Before You Start
If you have ever lost track of who is who in this novel, this one is for you.
Here are The Brothers Karamazov characters: who each one is, what they want, and every name they go by. The early parts are spoiler free. Where I have to reveal something from late in the book, I will warn you first.
I am using Constance Garnett’s translation from Project Gutenberg, ebook number twenty-eight thousand and fifty-four. All spellings follow hers.
The Name Problem
Russian names are the main trap. A character has a first name, a father’s name, and a family name. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov is Fyodor, with a father’s name ending in vitch. His sons are Dmitri Fyodorovitch, Ivan Fyodorovitch and Alexey Fyodorovitch. The ending changes, but the person does not.
Then there are pet names. Dmitri is Mitya. Alexey is Alyosha. Katerina Ivanovna is Katya. Agrafena Alexandrovna is Grushenka.
By my count, in this translation Alyosha appears about twelve hundred and forty times. Dmitri and Mitya together appear about thirteen hundred, and Ivan about seven hundred. That is how much page the book gives each brother.
Fyodor Pavlovitch
The father. The narrator says he hardly spent a day on his own estate, and calls him abject and vicious. He started with next to nothing and, at his death, had a hundred thousand roubles in cash. He married twice and forgot each set of children.
He plays the buffoon, and the family meeting at the monastery is his stage. What he wants most is Grushenka, and he has an envelope of three thousand roubles ready for her. Most of the plot grows out of that.
Dmitri, Called Mitya
The eldest, twenty-seven, a former army officer. He is passionate, broke, and owes Katerina Ivanovna money. He says his father cheated him out of his mother’s money, and he is in love with Grushenka.
The best way into him is the three chapters called The Confession of a Passionate Heart, where he pours himself out to Alyosha. In my reading he is the brother who feels the most and plans the least.
Ivan Fyodorovitch
The middle brother, twenty-four, the intellectual. He is the one who tells the Grand Inquisitor poem, and who tells Alyosha he cannot accept a world with the suffering of children in it. The idea people attach to him is that if there is no God and no immortality, everything is lawful.
Spoiler warning for the rest of this section. That idea comes back on him. He visits Smerdyakov three times, sees a devil, and collapses in a brain fever.
Alexey, Called Alyosha
The youngest, twenty, and the one the narrator calls his hero. A novice at the monastery, devoted to the elder. He remembers his mother, who died when he was in his fourth year, all his life, and the book spends a whole paragraph on that memory.
The narrator insists he is not stupid or simple. People tell him their secrets, and he carries messages between the others. When his elder dies, the decay of the body shakes him badly, and he leaves the monastery within three days. By the end he is the one speaking to the boys.
Smerdyakov
A servant in Fyodor’s house, brought up by Grigory and his wife Marfa. He is quiet, and he knows the secret signal Fyodor uses with Grushenka, a pattern of knocks on the window. Full spoilers ahead. Near the end he tells Ivan that he killed Fyodor, shows him the money, and hangs himself that night.
The Women
Katerina Ivanovna, Katya, is Mitya’s former fiancee, proud and tormented. The narrator describes her love as lacerated, and in a late chapter says it began in wounded pride and was more like revenge.
Grushenka is the other woman in Mitya’s life, and in Fyodor’s. In the book she tells a folk story about a woman and an onion. In my reading she is the most direct person in the novel.
Lise Hohlakov is a girl who teases Alyosha, and the two agree to marry some day. Her mother, Madame Hohlakov, is a talkative, anxious woman who says she has been out of her mind twice in her life.
The Narrator
One more character that people forget. The story is told by a local man who says “our town” and “our police captain”, and who describes himself in the courtroom, remembering how the jurymen walked in. He never gives his name. He calls Alyosha his hero, and he says openly when he does not know what a character was thinking.
Who Wants What
Here is the web, spoiler free. Fyodor and Mitya want the same woman, Grushenka, and Mitya also needs money. Ivan wants an answer about the suffering of children. Alyosha wants the others to stop hurting each other, so he carries messages between them, and that is why he is in almost every scene.
When They Show Up
You can use this as a reading map. The family and Alyosha come first, in book one. The gathering at the monastery is book two. Smerdyakov and the three confessions of Mitya are in book three. Katerina Ivanovna and the schoolboys appear in book four. Ivan’s poem is book five, and the elder’s own story is book six. Kolya and Ilusha get a whole book, book ten, which comes late.
The Elder and His Monks
Father Zossima is the elder, an old monk people come to for counsel. At the first meeting he bows to the floor at Dmitri’s feet, and the novel gives his life and teaching a whole book of its own. Father Païssy is his close friend, and sits with the body after he dies.
Servants and Hangers-On
Grigory is Fyodor’s old servant, gloomy, obstinate and loyal, who took in each boy in turn. Marfa is his wife.
Rakitin is an acquaintance of Alyosha’s who tells him, after the bow, that a crime is coming in this family. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov is a cousin of Mitya’s mother, a proud freethinker who is in a lawsuit with the monastery.
The Trial Cast
Spoilers again. At the trial, Ippolit Kirillovitch is the prosecutor, and Fetyukovitch is Mitya’s lawyer. Doctor Varvinsky is a kind young doctor who puts Mitya in a private room after the verdict.
The Boys
Ilusha is a young schoolboy, and Kolya Krassotkin is a fourteen-year-old. His mother is a widow who has devoted herself to him since her husband died, and she is afraid for him every day. The boys have mocked him about her. Kolya has a big dog named Perezvon. They look like a side story. They are the last scene in the book.
My Cheat Sheet
Here is my cheat sheet, and it is an opinion. Fyodor is the father. Mitya is the heart. Ivan is the mind. Alyosha is the soul. Smerdyakov is the servant who acts. The book itself leaves plenty of room to disagree with that.
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