The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky explores the psychology of humanity and freedom through “The Brothers Karamazov”, found in his short story “The Grand Inquisitor”. Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” is perhaps one of his greatest works ever known in modern literature because Dostoevsky’s philosophy is aimed towards free will, religion and human nature. For decades many have criticized the short story because Dostoevsky gives a profound understanding of the confrontation between Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor. Also, the story ends in ambiguity leaving the readers with wonder and confusion. Critics have argued over Dostoevsky religious and political thoughts on contemporary society. Dostoevsky’s arguments about Christ and the world gained many critics’ attention because his arguments are the key elements of mankind. In Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor”, the Grand Inquisitor argues the importance of stability over the theme, freedom.
Dostoevsky begins the story with Ivan (an atheist) telling a parable to his brother Alyosha (a delusional). The parable takes place in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition fifteen centuries after Jesus’ death in Seville. During the Inquisition, Christ comes back to Earth stealthily and begins to perform miracles on the people on the streets. Everybody recognizes Jesus and praises him for his return to Earth. The Grand Inquisitor, the man who burns heretics and is the leader of the Inquisitors, sees Jesus performing miracles on the people and is furious. The Grand Inquisitor demands that Jesus be arrested and be sent to prison. He demands everybody to leave the scene and the people obey him with fear. At night, the Grand Inquisitor visits Jesus in the cell and asks him why he has come back to E...
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...l be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves” (17). Since millions of people do not know how to use free will, they will live a happy life because “we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity” (17). With the Church handling all the sins, the people will die peacefully. Millions of people will be happy with this social formula and only “ we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy” (17). The people will never know that only the Church and the Inquisitor will be unhappy because all their punishment of sins will be their responsibility. This, the Grand Inquisitor assures, that his society will forever be happy and freedom will be alienated from mankind under the Church’s control.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was from Randolph, Massachusetts, born on October 31, 1852. As an American writer, she was best known for her stories and writings depicting characters who endured frustrated lives in New England. In 1867, Mary Wilkins relocated with her family to Brattleboro,Vermont. After studying for a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which now is Mount Holyoke College, Freeman lived at home where she spent most of her time reading, and writing stories for children. In 1883, soon after the death of her parents, she decided to live with friends, returning back to her hometown of Randolph, Massachusetts. Also, during that same year, she published her first adult story in a Boston newspaper. The best of her work was done while
In perhaps one of, if not the most famous chapters in the novel, "The Grand Inquisitor", Ivan tells Alyosha a poem that describes a leader from the Spanish Inquisition and his encounter with Jesus, who has made his return to earth. This Grand Inquisitor rejects Jesus and throws him in jail exclaiming:
Often times in literature, we are presented with quintessential characters that are all placed into the conventional categories of either good or bad. In these pieces, we are usually able to differentiate the characters and discover their true intentions from reading only a few chapters. However, in some remarkable pieces of work, authors create characters that are so realistic and so complex that we are unable to distinguish them as purely good or evil. In the novel Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky develops the morally ambiguous characters of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov to provide us with an interesting read and to give us a chance to evaluate each character.
Hansen, Bruce. “Dostoevsky’s Theodicy.” Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1996. At . accessed 18 November 2001.
Rodion Raskolnikov is a murderer, a damning criminal. Yet, he also has a warm heart that no one can equal. This character of paradox, of contradictions, of irony, is the true Raskolnikov. He is the Jekyll, and he is the Hyde; the zenith and the nadir. This hallowed literature of human nature provides us with important moral lessons, and at the same time helps the reader understand Dostoevsky’s philosophy on society better. Raskolnikov is not entirely a cold-blooded murderer, since he still has a feeling of love: The love towards Sofya Marmeladov. In this paper, we will go in-depth of how Sofya has an impact on Raskolnikov, by discussing their similarities and differences.
Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a reminder that books can provide answers to questions we never asked, but yearned to know. For that reason alone, The Death of Ivan Ilyich should be considered a work of art. However due to the many subtle hints and clues pointing at the underlying Christian nature of the book, it deserves to be added to the list of great modern Christian literature.
From the moment when Raskalnikov murders the old woman, his personality begins to change drastically. Dostoevsky challenges the reader to understand the madness which ensues by first demonstrating that the ideas and convictions to which Raskalnikov clung died along with the women. While the reader struggles with this realization, Dostoevsky incorporates the Biblical legend of Lazarus as a symbolic mirror for Raskalnikov's mind. By connecting the two, the reader encounters the foreshadowing of a rebirth of morals and beliefs, though what form this may assume remains cryptic. As references to Lazarus continue to occur, the feeling of parallelism increases in intensity. Just as Raskalnikov slowly struggled through madness, Lazarus lay dying of a terrible disease. When Lazarus eventually dies, Raskalnikov mimes this by teetering on the edge of insanity, the death of the mind. Eventually Sonya begins to pull Raskalnikov back to reality by relieving a portion of his guilt. As his Christ figure, she accomplishes this by providing the moral and spiritual sturdiness which Raskalnikov lost after his debasement during the murders. Sonya affects him not by active manipulation, but via her basic character, just as Christ personified his beliefs through the manner in which he lived his life. No matter what Raskalnikov says or does to her, she accepts it and looks to God to forgive him, just as Jesus does in the Bible. This eventually convinces Raskalnikov that what he did was in fact a crime and that he must repent for it and"seek atonement".
In such poor living conditions, those that the slums of Russia has to offer, the characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment1 struggle, living day to day. Raskolnikov, the protagonist, experiences multiple layers of suffering (the thought of his murder causes him greater suffering than does his poverty) as does Sonia and Katerina Ivanovna (1). Through these characters as well as Porfiry Petrovitch, Dostoevsky wants the reader to understand that suffering is the cost of happiness and he uses it to ultimately obliterate Raskolnikov’s theory of an ubermensch which allows him to experience infinite love.
As a result of Dostoevsky’s diligence and commitment to making this effort effective the special things about Russia that are good and dear to the heart were saved. The faith in the common man is surprising and a typical of Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky seems to put Ivan and Alyosha in the limelight so we can observe their striking differences. While the most important event of the novel – the murder of Fyodor – is rationalized by Ivan’s philosophy, Alyosha’s faith, influenced by the great Zosima, saves people from their wretchedness. Ultimately, faith in God and love for others prevail – there is no place for disbelief. The message Dostoevsky seems to try to send across is that however difficult faith in God may be when we have to deal with the gruesome reality of suffering in this world, its only alternative is an intolerable misery.
Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg is a large, uncaring city which fosters a western style of individualism. As Peter Lowe notes, “The city is crowded, but there is no communality in its crowds, no sense of being part of some greater ‘whole.’” Mrs. Raskolnikov initially notices a change in her son marked by his current state of desperate depression, but she fails to realize the full extent of these changes, even after he is convicted for the murder. The conditions and influences are also noticed by Raskolnikov’s mother who comments on the heat and the enclosed environment which is present throughout the city. When visiting Raskolnikov, she exclaims "I'm sure...
The conflict between good and evil is one of the most common conventional themes in literature. Coping with evil is a fundamental struggle with which all human beings must contend. Sometimes evil comes from within a character, and sometimes other characters are the source of evil; but evil is always something that the characters struggle to overcome. In two Russian novels, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, men and women cope with their problems differently. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and the Master in The Master and Margarita can not cope and fall apart, whereas Sonya in Crime and Punishment and Margarita in The Master and Margarita, not only cope but pull the men out of their suffering.
Within the tortured mind of a young Russian university student, an epic battle rages between two opposite ideologies - the conservative Christianity characteristic of the time, and a new modernist humanism gaining prevalence in academia. Fyodor Dostoevsky in the novel Crime and Punishment uses this conflict to illustrate why the coldly rational thought that is the ideal of humanism represses our essential emotions and robs us of all that is human. He uses the changes in Raskolnikov's mental state to provide a human example of modernism's effect on man, placing emphasis upon the student's quest for forgiveness and the effect of repressed emotion.
According to Raskolnikov’s theory in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”,there are two types of people that coexist in the world; the “Extraordinary” and the “Ordinary”. The ordinary men can be defined as “Men that have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because they are ordinary.”(248). To the contrary “extraordinary” men are “Men that have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way , just because they are extraordinary”(248). Dostoevsky’s theory is evident through the characters of his novel. The main character, Raskolnikov, uses his theory of extraordinary men to justify contemplated murder. There is a sense of empowerment his character experiences with the ability to step over social boundaries. He is led to believe the killing of the pawnbroker is done for the perseverance of the greater good. It is ironic that character who is shown to be powerful in the early stages of the novel subsequently go on to show many weaknesses.
In his novel Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky uses Raskolnikov as a vessel for several different philosophies that were particularly prominent at the time in order to obliquely express his opinions concerning those schools of thought. Raskolnikov begins his journey in Crime and Punishment with a nihilistic worldview and eventually transitions to a more optimistic one strongly resembling Christian existentialism, the philosophy Dostoevsky preferred, although it could be argued that it is not a complete conversion. Nonetheless, by the end of his journey Raskolnikov has undergone a fundamental shift in character. This transformation is due in large part to the influence other characters have on him, particularly Sonia. Raskolnikov’s relationship with Sonia plays a significant role in furthering his character development and shaping the philosophical themes of the novel.