The Brothers Karamazov Themes

In his journal, Dostoevsky wrote against the notion that societies were formed from the mere "need to live together": "This is not true; rather, it always happened as a result of a great idea" (sou...

Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is an extended reflection on religion, specifically Russian Orthodoxy, not only as a guide for individual morality but as a force in human history. Ivan's poetic...

Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov explores the question of free will by presenting and contesting different explanations of human behavior. The novel challenges the notion that in the absence of...

At the center of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is the sensational murder of Fyodor Karamazov. With the ensuing trial, the novel questions the possibility of an earthly justice, a notion of j...

Dostoevsky's characters in The Brothers Karamazov are put through the wringer. They are tormented by romantic disappointment and financial misfortune, by anxiety and jealousy and pride, by physical...

Our common-sense notion of guilt tells us we should only feel guilt over a specific act that we commit, for which we take responsibility. The Brothers Karamazov works with a much more generalized n...

The Brothers Karamazov laments the profound isolation of the individual in 19th-century Russian society. The culprits? The waning influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, the decay of traditional...

Family values? What family values? In his depiction of the Karamazovs, Dostoevsky gives us a seriously dysfunctional clan that seems to undermine every traditional notion of what a family ought to...