The Brothers Karamazov: A Personal and Universal Message

As Richard Pevear states in the introduction to his translation, “the juxtaposing of extremes that one finds in The Brothers Karamazov was also a mark of Dostoevsky’s life.” Indeed, the life of Dostoevsky was dramatic, and citing parallels between his biography and The Brothers Karamazov is a full task, mostly because, being his final novel and culmination of his life’s work and experience, he intended to put himself and his opinions onto the pages - -not as the narrator, but scattered throughout the ideological conflicts and characters. Yet the novel is more than merely a reflection of his biography. The Brothers Karamazov is both a personal and universal message, Dostoevsky’s final message: as personal as a tribute to his dead son and as universal as the great questions of God, purpose, and morality. This duality is, in part, what makes the novel remarkable. These two strands are woven into the novel in a manner some contemporary critics called “slipshod” but proved later to be remarkably modern, a sign of the new literary age approaching. To show his universal picture of humanity, Dostoevsky creates, with empathy, a wide range of believable characters from entirely different walks of life (a skill admired greatly in Shakespeare’s plays), uses the brothers as representations of the different parts of the human psyche, their amalgam being a passionate and accurate representation of the conflicted mind; and also by expressing with great intellect and force both sides of human thought - -rational (or scientific) and emotional (or spiritual) - -without judgment. To express his personal message, Dostoevsky works through subtle literary devices: labeling Alyosha the hero, the positioning of Books Five and Six and the positioning of the ending and epilogue, and the opinions represented by certain minor characters. Beautifully, with modern devices and a master’s ability, these two effects, personal and universal, though seemingly contradictory, are woven together.