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The Brothers Karamazov · Book III

The sensualists

ReasonGuiltFamilyFaith

Summary of the book

Book III descends from the stage of the monastery into the house of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and into what the family hides. Here appears the origin of Smerdyakov, son of a holy fool whom no one knows who got pregnant and who was raised by Grigory; Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov confesses to Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov in three stages (in verse, in anecdotes, and upside down) and opens the triangle with Katerina Ivanovna and Grushenka, with three thousand rubles in an envelope between them; Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov tells his father that there is no God and no immortality, and Mitya's invasion of the old man's house puts violence in place of the threat. The title is the key given by Mitya himself: the Karamazovs are sensualists by inheritance, insects whom beauty both saves and ruins. The question the Book leaves is how far a man answers for what he himself calls a beautiful fall.

Chapter I: Fyodor's House and the Servants

Chapter summary

The house of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is neither in the center nor on the outskirts, old but pleasant, of one story and a mezzanine, full of pantries, hiding places, and little staircases. Only Fyodor and Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov live there now; in the pavilion in the courtyard are three servants: the old Grigory Vasilyevich, his wife Marfa Ignatyevna, and the young Smerdyakov. Grigory is a firm and inflexible man, who goes straight to a point whenever he takes it for truth, honest and incorruptible. When the serfs were emancipated, Marfa wanted to leave Fyodor, go to Moscow and open a shop with their little savings, but Grigory decided once and for all that the wife was talking nonsense, and that staying with their former master, whatever he was like, was their duty.

Analysis

И не понимай, а оно так будет. Впредь молчи., And do not try to understand, but so it shall be. From now on, be silent.

Grigory imposes the duty without giving a reason: for him, what is not understood still holds, and it is enough that Marfa perform it. Marfa, more thoughtful than her husband, gives way, and the text says he respects her for her loftiness of spirit. The scene shows what sustains the house: the loyalty of a servant who does not ask whether the master deserves it.

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Chapter II: Lizaveta and the Origin of Smerdyakov

Chapter summary

The narrator goes back to say who Lizaveta, called Fedorenta, was, and why the find shook Grigory. A little over four and a half feet tall, with a broad, rosy, idiotic face of twenty, barefoot all year round and wearing only a burlap shirt, with black curly hair always dirty with earth and leaves, she spoke only in moans. Her father, Ilya, drunk and sick, beat her; her masters and many pious people tried to dress her, and she left everything in the churchyard. She was beloved: not even boys insulted her, she entered any house and received coins, which she carried to the church or prison alms box, ate only black bread with water, slept in courtyards, and in the rich shops did not touch a single kopeck even with thousands in view. The gentlemen said it was pride, but she did not even speak.

One September night, under a full moon, a band of drunken gentlemen returning home by the back way found Lizaveta asleep among nettles and burdock. They laughed, and one of them asked the absurd question: could anyone take such a creature for a wife? All said with disgust that no one could. Fyodor, who was then playing the buffoon on purpose, leaped up to say yes, and even with a certain spice. The band laughed and went away; Fyodor later swore that he had gone with them.

Analysis

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Chapter III: Mitya Confesses in Verse

Chapter summary

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov leaves the monastery not knowing what to do with his father's shout, which ordered him to move today, with mattress and pillow: he is not afraid of his father, he knows it was a theatrical outburst, like that of a drunken bourgeois who breaks his own crockery on his name day and the next day laments the plates. His fear is of another kind, and greater: Katerina Ivanovna, who summoned him by note and whom he cannot say why he fears. She is beautiful, proud, and domineering, and her aims are noble: to save Mitya, who has offended her. To reach her house without losing time, he takes a shortcut through the back, and, passing the garden of his father's neighbor, sees Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov leaning over the fence, making signs with his hands, unable to shout. Mitya helps him over and leads him, in whispers, to an old arbor in the corner of the garden, with a green table and half a bottle of cognac.

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Chapter IV: Mitya Confesses in Anecdotes

Chapter summary

Mitya moves from verses to anecdotes and begins with what his father said in the cell: that he paid thousands to seduce young women. That, he says, is a filthy phantom that never existed; what happened did not require money, money was incidental. He liked dark alleys, the humiliation of debauchery, and cruelty, and asks himself whether he is not a bedbug, an evil insect. He tells of a picnic of seven troikas, in which, in the dark of the sleigh, he squeezed the hand of a poor civil servant's daughter and covered her with kisses, and afterward ignored her for five months, while she followed him from a corner of the hall with a little flame of gentle indignation; all for the insect's pleasure. She married a civil servant and lives happily, and he never told anyone. Alyosha blushes and says that it is not because of his brother's words or deeds, but because he is the same as him, and he explains it with the staircase:

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Chapter V: The Three Thousand and the Request to Alyosha

Chapter summary

Alyosha says he understands the first half of the story, and Mitya calls it a drama; the second is a tragedy, and it is here. The next day Katerina's maid brought a packet with the change from the five-thousand-ruble note, two hundred and sixty rubles, and no note. The lieutenant colonel settled his accounts successfully, but fell ill and died within five days; Katerina, her sister, and their aunt left for Moscow, and before that a little blue note, in pencil, said that she would write and that Mitya should wait. In Moscow the general's wife, a relative of theirs, lost both nieces to smallpox, adopted Katerina as a daughter, and gave her an eighty-thousand-ruble dowry. Mitya received the four thousand five hundred by mail and, three days later, the promised letter. He keeps it always, and would show it; in it Katerina offers herself in marriage:

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Chapter VI: Smerdyakov at Fyodor's Table

Chapter summary

Alyosha finds his father still at the table, in the hall (the house has a real dining room, but he prefers the great hall, with old white furniture with worn red upholstery, two portraits, and icons with a lamp). The lunch is over; they serve jam, coffee, and liqueur. Ivan is there, and Grigory and Smerdyakov stand by. All are in good humor. Fyodor celebrates Alyosha's arrival, orders liqueur brought and asks about the mattress; he says he loves him and will give him his paternal blessing, but corrects himself, and only makes the sign of the cross over him: now it will be entertaining, for Balaam's ass has begun to speak.

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Chapter VII: The Dispute About the Soldier and Faith

ReasonFaith

Chapter summary

Balaam's ass speaks. Grigory had heard that morning, at Lukyanov's tavern, the story of a Russian soldier who, seized by Asiatics and threatened with a dreadful death unless he renounced Christianity and embraced Islam, refused, let himself be flayed alive, and died praising Christ; the day's newspaper carried the news. He tells it at the table. Fyodor, in good humor, says that the soldier ought to be promoted to saint on the spot, and his skin sent to some monastery, to bring in pilgrims and money:

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Chapter VIII: The Cognac and the Question About God

FamilyFaith

Chapter summary

The debate ends, and Fyodor, cheerful a moment ago, frowns and drinks one more glass of cognac. He dismisses the servants, with the ducat promised to Smerdyakov, and asks Ivan why the servant has been frequenting the table since he arrived. Ivan says he is a lackey and an oaf, cannon fodder when the hour comes; Fyodor says that such a donkey thinks and thinks, and nobody knows where it will end. He does not steal, does not gossip, makes good pies; let the devil take him. The peasants should be thrashed, Russia is rubbish, and he tells the story of Mokroye, where the old men love to flog the girls by sentence so that the young men later take them as brides. Alyosha blushes, and Fyodor regrets having offended the abbot.

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Chapter IX: Mitya Bursts Into the House and Beats His Father

FamilyFreedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

Grigory and Smerdyakov enter behind Mitya: they had fought with him in the vestibule, on Fyodor's own orders, given days before. Grigory runs ahead, closes the doors to the inner rooms and stands before them with his arms outstretched like a cross, ready to defend the entrance to the last drop. Mitya, seeing this, almost howls, shouts that she is there, hidden, and throws himself on him; Grigory pushes him back, and Mitya, beside himself, lands a punch that knocks him down and passes over him. Smerdyakov stays at the far end of the room, pale and trembling, clinging to Fyodor.

Mitya's shout, she is here, changes the old man: fear leaps out of him, and Fyodor runs after his son, bellowing for them to seize him. A glass vase falls and shatters. Ivan and Alyosha bring him back to the room. Fyodor loses control at the thought that Grushenka is in the house. Mitya comes back, having found the back entrance locked, with the key in his father's pocket, and all the windows shut; she could not have entered or left. Fyodor shouts that he stole money from the room; Mitya seizes the old man by the two tufts of hair left at his temples, pulls him and throws him to the floor with a crash, and even stamps his heel on his face two or three times. Ivan pulls him off; Alyosha helps.

Mitya asks Alyosha to swear whether she had been there, and Alyosha swears she had not. He reminds him not to talk to the old man about money and to go now to Katerina Ivanovna. Before leaving, he shouts to his father that he does not regret the blood, that he should keep his dream, because he has one too; and he curses him and disowns him.

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Chapter X: Katerina Ivanovna and Grushenka Face to Face

Chapter summary

Alyosha leaves his father's house downcast and with his spirit in pieces, and he fears gathering what has scattered. The main question hangs over him: how will it end between the father, Mitya, and the woman? And there are others involved, more than he supposed. Ivan has taken a step toward him, and Alyosha is startled. Curiously, he had been going to Katerina Ivanovna in fear, and now he goes hurriedly, expecting guidance. But the message has grown heavier, for the matter of the three thousand is settled, and Mitya, feeling dishonored, will no longer stop at any fall.

It is seven o'clock and getting dark. Katerina lives in a spacious house on Bolshaya Street with two aunts: one is only an aunt to her silent sister Agafya, and the other is a lady from Moscow, though poor, and both are there only out of etiquette. In the drawing room there are signs of a visit: two cups of chocolate half drunk, biscuits, raisins, sweets; behind the doors, footsteps and dresses rush about. Katerina comes in quickly, smiling, with both hands outstretched, and says she has not prayed for anything else all day. Alyosha recalls that three weeks earlier, when Mitya took him to introduce himself, she seemed haughty and domineering, and that he told Mitya she would make him happy but never give him peace. Now he sees in her face kindness and frankness, a generous energy and a faith in herself, and he feels guilty before her.

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Chapter XI: Mitya on the Road and Lise's Letter

Chapter summary

It is a little more than a verst from the center of town to the monastery, and it is already almost night. Halfway there, at a crossroads, under a willow, a figure hurls itself at Alyosha, shouting that he hand over his purse or his life. It is Mitya, who waited there because it is the only road to the monastery. Alyosha, shaken, weeps, something he had long wanted to do, because of his father's blood from a little while ago, and now this game. Mitya asks whether he was out of place. He explains that, hidden under the willow, he was waiting for Alyosha and thought:

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