This is one of the “Great Books of the Western World” series I’ve never read before, so I’m trying to fill the gaps in my education! I skimmed through some chapters, but read most of it and feel I gained a good understanding. I also listened to a few “Great Course” lectures on Russian literature. It still took me a long time to read this novel. Maybe it was the translation I read, which seemed stuffy. I liked Crime and Punishment more, and War and Peace (by Tolstoy) much more.
I think my struggles with BK are mostly with the style: the 19th century, third person omniscient narrator paired with occasional authorial intrusions disguised as comments by a very minor character, almost a community voice (maybe like the chorus in Greek drama). John Fowles employs the artifice of these mechanics to wondrous effect in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, where they seem to disappear into the story like the stage props in Shakespeare, but here they always seem awkward and obtrusive, not insightful. Maybe that’s partly due to the more advanced development of the novel form in the last century, but I also think Fowles is just a better writer.
My second complaint is that the plot is full of digressions which seem to exist only to incorporate abstract debates on the merits of “democratic Christian nationalism” in Russia, atheism, free will, altruism, and the nature of good and evil. The novel is often considered one of the “Great Books” for its consideration of these themes, but the presentation is more didactic than organic. The murder of the Karamozov’s father, the endless investigation and trial, and the torturous debates were too much for me to slog through at times.
Maybe the worst thing though, is I did not care much about any of the characters. The brothers Mitya and Ivan, and their father are deeply flawed, selfish, and petty, “great sinners” as are all humans in Dostoevsky’s view, but I can’t find much compassion for them in the story. The fact that Aloysha, the youngest brother, can forgive his family is something of a miracle. In the last chapter, at a child’s funeral, he is clearly shown to be a Christ-figure as all the children follow him, rejecting the egoism of his father, brothers, and the histrionic fury of most of the female characters.
Although Aloysha is the hero and ideal, he is hardly the main character. The novel instead focuses on Mitya’s guilt or innocence in the murder of his father, and much attention is paid to the exchange of 3000 rubles as his possible motivation. The trial and its petty details feels like an allegory for the trial of all humanity, with Mitya’s conviction and commutation of sentence as he flees to Europe with Grushenka meant to leave us all feeling guilty. And I generally hate allegories because they fail to ground the story in believable experience and character.
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