Ivan Karamazov
Intellectual son
- Wants
- To hold a moral position that does not require God to exist.
- Undone by
- He argues with such brilliance that he cannot stop, even when the argument turns on him.
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NovelContinental · 1880Study guide · no full textDemanding
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky →A murder mystery where the real investigation is moral. The Grand Inquisitor chapter is the most argued-over passage in the nineteenth-century novel — decide what you think it claims.
Study guide
This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.
“If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”
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The castFull atlas →
Alyosha Karamazov
Novice monk, youngest son
- Wants
- To be present to people without needing a theory for them.
- Undone by
- He trusts others too easily to warn them in time.
Now read the first page with all of this in mind.
The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.