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The Brothers Karamazov · Book XII

A judicial error

ReasonGuiltFamilySufferingJustice and Law

Summary of the book

Book XII is the trial, and the narrator, who says he lacks the strength to tell everything, chooses what struck him most: the hall full of people who came to see a spectacle, the testimonies that come undone, the catastrophe that throws Ivan and Katerina Ivanovna against the defendant they wanted to save, and the two speeches. The prosecutor Hippolyte Kirillovich builds a psychological explanation of the crime, the lawyer Fetyukovich builds another from the same facts, and the lawyer himself says what that is worth: psychology is a stick with two ends. Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, who did not kill, hears himself described as calculating and as a victim, and fits none of the portraits. The court works without visible fault, and that is why it errs: the question that remains is what is lost when a man's life is reconstructed by deduction, and who, in such a room, still hears what he says.

Chapter I: The Session Opens

Chapter summary

On the day after the events of Book XI, at ten in the morning, the trial of Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov opens. The narrator warns that he has no strength to tell everything, not even in order, and that he will say only what struck him. The hall is packed, with people from other cities, from Moscow and Petersburg, lawyers crowded behind a railing, and at least half the public women, almost all on Mitya's side, because they imagine him a conqueror, while the men, in general, are hostile. They are waiting for the two rivals, Katerina Ivanovna, of whom it is said that she will ask to accompany him to hard labor, and Grushenka, whom the ladies know as the woman who lost her father and her son. The prosecutor Hippolyte Kirillovich is ambitious and sick, wounded since Petersburg by having been little recognized, and sees in the case a chance to revive his career, with the fear of meeting the master of the defense, Fetyukovich. The presiding judge is cultured and humane, and interested in the phenomenon, not in the people. On the table lies the body of evidence: the silk dressing gown stained with the blood of Fyodor Pavlovich, the copper pestle, Mitya's shirt and coat, the stiffened handkerchief, the pistol, the envelope with the pink ribbon. The twelve jurors are four civil servants, two merchants, and six peasants and petty bourgeois. The narrator recognizes what the ladies were saying, that people like these would understand little of so subtle a case:

Analysis

Тем не менее лица их производили какое-то странно внушительное и почти грозящее впечатление, были строги и нахмурены., even so, their faces made a strangely imposing and almost menacing impression, stern and scowling.

The narrator examines the twelve jurors with the ladies' doubt, that a case so subtle should fall into the hands of petty clerks and peasants, and yet he acknowledges that their faces impress. He prepares the reader: the verdict will come from the people the hall judges incapable, and the surprise, his and ours, will be the measure of the distance between the educated audience and those who decide.

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Chapter II: The Witnesses for the Prosecution

Chapter summary

The narrator says he will not describe all the interrogations, because the essential will be in the speeches, and he notes what everyone saw from the start: the prosecution is far stronger than the defense. The ladies, who want acquittal, are convinced of the guilt, and the acquittal would be "out of humanity"; the men want to see what Fetyukovich can salvage from a lost case. The lawyer, who studied the file in three days, proposes no alternative version: he sets out to stain the reputation of each witness for the prosecution. Grigory testifies calmly and majestically, says that Fyodor Pavlovich was unjust to his son, and confirms the open door, without yielding. Fetyukovich asks him what the balm he rubbed on his back was made of: sage, plantain, pepper, in alcohol, and from what was left he drank about a glass; a glass and a half, the lawyer insinuates. He asks whether he might not have seen the gates of paradise open instead of the garden door, and what year it is today; Grigory, dazed, does not answer, and ends by saying:

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Chapter III: The Experts and the Nuts

Chapter summary

The medical examination helped little, and Fetyukovich had not counted on it; it was born of the insistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had the famous Moscow doctor summoned. The three experts are the Moscow doctor, Doctor Herzenstube, and the young Varvinsky. Herzenstube, seventy years old, honest and pious, speaks a Russian built on German lines, which he thinks better than that of the Russians, and he forgets words, which he searches for with his hand in the air. He declares that the defendant's abnormality is evident, because Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov entered the room staring straight ahead, when, being a great admirer of women, he should have looked to the left, toward the ladies. The Moscow doctor speaks of "affect" and "mania" and says that Mitya ought to have looked to the right, searching for his defender. Varvinsky declares the defendant normal, and says that looking directly at the judges on whom his fate depended was precisely the sign of normality. Mitya shouts "Bravo, doctor!", and the opinion of the younger man weighs more. Then, as a witness, Herzenstube recounts Mitya as a child, without boots, in his father's yard, and how he brought him a pound of nuts, teaching him "Gott der Vater." Twenty-three years later the young man came into his office, raised his finger and said:

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Chapter IV: Luck Smiles on Mitya

Chapter summary

The witnesses for the defense begin, and luck smiles on Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, unexpectedly even for the defense itself. Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov testifies without an oath, treated with sympathy, and paints his brother as violent and passionate, but noble, and denies that he could kill for money. The prosecutor asks him whether Mitya told him he would kill their father. Alyosha answers that not directly, that he spoke of hatred and of the fear that, "in a moment of revulsion," he might kill him:

Analysis

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Chapter V: The Catastrophe

Chapter summary

Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov had been called earlier, but the bailiff had warned that he was unwell and would testify when he improved; now he approaches slowly, without looking at anyone, head lowered, his face "touched by the earth," like that of a dying man. Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov rises and moans "ah." The presiding judge reminds him that he testifies without oath, and Ivan begins to laugh. He answers reluctantly, briefly, with growing disgust, that he has nothing special to say, and asks to leave; he takes four steps, stops, smiles to himself and returns. He tells the story of the peasant woman who says "I want to, I jump, I want to, I don't jump," and takes from his pocket a bundle of money, which he has handed to the presiding judge: it is the money from the envelope, received yesterday from Smerdyakov, the murderer, before he hanged himself. The one who killed the father was he, and not the brother, and he himself, Ivan, taught him to kill, for who does not wish for the father's death? The presiding judge, astonished, asks whether he is mad, and Ivan, turning to the public:

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Chapter VI: The Prosecutor and the Karamazov Family

Justice and Law

Chapter summary

Hippolyte Kirillovich begins trembling, with cold sweat and chills, and considers the speech his masterpiece, his swan song: nine months later he would die of tuberculosis. He puts heart and spirit into it, and he wins because he is sincere: he truly believes in the defendant's guilt, and trembles with the desire to "save society." He opens with horror: we are now little horrified by what ought to horrify us, and that is the true horror:

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Chapter VII: Historical Outline of the Case

Chapter summary

The prosecutor moves on to the expert testimony: the defendant is not mad, and that is worse, because, if he were mad, he would be more cunning. He agrees with the young doctor, but explains the "delirium" over the three thousand rubles by another cause, closer than mania:

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Chapter VIII: The Treatise on Smerdyakov

Chapter summary

The prosecutor examines the suspicion about Smerdyakov. The first to cry out that it was he was the defendant himself, in prison, without presenting a fact; only three people support it, the two brothers and Grushenka, and all by ties: Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, only today, and ill; Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, "from the expression of his face"; Grushenka, because Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov does not lie. He describes the dead man as feeble-minded, confused by philosophical ideas, terrified of Mitya, serving him as a spy, tortured by the remorse of a traitor, and who falls into the fit upon finding himself without protection, on going down to the cellar thinking "what if he comes now?" He asks what good pretending would do, and tells who was in the house that night, five people, of whom three are out of consideration, leaving Mitya and Smerdyakov. The accusation against the dead man arises, he says, from there being no other name:

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Chapter IX: Psychology, the Troika, and the Peroration

Chapter summary

The prosecutor follows the historical method, which nervous orators love because it contains them, and comes to the moment when Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, jealous of everyone, falls before the "old one" and the "indisputable." He says that his fall has a logic: he understands that the "other" was his only good with Grushenka, that she loves him, and that he, with his father's blood on his hands, has nothing to offer her. The way out that comes to him is suicide. He runs after the pistols pawned to Perkhotin, takes out of his pocket all the money and plans a last party, so as to blow his brains out at her feet afterward. The prosecutor sees in this a great deal of romantic pose and, beyond it, something that beats endlessly in the brain and poisons the heart: conscience. And, before closing the analysis:

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Chapter X: Fetyukovich's Defense

ReasonJustice and Law

Chapter summary

When Fetyukovich begins, the hall devours him with its eyes: he speaks directly, simply, with conviction, without pathos or sonorous phrases, with a beautiful voice, bending his long spine as if throwing himself toward his listeners. He presents himself as a man who defends only those he holds innocent, and he states his thesis at the outset, because he keeps no effects in reserve:

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Chapter XI: Neither Money Nor Theft

Reason

Chapter summary

One point surprises everyone: the denial that the three thousand rubles ever existed, and therefore that there was any theft. Fetyukovich notes that only Smerdyakov saw the money, and that no one knows when he last saw it; the bed was not disturbed, and the envelope on the floor, which the prosecutor himself called the only clue, may have been opened and thrown to the floor by the old man, eager to show the banknotes to his beloved. He cites the case of an eighteen-year-old in Petersburg who killed a moneylender and fled with fifteen hundred rubles, was arrested hours later with the sum and the makeup of the banknotes, and confessed: that, he says, is proof. Here, nothing. The fifteen hundred found are the ones the defendant always said he had, and the half hidden in Mokroye is "the castle of Udolpho." The lawyer sums up what the prosecutor built and what reality says:

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Chapter XII: There Was No Murder

Justice and Law

Chapter summary

Fetyukovich reminds the jurors that a life is at stake here, and that the prosecution itself admitted hesitating to assert premeditation until that day's "drunken" letter. Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, he says, ran after Grushenka only to learn where she was; if she had been at home, he would have stayed with her and would not have done what the letter says. The pestle was in plain sight, on the shelf; in a cupboard, the defendant would have left with empty hands, and perhaps no one would have died. The shouts in the taverns, he says, belong to drunkards and to children, and the letter may be one more shout from a man leaving a tavern. The logic of the accusation, "he was in the garden, so he killed," comes down to "he was there, so he did it." And if he did not, even if he had been there? Mitya may have entered, pushed, or even struck his father, and fled relieved at not finding Grushenka there; he jumped the wall to help Grigory because his heart was clean; he did not kill himself in Mokroye because "his mother had prayed for him." There remains the prosecutor's question: who then killed? The prosecutor says there is no other name. The lawyer replies that there is none because he excluded Smerdyakov in advance, and lists what points to the servant: the attack on the day of the crime, the suicide on the eve of the trial, the testimony of Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov. He describes the dead man as he knew him: not feeble nor simple, but suspicious, ambitious, rancorous and envious, ashamed of his origin and of the nickname "son of Stinking Lizaveta," dreaming of France, and dazzled at seeing three thousand rubles in notes all at once. He imagines that he woke with Grigory's cry, went to the garden, heard from his terrified master what had happened and, in a sick brain, conceived the terrible and irresistible idea: to kill, take the three thousand, and throw everything on the son. He notes that the prosecutor's reasoning about the envelope was the same that Smerdyakov had set out to him two days before, with an air of naivety, as if he wanted to impose it. He answers the question of the note, why the servant did not confess in his letter:

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Chapter XIII: A Sophist and the Parricide

Family

Chapter summary

The lawyer says that it is not the sum of the facts that destroys Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, but a single one: the father's corpse. Had it been a simple murder, the jurors would reject it for lack of proof; since it is parricide, the body imposes itself. The blood of a father who loved, who suffered over the illnesses of his son, is sacred; but Fyodor Pavlovich was not that. He recalls what Doctor Herzenstube told, the boy without boots and the nuts. He asks who is to blame, behind the defendant's brutality, for having received such an upbringing: Mitya grew like a wild animal, under divine protection, and gathered tenderness where only violence is seen. And he says what a father is:

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Chapter XIV: The Verdict

GuiltFamilyFaithJustice and Law

Chapter summary

The enthusiasm is uncontrollable, the women weep, some men too, and the presiding judge gives way. The prosecutor rises for his rebuttal, hated by the hall, pale and trembling, and speaks briefly. He says that the lawyer has made novel upon novel, a Byronic Smerdyakov and a defendant who kills and does not kill, "a sphinx," and that from the tribune of truth and sound ideas has come the thesis that calling a father's death parricide is a prejudice:

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