If nothing else, the plot of The Brothers Karamazov is gripping. Fyodor Pavlovitch (Pavlovich by some lights) and his eldest son, Dmitri, fall passionately in love with the same woman, Grushenka. For her part, Grushenka is playing both of them for laughs. But hilarity does not ensue. Instead, Fyodor Pavlovitch gets murdered.

One might say The Brothers Karamazov draws water from many different samovars. The mistreatment by Fyodor Pavlovitch of his four sons shapes them all in different ways. In this sense, the story is a family drama. It is equally a murder mystery, a courtroom saga, and something of a psychology procedural. There is theology and cultural criticism. There is philosophical lucidity and no shortage of ha-has. At 880 pages, there is no shortage of anything.

The story cracks a window onto pre-revolutionary Russia, where we find the country in a worried state about losing its religion, a condition brought on by the cresting waves of European influence. The issue of class lingers over the narrative, which takes place in the years after serfdom is abolished. And as with the novel’s predecessor, Crime and Punishment, author Fyodor Dostoevsky is deliberate in exploring the nature of guilt.

For the characters in The Brothers Karamazov, guilt is an infinite shapeshifter that gets around to almost everyone. Guilt is poetic, shared, and calculated by degrees of separation from the offense. Owing to the colossal dimensions of guilt in The Brothers Karamazov, the question of who killed Fyodor Pavlovitch is but a small part of the proceedings, and by no means the crucial one.

Dmitri’s alleged guilt comes from being part of the salacious love triangle with Fyodor Pavlovitch and Grushenka, as well as being at the scene of the crime. He has recently attacked his father. Though Dmitri proclaims his innocence, he admits that he wanted his father dead.

The second son, Ivan, knows his brother and father are coming to blows and responds by leaving town, saying, “One reptile will devour the other.” Does Ivan’s leaving, and his public declaration of amorality — “Everything is lawful” — make him somehow responsible for his father’s murder? In the aftermath of the killing, he seems to think so.

The brothers’ illegitimate half-sibling, Smerdyakov, who has been raised as a servant in their household, is bed-bound with illness when the crime takes place. He is the only suspect other than Dmitri. Smerdyakov is something of an “idiot savant” (or is he?) and is under the influence of Ivan’s ideas. If Smerdyakov killed Fyodor Pavlovitch, is he capable of understanding the full extent of his crime? And if he did it out of an imagined agreement that Ivan egged him into, how much of the blame does Ivan share?

The investigation of the murder is dealt with in the conventional sense of establishing motives, means, and degrees of premeditation — until it isn’t. At the trial, Dmitri’s defense enlarges the court’s understanding of guilt by arguing the guiltiest person of all is the victim, Fyodor Pavlovitch, a negligent father and a contemptible human. In a comic turn, the prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, counters the defense’s argument by declaring Dmitri, along with all of Russia — “The Galloping Troika” — guilty of murder for having adopted the corrupting influences of modernity. (Possibly not the best legal strategy but rather amusing in its sweep.)  

Dostoevsky’s conflation of guilt before the law, guilt before the community, and guilt before one’s own conscience is not a conceptual slip. Within the moral system of the novel, all guilt is relevant. The point he seems to be making is that it takes a village to murder a father. Maybe even a country or a continent; perhaps the entire world.

And where there is guilt, there must also be innocence. The fourth brother, Alyosha, is a novice monk. By Dostoevsky’s own account, he is the hero of the story and the only Karamazov —maybe the only character in the book (aside from Alyosha’s saintly mentor, Father Zossima) — who does not share any of the blame. This rare immunity comes from religion, specifically (quelle surprise!) Russian orthodoxy, which Dostoevsky floats as a better alternative for justice than the court system. His reasoning is circular and fundamentalist but no less compelling for it: Because guilt is held by the whole society, and because guilt goes beyond the material grasp, only a shared spiritual movement is equipped to respond to it.

Commentators have noted that Dostoevsky’s characters in The Brothers Karamazov represent different archetypes or life philosophies. Fyodor Pavlovitch plays the hedonist and, at his most likable, is something of a court jester. Dmitry is of the same “sensualist” ilk as his father, only more generous. In this, he represents the path of self-destruction. Smerdyakov is not much fun as the inscrutable psychopath, and Alyosha, his opposite, shines with the light of Christ but lacks a meaningful struggle to deepen his character.

Ivan, the most interesting son of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the book’s cautionary tale, is cast as the atheist. As the murder investigation goes on, his nihilism gives way to a thoughtful tirade about the problem of evil. Dostoevsky may have stacked the literary deck in favor of the “good” brother, Alyosha, but the author’s steel-manning of Ivan’s tortured worldview unintentionally wins the day. Chapter four of Book V, entitled “Rebellion,” showcases Ivan’s stirring takedown of forgiveness:

“I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive…”

For Ivan, this bellowing from the soul, and the guilt he feels about his father’s death, will eventually cost him both his health and sanity. After all, Dostoevsky could not have a character lashing out at God’s plan, only to live happily ever after. Still, as a character, Ivan stands the test of time: After nearly 150 years, it is he most readers will be drawn to — his reluctance to get involved in family conflict, his anger at the misuses of religion, his need to be heard and admired, his openness to being both wrong and wronged, his inner tumult and heartfelt sympathy for human suffering.

The quandaries raised in this work are freighted with meaning and therefore potentially life-enhancing. But like in wrestling all night with an angel, one needs stamina for the battle and patience to parse the lessons.

At the story level, The Brothers Karamazov is hostile to readers — long and tedious, it introduces characters and backstories that are beside the point, often nowhere near it. It retreads the same ground as Crime and Punishment, then tries to expand the scope but fails to do so in an engaging way. Dostoevsky’s competitor, Tolstoy, was rumored to have passed away with The Brothers Karamazov at his bedside, which makes one wonder if the book might have contributed to his death.

Those with a thirst for the existential will not be able to skip The Brothers Karamazov, but perhaps everyone else should.

Please share your experience, if you are still alive, with reading The Brothers Karamazov on Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram. You can join Dorothy in next reading Franz Kafka’s much shorter novella, The Metamorphosis, which will be the subject of her column on September 15th, 2025.