The Brothers Karamazov is the most complex and thought provoking book I have ever read. I was really drawn to the idea and complexity of suffering thru out the book. Smerdykov suffered his whole life, knowing he was a bastard child and having epilepsy seizures. The way he handled his suffering, turned him into a murderer. The Karamazov curse of sensuality drove Fyodor and Dmitri to a life of suffering. The book showed me how spiteful and hopeless people really are without a religion to guide them. Ivan’s lack of understanding love drove him to insanity, and I thought it was really interesting how the characters took shape as we learned more about their back stories and suffering. Each one of the brothers were orphans and had the same upbringing, but they came out entirely different people. When we learn more about how the characters had suffered and the suffering they had seen, we see why they think the way they do. Because of the suffering of little children that Ivan had read about or seen he refuses his “ticket” with God. He rejects the world that God has allowed men to create. He wants out of a religion that allows all this suffering to mankind. Ivan later goes insane, we learn at the end of the book. Without any hope that this suffering is fleeting he literally loses it. Alyosha is on the opposite spectrum; he sees all the suffering in everyone’s life and tries to make a difference. The book gives several examples, but the one that sticks with me the most, is the little boy who dies. Alyosha rallies the all the school children together to help ease the suffering of the little Ilyusha and the boy’s father.
Dmitri has also been talked about as being the hero in this book by this class. We know at the end of the book the little boy Kolya says he wants to be just like Dmitri when he grows up. Dmitri we know didn’t kill his father but all the evidence points to him. He is convicted and is sentenced to work in Siberia at a hard labor camp. Because of the way Dmitri handled the news of all the suffering that was going to come his way he is heroic. It would take guts to take punishment the way Dmitri did. Dmitri sacrificed himself for truth and justice; he let his name be disgraced for the betterment of mankind.
Grushenka was a very complex woman she suffered because of a lover who left her. She lets that shape her into the women she was in the book; she flirts and lead Fyodor and Dmitri to believe they both have a chance, because of what her suffering had taught her about men. All is suffering and all is fleeting, but Grushenka learned the last part of this too late. She admits her guilt in the murder of Fyodor, if only she had been faithful to one Karamazov and learned to let go of her previous suffering, perhaps the death of the father wouldn’t have happened.
The story we read about of the philanthropist is a great example of how suffering shapes lives. The philanthropist suffered a broken heart from the lady he loved; her heart belonged to another. So he decides to murder the women who caused his pain. In the book he says” I shall atone for my crime with my secret suffering”. He was not able to live life with all the guilt, he talks to Father Zosima about the guilt he feels when he has children. He can’t bear the thought of giving life when he has taken life. This would suggest to me that as a result his children suffered with a bad relationship with their father. The philanthropist sufferer d for fourteen years with the guilt of the murder, he was faced with two decisions. One to do the right thing, confess and end his suffering, or two to keep living with the suffering quietly. How he handled his suffering was very brave in the end, he confessed to the crime and his suffering was fleeting. I wonder how his life would have been different if he would have read the story of Lot’s wife. Would he have been able to live a life without suffering if he knew to keep looking forward in life? All is suffering and all is fleeting. I think we can easily understand all is suffering, but the all is fleeting seems to come too late to most of us.
In the last part of this class we have read Hamlet and talked briefly about Job. Father Zosima also talks about Job in the brothers Karamazov. So I re-read to story of Job and was blown away. He suffered more than we ever will, and the way he handled his suffering was superhuman; or I would call it heroic .He lost all of his children and his home and livestock. Satan did this because he thought that Job would curse God. Job passed Satan’s test and was blessed with twice as much. Job showed how we handle suffering is very important in our lives. Suffering has a way of changing a person for better or for worse. I think Dostoevsky gave beautiful examples of this in his book.
While researching for this paper and reading more of Father Zosimas chapter, one cannot ignore the story of Jesus. If Jesus hadn’t handled suffering the way he did, if he hadn’t gone through with being crucified then the religion we know today as Christianity would not exist. He is a great example of how you handle suffering affects more than just yourself. Father Zosima says in the book “if evil deeds of men sadden you too greatly and arouse in you an anger you cannot overcome and fills you with desire to wreak vengeance on the evil doers- fear this feeling cause you too are responsible for the evil deeds of all men.”
For how we handle suffering affects more than just ourselves, we can’t have peace till we learn that suffering is fleeting and that is what the characters in the Brothers Karamazov taught me. We are all responsible for how we handle suffering. Will we allow it to make us heroes? Or instead will we give in and live selfishly like Fyodor? The fact that knowing your suffering is fleeting is what will get you through your suffering. In the end of the book we realized how everyone had guilt in the murder of the father. For we too are responsible for the deeds of evil men, and how we handle suffering is the example we lay out for those men.So what I have learned is this, love the moment. Flowers can grow out of dark moments. Therefore each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed. And knowing that suffering is fleeting is what makes it possible to live in the moment. Knowing that suffering is fleeting is what gives mankind sanity and how we handle suffering is what makes heroes out of drunks, and monks out of orphans. So when something is taken away from you, like a father perhaps, it doesn’t happen to make you suffer. It could be so that something else great could come into your life or so that you might loosen your grip on that thing so you can grab onto something better. This will not happen though unless you understand that suffering is fleeting, and you learn to always look forward
