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Ivan Karamazov
In the Brothers Karamazov, Ivan plays a vital role in the plot of the story. He has many defining characteristics, including strong beliefs on the idea of God and the world as a product of these beliefs. It is these powerful and thought provoking beliefs that help develop his character and the reader's opinion on Ivan. However, as the novel progresses, Ivan's thoughts on responsibility and his intellectual nature begin to cause him turmoil and ultimately end in his demise.
In this novel, each of the three brothers have a defining characteristic. Alyosha is religious, Dmitri is military-minded and Ivan is intellectual. Ivan ponders ideas and concepts deeply in the novel, and his strong ideas on God are most prevalent in a discussion between him and Alyosha concerning the torture of children. In this discussion, Ivan goes into depth on his ideas concerning God. At first, it may appear that Ivan does not in fact believe in God and that he is an atheist. However, this is not the case. Ivan does not reject God. He does believe in a God, it is the world created by God that he can not believe in. The examples that he gives to defend his beliefs are shocking, gruesome, and one of the most difficult parts in the books to read without evoking some kind of human emotion. Tales of a child shot in the face and an innocent child being torn to shreds by dogs secure his position and are difficult to refute. Tales like this make it difficult for even spiritual Alyosha to justify a God. He poses the question concerning how could he believe in a God and world that permits the torture of innocent children. Why would a world exist where people torture beings not old enough even to have sinned? Ivan hints that he would believe in a world that permits the suffering of adults, but the suffering of children is simply incomprehensible. He notes “Listen, if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?” (Dostoevsky, Book V Ch. 4). These beliefs demonstrate Ivan's stance on the injustices of the world.
Near the end of Ivan's rant, he poses this deep question to Alyosha. “Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature-that baby beating it's breast with it's fist, for instance- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears:would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!” (Dostoevsky, Book V Ch. 4 ). Alyosha, being a man dedicated to religion and God, cannot even consent to this, which in a way proves and validates Ivan's point. Clearly, after hearing about all of Ivan's beliefs, it is obvious that he is a man bursting with unending amounts of dilemma and despair concerning injustices in the world. These strong feeling affect him throughout the rest of the novel, particularly towards the end of the novel in his discussions with Smerdyakov.
In the novel, the reader can clearly see a relationship develop between Smerdyakov and Ivan. That relationship involves the two men being foils of one another. When Ivan first visits Smerdyakov, Smerdyakov begins to affect Ivan by telling him things he would rather not hear. First, he tells him that he actually wanted his father dead. In addition, he mentions that he left his father on the day of his murder because he believed his brother Dmitri was going to murder old man Karamazov, and he secretly wanted this. This seems to be the beginning of a complete downhill spiral for Ivan. The idea that he could in a way be responsible for the death of his father takes a toll on his conscience. Later on, Ivan visits Smerdyakov for a second time, and this time he continues to inform Ivan of his subconscious thoughts and desires. He tells Ivan that he wanted his father dead so that he could inherit a sum of wealth. Concerned and in turmoil over these assertions, Ivan visits Katerina, who shows him a letter from Dmitri promising to kill Fyodor Karamazov. This puts Ivan at more ease, and helps to convince him that he had nothing to do with the death of his father. However, even with Ivan's conscious put at ease, the worst is yet to come. On his final visit to Smerdyakov, he is confronted with a heartwrenching fact. Smerdyakov confesses that he killed Fyodor Karamazov. However, he does not accept full responsibility for the murder. He asserts that he would not have been able to commit such a crime had it not been for his discussions with Ivan. He claims that Ivan's beliefs and ideas gave him reason, justification, and permission to commit the murder. In other words, he gave him tacit approval for the murder. Therefore, Ivan is greatly responsible for the horrific murder of his own father.
Now, Ivan feels that he has the ability to prove his brother Dmitri's innocence, but he is equally troubled by the concept of his responsibility for the murder. The next chapter of the novel, The Devil, Ivan's Nightmare, represent the point at which Ivan Karamazov is driven mad. After Ivan returns home from his visit with Smerdyakov, he is met by a hallucination or dream representing the devil. The devil figure confronts him with all his doubts, weaknesses and fears and eventually causes Ivan to resort to madness. At first it is unclear whether the devil figure was a dream or reality, but that question is answered when Ivan says “Never for one minute have I taken you for reality. […] You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom. It's only that I don't know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer for a time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me....of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them” (Dostoevsky, Book XI Ch. 9). From my interpretation, the devil figure was created by Ivan's imagination and was actually a part of him, representing all his conflicts and some of his thoughts. When confronted with all of this and forced to look himself and face his thoughts he was unable to bear it all and went mad.
Overall, we can witness the path Ivan takes into insanity and how his intellectual nature affected this. As demonstrated by his rant on the idea of God and torture of innocent children, Ivan is frustrated by the world's injustices. Also, he seems to resist the thought that he has responsibility for the actions of humans, and maintains that humans are responsible for their own actions. However, his collapse into madness shows how his beliefs cannot justify the emptiness in his heart. In the end, he is forced to believe otherwise and ponder the possibility of personally bearing a role in his father's murder. Father Zossima held the belief that we're all responsible for everyone else, and that theme is brought to life with Ivan's dilemma. In a way, all of the brothers are responsible for the murder of their father. Even though none of them directly committed the crime, they each played a role. Dmitri admitted that he wanted his father dead. Alyosha didn't stop any of them from the crime. Finally, Ivan's discussions with Smerdyakov justified the killer's actions. Therefore, it seems like Smerdyakov wasn't the only one who bears a burden for the murder. This notion of shared fault contradicts all Ivan believes about personal responsibility.
In addition, Ivan's intellectual nature seems like a way to escape from others and retreat into his own thoughts. However, in the end yet again, he cannot remain separate. In fact, he becomes morally involved in the murder. Finally, when Ivan is confronted by the devil, his lack of complete faith in God gives him nothing to retreat to and no higher power to place his sanity in. Therefore, he is unable to remain sane and justify all the conflict happening within him and as a result, goes insane. His original beliefs of resenting the world created by God and the lack of acknowledging moral responsibility for other peoples actions turned against Ivan as the novel progressed. In his final great moments in the story, he way forced to bear responsibility for the actions of others as well as deal with the murder of his father, which he was made to believe was partially his fault. Overall, the intellectual nature of Ivan was not able to deal with Smerdyakov's accusations on responsibility, and the two characters are portrayed as foils of each other.









Works Cited
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.