Reading a book by Dostoevsky does not give us any insight into the mind of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky almost never makes an absolute statement in his books, and in general, very few opinions expressed by the characters in his novels can be traced back to the author himself. Therefore, we still do not know what Dostoevsky thinks about family life, the father/son relationship and all its nuances, or even the merits of Ivan's worldview compared to Alyosha's when we read The Brothers Karamazov. It never tells us what to believe, but this massive work by Dostoevsky puts us in a very uncomfortable position as it forces us to consider the messiness, the sheer concreteness of a son's relationship with his father, and all things unexpressed. pain and problems which, at least in this case, culminated in murder. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Relationship has biblical connotations and connections. For example, to what extent is a child obligated to love a father? Does a father have to somehow “earn” the title to win the love of his children? Although Fyodor Pavlovich's drunkenness and philandering make it easy to see in this book, what makes the father/son relationship naturally tense in all cases (i.e., what are the factors inherent in all father/son relationships)? These are all questions we face when reading this book, although we should not expect a definitive and clear answer to all our questions from Dostoevsky himself. Instead, the obligation rests on Dostoevsky to artistically present the narrative in the most provocative way possible, appealing to our instinctive feelings of sympathy, justice, and intrigue, and strategically raising these questions that wound most deeply and cause the reader the most discomfort. The father/son relationship is perhaps the most mysterious of all family bonds. The son knows that he was born of the father and that he must share at least some of the father's traits, but it often happens that those traits are never fully known by the son (even if they are, they often reveal themselves in our worst moments) or the best moments ). This fact is recognized in Scripture; Adam was created by God in his image and likeness, and Jesus Christ himself fully identified with God and with man, whom he called his Father and his brothers. When your father is virtuous and generally good-natured, this is not a big problem, but if your father is Fyodor Pavlovich, who has practically no positive traits and did almost nothing to raise children better than him, you will not. you necessarily want many of your father's traits to be inherent. Dostoevsky recognizes this fact and masterfully uses it to add depth and mystery to his novel. “Karamazovism” is a term that was never even fully defined (which was frustrating to the reader), but, because it is a quality, it is a term recognized as possessed by Fyodor and all of the Karamazov brothers. From the beginning of the book, Alyosha's “Karamazovism” is established in the reader's mind by Rakitin: “I have been watching you for a long time. You are a Karamazov too, a full-fledged Karamazov, so race and selection mean something. You are a sensualist after your father, and after your mother... a holy fool. Alyosha does not deny this, although we are given very little evidence of his sensualism throughout the book; he is chaste, and although he often notices the beauty of Grushenka and Katerina Ivanovna, it cannot be seen as anything more than an ordinary man would feel at the sight of a beautiful woman. Not only has Alyosha's inherent "Karamazovism" never been questioned, but it is further confirmed by Kolya and thehis friends in the last words of the book: "Karamazov, we love you... Long live Karamazov!" (776) Beginning the novel with descriptions of the family and closing the entire novel with these words of Kolya, Dostoevsky tells the reader to see Alyosha as Karamazov first and last, urging us to recognize the inherent “Karamazovism” in him despite the spectacle that is already been made of Karamazovism to all intents and purposes. In the reader's mind, this has the effect of clouding the novel. It clouds our judgment because it makes any action possible for Alyosha, Ivan, Smerdyakov and Mitya, essentially because all these characters have the same Karamazov tendencies passed down from their father. This makes it impossible to remove suspicion from any of these characters, instead leaving some level of guilt and suspicion on all characters. Ivan may not have killed Fyodor, but he is not entirely innocent, nor are Mitya, Smerdyakov, and Alyosha. One of them must be the killer, of course, but this sensuality shared by Karamazov places a certain degree of blame on everyone, confusing the reader's judgment and complicating the novel. This connects to another key idea in the book, the one that Zosima gives voice to first, that “everyone is to blame for everyone,” an idea that is difficult to ignore throughout the novel. In this family context, Ivan believes himself guilty of influencing Smerdyakov to kill his father, and Mitya is only able to accept his fate because he believes himself guilty (to some extent) of committing murder by wishing for his father's death . This is consistent with what we believe about families; they exist as a unit, not shifting blame from one member to another but rather accepting responsibility as a whole. In the ideal family there should be no factions or harboring resentment, but all grievances should be expressed openly. The family is a microcosm of what we see in the history of human existence; that everyone is guilty of everyone else and that only by accepting this fact can we, as Father Zosima says, “gain the whole world with love and wash away the sins of the world with [our] tears” (164). The transmission of certain traits from father to son is mysterious and impossible to quantify, but Dostoevsky does not shy away from the most uncomfortable questions concerning fathers and children, the ones we can see unfold before us with our own eyes. Yet these are the issues that are being blamed for murder, not the intangible genetics discussed above. In particular, Mitya's defense lawyer, Mr. Fetyukovich, openly expresses several issues in his speech, including these in book 12, chapter 13: "But, gentlemen of the jury, one must treat the words honestly, and I will allow myself to name one thing with the right word, the right name: a father like the murdered old Karamazov cannot and does not deserve to be called father. Love for a father who is not justified by the father is an absurdity and an impossibility. Love it cannot be created from nothing; only God creates from nothing.” (744) I consider this the most shocking statement in the entire book. This statement naturalizes the instinctive revulsion we feel at the thought of a son killing his father the same brotherhood from which the book takes its name is called into question. After all, if Fyodor Pavlovich were not the father of his three children, would the entire family be delegitimized? on communication between them, the idea that the murder of this father is no more damnable than the murder of an ordinary peasant is surprising. As the reader reads this statement, he gets the feeling that the entire world of The Brothers Karamazov has been deconstructed, that one of the central pieces of information we believed, namely that this book is aboutboth family matters and family matters. murder – is questioned. If Fyodor Pavlovich was never the father of his children and does not need to be treated differently, what makes this book different from any other mystery? Again Dostoevsky uses this question strategically, saving it in the last part of the book when Fyodornon's authorship had been questioned in the previous 700 pages, to attract our attention, indicating the meaning of the question. It is significant precisely because, if we strip Fyodor Pavlovich of his fatherhood, it changes the entire lens through which we see all fathers; namely, that fathers no longer have an intrinsically higher position than their children, but rather must earn their respect and love. Based on this first hypothesis, the chain reaction that will surely follow will be catastrophic; children will no longer consider themselves submissive to their fathers but as judges of their fathers, capable of determining their fate and, if Fetykovich is to be believed, somehow justified in punishing them if the evaluation is negative. Fetyokovich himself states: “'Fathers, do not provoke your children!' Let us first fulfill Christ's commandment ourselves and only then expect the same from our children. Otherwise we will not be fathers, but enemies of our children, and they will not be our children, but our enemies, and we ourselves will have made them our enemies! (744). The relationship between father and son will be defined by hostility, not simply ambivalence. As Ivan said, “If there is no God, everything is permissible.” Once the first hypothesis is proven, an entire belief system collapses. Here is a very real example of the same logic Ivan used; that if there is no father, everything is permissible. It is also worth noting that this hostility between father and son is actually a biblical concept, but only in the context of the heavenly kingdom and eternal punishment. Speaking of the future judgment, Jesus says: “From now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. 53Father will be divided against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." (Luke 12:52-53). Biblically, it is only in a world with God that there will be a true division between father and son, and not the other way around. There is another issue raised by the defense attorney that we need to address. This problem is best illustrated by Smerdyakov's life; as we know, it was long rumored that Smerdyakov was the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovich and the "Stinking Lizaveta", a beggar from the city. The very details of Smerdyakov's birth disgust the reader: Fyodor Pavlovich is seen hanging around Lizaveta one night, Lizaveta is soon after pregnant, and a baby is born in the garden outside Karamazov's house. In such a situation, when the father is not present at the birth of the child, what do we define as the moment of fatherhood? Where is the love for the child at the moment of conception? Defense lawyer Fetyokovich puts it in the most touching way: “The young man involuntarily begins to think: 'But did he love me when he was fathering me?', he asks, wondering more and more. «Has he begotten me for myself? He didn't know me, not even my sex at that moment, the moment of passion, probably warmed by wine, and probably did nothing for me other than transmit to me the inclination to drink'” (745). Here is another moment in which we are forced “involuntarily” to stare impassively at the reality of fatherhood; that comes from passion. We are forced to face the possibility that we, “innocent” children, may have been born from impurity, from sensuality, simply from an unexpected causality of such sensuality, all from two people we cannot evenchoose. This begs the question: How can a child be born innocent if he is born from such passion, even drunkenness? The incarnate Christ, born of the virgin, is the only man free from this natural inclination to debauchery in all of us. Knowing the innate guilt in all men, even newborns, it was essential to Christ's mission that he be born free from passion and sensuality, requiring instead that he be born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin. According to the biblical narrative, then, it would seem likely that the children are not as innocent as Ivan makes them out to be. At this point Dostoevsky has completely baffled the reader; presented compelling evidence for children's inherent innocence through the words of the story of Ivan and Illyusha, but now provides a seemingly irrefutable argument against children's innocence. This is, once again, consistent with a general pattern of this novel; that the dichotomy between father and son has profound implications for any belief system, and that we cannot afford to trudge through this novel without recognizing and examining these implications. Finally, to conclude his speech, Fetyukovich generalizes the entire defense, developing a simple method by which we can determine the legitimacy of a father. He says this: “How to decide, then? Here's how to do it: the son comes before the father and asks him reasonably: 'Father, tell me, why should I love you? Father, prove to me that I should love you' - and if the father can, if he is able to answer and give him proof, then we have a real, normal family, founded not only on mystical prejudices, but on reasonable, self-responsible and strictly humans. In the opposite case, if the father cannot provide any proof, the family is over then and there: he is not a father to his son, and the son is free and has the right to consider his father as a stranger and even as a stranger . his enemy." (745). As has been mentioned before, this novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky is primarily concerned with the communication of characters; communication between brothers, between father and son, between man and woman, and between man and God. communication, as we see in the novel, is inherently disordered and broken, leading to excessive anger, conflict, and, in this case, ultimately murder. However, Dostoevsky is still not in the business of giving his readers lessons to live by no idea how to relate to our fathers by reading this novel Fetyukovich's conclusions are an oversimplification, and to believe in them as the central message of the book is to reject the familial bond that underpins the entire book and (literally) binds it on the side. before the book. However, the book has a practical value; through a kind of screen we can see that there is something objectively right and wrong in the family's behavior, but it is never stated openly and it is seen primarily through the disorder of family affairs. The ideals are established from the beginning of the book and all play out consistently; Alyosha's belief system is not separate from his communication, and Ivan and Mitya are also consistent with theirs. Some of the essential questions that arise in the novel - about whether everyone is to blame, about whether everything is permissible without God, and about the inherent innocence of children - are scattered throughout the novel, making it impossible for the reader not to continually question themselves. stumble upon them as they read. These are the questions that we face every day in our communication but that we are not willing to acknowledge. Here Dostoevsky has thus skillfully juxtaposed and contrasted belief systems, presenting some first and withholding others until.