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The Brothers Karamazov · Book XI

Ivan Fyodorovich

ReasonGuiltSufferingFaithJustice and Law

Summary of the book

On the eve of the trial, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov goes from door to door around town, and each door gives him a piece of what will happen in court. Grushenka fears a secret that Mitya, Ivan, and Katerina Ivanovna are hiding from her. Madame Khokhlakova dreams of an "affekt" that would absolve everything. Lise Khokhlakova confesses her taste for evil and hands a note to Ivan. Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, in prison, discovers that he will accept suffering "for everyone." The final six chapters belong to Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: Alyosha tells him that the murderer is not he; three conversations with Smerdyakov drag him from refusal to certainty; and on the night of the confession he sees the devil sitting on the sofa, who gives him back his own ideas in the voice of a parasite. The question the book leaves is the one Alyosha asks as he falls asleep: whether Ivan rises in truth, or perishes in the hatred of having served what he does not believe in.

Chapter I: Grushenka's Restlessness

Chapter summary

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov goes to the house of the merchant Morozova, where Grushenka lives, because she has insistently sent for him that morning. Two months have passed since Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov's arrest. She was ill for five weeks, one of them unconscious, has grown thin, and her gaze has become firm, with a vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows. The joy she had before remains, and the jealousy of Katerina Ivanovna, which did not leave her even in delirium, has only grown. In the house lives Maksimov, the homeless old man she brought from Mokroye out of pity and let stay. The elderly merchant who supported her is dying and has ordered the door barred to her.

Analysis

Grushenka lays out the reason for her hurry: she has come back from the prison, where she goes every day, and quarreled with Mitya again. He threw back at her the pastries she had brought him and stepped on one, jealous of "the old one," the Pole, to whom she sends money, because the two Poles, Mussialovich and Vrublevsky, write her pompous letters asking for smaller and smaller loans, down to one ruble, and she found them in misery. Out of spite, she will send pastries to them too. She sees in Mitya's jealousy a pretext, and the reason she gives is that he praised Katerina Ivanovna, who sent for the doctor from Moscow and the lawyer:

Мне не то обидно, что он меня, такую, приревновал, а то стало бы мне обидно, коли бы вовсе не ревновал [...] Только мне то обидно, что он меня вовсе не любит и теперь нарочно приревновал, It is not that he is jealous of me, of what I am, that offends me; it would offend me if he were not jealous at all [...] What offends me is that he does not love me at all, and now he is jealous on purpose.

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Chapter II: Madame Khokhlakova's "Affekt"

Justice and Law

Chapter summary

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov goes to the Khokhlakovs' house to see Lise Khokhlakova, who has summoned him, but her mother intercepts him. For three weeks, with her leg swollen, Madame Khokhlakova receives him in an elegant house dress, lying on a divan, so agitated that she runs through each subject with the next: Lise has returned the engagement to marry Alyosha, which she always took for a sick girl's fancy; the Moscow doctor examined Lise and charged fifty rubles; she herself intends to go to the trial even in her condition, since she is a witness. What consumes her is a clipping from the Petersburg newspaper "Rumors," in which an anonymous correspondent reports that a "bored widow" of forty offered the murderer three thousand rubles to run away with her to the gold mines, and that he preferred to kill his father and rob him rather than drag himself to Siberia with her "forty-year-old charms." She attributes the piece to Rakitin, whom she threw out of the house after a scene: he seemed to her to be in love with her, brought verses about her sick foot, quarreled with young Perkhotin, who treated him with noble irony, and she, weighing whether it would be noble to throw him out, shouted, fainted, and dismissed him. She admits she was not angry, and that she wanted the scene because it seemed beautiful to her.

Analysis

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Chapter III: Lise's Little Devil

Chapter summary

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov finds Lise Khokhlakova in the old wheelchair, thinner in three days, with a feverish look; she does not offer him her hand. She says she overheard her mother's conversation and is glad to have refused him: if she were married to him, she would give him a note to deliver to the man she loved later, and he would carry it and bring back the answer. She sent sweets to Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov in prison. Alyosha sees in her something wicked and something naive, and she explains that the naive part is not being ashamed before him, and that is why she respects him little. Then she tells him the wish that summoned him:

Analysis

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Chapter IV: The Underground Hymn

GuiltSuffering

Chapter summary

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov reaches the prison at dusk, and the town lets him in without formalities: the commissioner has begun to look at Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov with pity, the director enjoys talking with him about "wisdom" and is reading the apocryphal gospels. At the door he crosses paths with Rakitin, who leaves sulking after an exchange in which Mitya, jokingly, told him not to forget what belongs to others, and Rakitin bellowed that this was meant for the Karamazovs, "a race of serfs." Mitya laughs, turns to Alyosha, and says that the head has not been lost, what has been lost is what was inside it: the ideas, the ethics, Claude Bernard. Rakitin taught him that thought comes from the "tails" of the nerves in the brain, and this burned him, but "it is God I pity." Rakitin wants to write an article on the case, arguing that Mitya could not help killing, devoured by his surroundings, and he has been rhyming verses at Madame Khokhlakova's feet, courting her with an eye on a hundred and fifty thousand rubles, until he was put out on the street. Alyosha tells him about the "Rumors" correspondence, and Mitya recognizes it as his work.

Analysis

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Chapter V: It Wasn't You

Chapter summary

On the way to Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov's room, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov passes by the house of Katerina Ivanovna and goes in, thinking Ivan may be there on the eve of the trial. On the stairs he meets Ivan, who is coming down and receives him curtly, advising him not to go up: she is "in agitation." She calls them back with such authority that Ivan goes up again, grumbling that she heard everything from the door. Alyosha delivers the message from Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, that she should spare herself and not tell the court what happened between them when they first met. She laughs bitterly: does he fear for himself or for her? Alyosha answers that it is for both of them. Then she loses control. She had told herself that touching that man was like touching a reptile, and yet he is still a man. She asks Ivan, hysterically, whether he was the one who killed, and says that she was with Smerdyakov, that it was Ivan himself who convinced her that the parricide was Mitya, and that she had believed only him. Alyosha shudders at the familiar "thou" he hears between the two of them, which he had never imagined. Ivan cuts the scene short and leaves, and she orders Alyosha to follow him, since she is in a nervous fever.

Analysis

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Chapter VI: The First Conversation with Smerdyakov

Chapter summary

For the third time since returning from Moscow, Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov goes to see Smerdyakov, and the narrator recounts the earlier visits. Ivan arrived five days after the father's death, when the funeral had already taken place: Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov did not know his address and sent the telegram through Katerina, who sent it to relatives in Moscow, and Ivan only looked them up on the fourth day. Alyosha received him certain that the murderer was Smerdyakov, and Ivan, after hearing the prosecutor and the commissioner, attributed that certainty to his brother's compassion for Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov. Ivan does not like Mitya, and at the first visit to his cell he found him agitated and confused, repeating that the three thousand "were his" and that Grigory's open door was the work of the devil; Mitya offended him by saying that it was not for one who preaches that "everything is permitted" to suspect him. From there Ivan went to the hospital.

Analysis

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Chapter VII: The Second Conversation

Guilt

Chapter summary

Two weeks after the hospital visit, as soon as he leaves Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov in the street, Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov goes to the house of Marya Kondratyevna, where Smerdyakov already lives, outside the hospital. He finds him in a warm little room full of cockroaches, in a dressing gown, and wearing spectacles on his nose, which he had never seen before, and this enrages him: "a creature like that, and wearing spectacles!" The servant's look is one of contempt, and Ivan, who wants to speak plainly, demands to know what he meant by promising to keep silent about the conversation at the gate if Ivan kept silent about the faking. Smerdyakov answers unhurriedly that Ivan, knowing of the murder beforehand, left his father to his fate, and that he would keep silent so that no one would conclude anything bad about Ivan's feelings "or about other things." Ivan shouts "what things?" and the servant says what he thinks: that Ivan perhaps wished his father dead. Ivan strikes him on the shoulder, and Smerdyakov bursts into tears: it is shameful to hit a weak man. He explains that when he stopped Ivan at the gate he only wanted to probe him at the exact point, to see whether he wanted the father dead soon. Ivan accuses him of having been the one, and the servant says Ivan knows it was not him. When Ivan asks where the suspicion came from:

Analysis

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Chapter VIII: Smerdyakov's Confession

ReasonFamilyFreedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov crosses the blizzard toward the far end of town with a headache and cramped hands. On the way, a small, drunken peasant, singing and cursing, bumps into him; Ivan shoves him in anger, and the man falls flat on his back on the frozen ground, groans once, and lies still. "He'll freeze," he thinks, and goes on. At the house, Marya Kondratyevna whispers to him that Smerdyakov is very ill and quiet. Ivan finds him sitting on a leather sofa, thinner and yellower, with sunken eyes, and on the table a thick book with a yellow cover. He asks only whether Katerina Ivanovna has been there. The servant says that Ivan is ill, so yellow that even his eyes look yellow, and then that he can go to sleep without fear, for "you did not kill." Ivan shudders, thinks of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov and answers that he knows it was not he. Smerdyakov repeats the "you know?" with mockery, and Ivan seizes him by the shoulder. The servant whispers:

Analysis

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Chapter IX: Ivan's Devil

ReasonFaith

Chapter summary

The narrator interrupts to say that he is not a doctor and must explain the illness of Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: he is on the eve of a brain fever, which an extreme effort of will has been postponing until after the trial. He has already been to the Moscow doctor, who told him that hallucinations are very possible in his condition and that he should get treatment without delay, and Ivan, on leaving, preferred to stay on his feet as long as he had strength. Now, seated, almost knowing that he is raving, he fixes his gaze on the sofa against the opposite wall, where there is someone who was not in the room when he came in: a gentleman of about fifty, in a brown jacket of good tailoring but worn and out of fashion, checked trousers too tight, slightly soiled linen, a frayed scarf, a tortoiseshell lorgnette, and a gold ring with a cheap opal. He is the type of former landowner whom the end of serfdom impoverished and turned into a well-mannered parasite, who goes from house to house of old acquaintances.

Analysis

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Chapter X: He Was the One Who Said It

Faith

Chapter summary

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov enters and tells what he has brought: Marya Kondratyevna ran to his room a little over an hour ago, saying that Smerdyakov had hanged himself, that she had found him hanging from a peg when she went to fetch the samovar. She told no one: she ran straight to him, the first to know, and ran the whole way. Alyosha went to the house and saw the body still on the peg and, on the table, a note: "I am ending my life of my own will and pleasure, so as not to blame anyone." He left it where it was, went to the commissioner, and has come now. During the account he does not take his eyes off Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, who looks at him as if he were not listening, and, seeing his brother's face, cries out that he must be very ill.

Ivan says, thoughtfully, that he was right to come and that he already knew the other had hanged himself. When Alyosha asks who told him, he answers that he knew: "he told me, just now." Alyosha looks around without meaning to: who? "He ran off," says Ivan, with a smile. He was afraid of Alyosha, the dove, the cherub, about whom he speaks in disjointed rhythm, and soon he asks whether Alyosha knows the constellation of the Lion and the Sun. Alyosha makes him sit down and brings him a wet towel, but the only cloth at hand is dry, folded, on the dressing table, and Ivan, seeing it, recalls that an hour ago he wet that same towel and threw it onto a chair. The candles are almost out. He cries out: "It was not a dream! He was here, on that sofa! When you knocked, I threw this glass at him... I have dreams that are not dreams: I walk, I talk, I see, and I sleep." And he tells that the visitor is a devil, who has visited him two, almost three times, and who provokes him by saying that he is angry at being only a devil, and not Satan with scorched wings, in thunder and splendor. But he lies: he is an impostor, a wretched little devil who goes to the bathhouse, with a tail like a Great Dane's, an arshin long and brownish. Alyosha makes him lie down, puts the towel on his forehead and sits down beside him.

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