I like Dostoyevsky and enjoyed many of his books but the Brothers in my opinion is just badly written: long and self-repetitive. It has moments of clarity and beauty like the The Grand Inquisitor novel or the discussion in the monastery, and ideas in the book are compelling but boy it's an ordeal to get to them. So my advice: if you want try Dostoyevsky please don't start with "the masterpiece", pick any other book of his. Crime and Punishment, the Idiot or short novels like The Gambler are a good start. You can get to the Brothers later if you chose to.
Another thought I had been having when reading the book was that Dostoyevsky uses insanity and especially insanity caused by stress way too often, it's a major plot device in his books while it's so rare in real life. However now I observe many of my friends (especially single ones) slowly going insane in various ways and I don't anymore think that it's rare. I guess mental health becomes scarce as you get older just like the physical health, just didn't expect this to manifest itself around the age of 35.
Funny to see this pop up as I’m reading this book for the first time currently. I’m about half way through and have enjoyed the story so far. The writing is often frantic and sometimes exhausting to read, but it certainly keeps one’s interest. I’ve been surprised to find the social commentary so resonant with life today. I’ll wait to read this review until I’ve finished the book.
Free to download from Standard Ebooks for anyone interested: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/the-brot...
In my opinion the author of this article makes the same error as Nietzsche did. Seeing it as a book about psychology that revolves around theological themes, when it is a book about theology that revolves around psychological themes.
What I find quite problematic is how it fully inverts what the Grand Inquisitor is about through its oversimplification. Its not an indictment of Christ, it’s about an indictment of Christ, but in fact it‘s Christ who is exposing the institutional church , how Ivan views it, with the only thing it ironically doesnt ‘t expect of him: a deeply Christian act
Alyosha is quite literally introduced as the hero of the novel, so saying his presence pales in comparison to Dimitry and Ivan is kind of weak. I‘d agree that his spectacle pales in comparison to his brothers, but his presence not at all.
There is a special place in hell for people who share locked articles.
I love this book so much. If anyone here attempts to read I’ll only say this much - the second quarter of the book (25% to 50%) can be a bit of a slog, but after that it becomes hard to put down. The sense of urgency in the story won’t allow you to.
This book is also notable for me in that I fundamentally disagree with one of the author’s main idea - that humans need religion as a source of morality. At least, that’s how I interpreted Ivan’s fate - he went mad trying to make sense of the world without God, purely through a rational lens. This disagreement with the author doesn’t matter to me though, because the book is a work of art. That much was clear to me, even as I was turning the pages for the first time. The vitality and detail of each of the characters, especially Dmitri - only a great artist could do that.
I also wonder how Dostoevsky would have felt, if he had written his book 150 years later. While our world was far from perfect, it is far from the universal misery of Tsarist Russia, where serfs starved to death. I feel like you can’t make sense of life in those circumstances with religion explaining why there’s so much pain in the world, so I understand where he was coming from. But would he still have felt the same even if life was substantially better for most people?
Lastly, if anyone can explain to me - why do they call Agrafena Alexandrovna Grushenka? Is this a standard nickname for Agrafena, like Alyosha is for Alexei? I feel like everyone in the novel just took the name for granted, like it was normal to call someone a little pear.