Who He Is
Fetyukovich is Mitya's lawyer, a famous defender from Petersburg, who took the case more for the fame than for the money (chapter I of Book XI), thin and tall, with a bird-like face and very close-set eyes (chapter I of Book XII). The prosecutor Hippolyte Kirillovich fears him as an old enemy from the Petersburg days (chapter I of Book XII). He was paid three thousand rubles, given by Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, by Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov and by Katerina Ivanovna, and he listened to Alyosha, but said he had already formed an opinion and would weigh what he had heard (chapter I of Book XI). He judges Mitya guilty and does not believe him (chapter IV of Book XI). He studied the case for three days and, instead of proposing an alternative version, he discredits the witnesses for the prosecution one by one (chapter II of Book XII). What defines him is his craft: he knows that psychology is an instrument that yields whatever one wants, and says it depends on whose hands hold it (chapter X of Book XII), and he wants to save the defendant, even if the version he offers is only partly true. What he ignores is the truth of Book XI; what he does not foresee is the jury of officials and peasants.
Trajectory
In chapter I of Book XII he enters the room after Mitya, and everyone waits for his arrival. In chapter II of Book XII the ladies, who want an acquittal, are convinced of the guilt, and the men want to see what he can salvage from a lost case. With the witnesses for the prosecution, his method is to stain them. He gets Rakitin to admit that he did not return the twenty-five rubles to Grushenka, and gets Grigory to hesitate about the gates of paradise. To the captain Snegiryov, who arrives drunk, he asks about the humiliation, and the captain refuses:
Бог с ними-с. Илюшечка не велел. Мне бог там заплатит-с. [...] Илюшечка, сыночек мой: «Папочка, папочка, как он тебя унизил!» У камушка произнес. Теперь помирает-с…, God keep you all. Ilyushechka did not want it. God will pay me for it there. [...] Ilyushechka, my little son: "Daddy, Daddy, how he humiliated you!" He said it by the little stone. Now he is dying...
In chapter III of Book XII the medical report helps very little, and what makes the impression is old Doctor Herzenstube, who recalls the boy Mitya without boots and the pound of nuts. The lawyer, who did not expect this, will keep the anecdote for his speech:
Я сейчас приехал и пришел вас благодарить за фунт орехов; ибо мне никто никогда не покупал тогда фунт орехов, а вы один купили мне фунт орехов, I have just arrived and have come to thank you for the pound of nuts; because no one ever bought me a pound of nuts back then, and you alone bought me a pound of nuts.
In chapter IV of Book XII, when he asks Grushenka about Rakitin's twenty-five rubles, he brings out a kinship that no one knew of and dismantles the seminarian's applauded speech. In chapter IX of Book XII the ladies wait calmly, after the prosecutor, for his great speech.
In chapter X of Book XII he begins directly, simply, without resounding phrases, and states his thesis at the outset, because he is not saving his effects:
подавляющая совокупность фактов против подсудимого и в то же время ни одного факта, выдерживающего критику, если рассматривать его единично, самого по себе!, an overwhelming mass of facts against the defendant, and at the same time not a single fact that withstands criticism if examined in isolation, on its own!
He praises the prosecutor as a psychologist in order to remind everyone that psychology is dangerous in the hands of an artist:
Но ведь психология, господа, хоть и глубокая вещь, а все-таки похожа на палку о двух концах, but psychology, gentlemen, however profound a thing, is still like a double-edged stick.
He turns the prosecutor's argument inside out: the murderer who jumps to see whether the witness is dead would have finished off the witness, and he concludes:
из нее можно вывесть всё что угодно. Всё дело, в каких она руках., you can draw anything you like from it. It all depends on whose hands it is in.
In chapter XI of Book XII he denies the money and, with it, the theft. Only Smerdyakov saw the three thousand, and the envelope on the floor may have been opened and thrown down by the old man. He cites the Petersburg case in which the sum, the make-up of the banknotes and the confession all matched, and he returns the prosecutor's own vocabulary to him:
И такими-то романами мы готовы погубить жизнь человеческую!, and with novels like these we are ready to ruin a human life!
And he fixes the legal point:
нельзя обвинять в грабеже, если нельзя указать с точностью, что именно ограблено, это аксиома!, one cannot charge someone with robbery if one cannot state exactly what was robbed; that is an axiom!
In chapter XII of Book XII he argues that Mitya did not kill, and attributes to Smerdyakov, whom he describes as distrustful, ambitious, resentful and envious, the terrible and irresistible idea, conceived on waking to Grigory's cry. He answers the question in the note, why the servant did not confess in his letter:
Отчаяние и раскаяние — две вещи совершенно различные., despair and remorse are two completely different things.
And he warns the jurors:
Господа присяжные заседатели, поберегитесь судебной ошибки!, gentlemen jurors, beware of judicial error!
In chapter XIII of Book XII he moves on to parricide. What ruins the defendant, he says, is the father's corpse, and he recalls the boy without boots. He defines what a father is:
родивший не есть еще отец, а отец есть — родивший и заслуживший, he who begot is not yet a father; a father is he who begot and has earned it.
And he sets out how the young man reasons in the face of an unworthy father:
Отец, скажи мне: для чего я должен любить тебя? Отец, докажи мне, что я должен любить тебя?, Father, tell me: why must I love you? Father, prove to me that I must love you?
He asks the jurors to punish, if they must, but to save:
Но хотите ли вы наказать его страшно, грозно, самым ужасным наказанием, какое только можно вообразить, но с тем чтобы спасти и возродить его душу навеки? Если так, то подавите его вашим милосердием!, but do you want to punish him terribly, menacingly, with the most dreadful punishment one can imagine, provided that you save and revive his soul forever? If so, crush him with your mercy!
And he closes by handing the troika back to the prosecutor:
Не бешеная тройка, а величавая русская колесница торжественно и спокойно прибудет к цели., not a frenzied troika, but a majestic Russian carriage will solemnly and calmly reach its goal.
In chapter XIV of Book XII, after the prosecutor's rejoinder, he replies with dignity and with Jupiter's proverb, and the ladies consider him the winner. While the jurors deliberate, he speaks of the invisible threads that bind him to them and is certain of success. The narrator records the result:
И потом по всем пунктам пошло всё то же: виновен да виновен, и это без малейшего снисхождения!, and then, point by point, it was the same all the way through: guilty, and guilty, and without the slightest leniency!
Themes Embodied
Fetyukovich is the man of Reason placed in the service of Justice and law, and the novel shows him using the instruments the prosecutor uses, psychology and hypothesis, with the difference that he knows they are instruments. It is reason that knows itself to be an instrument: anything can be drawn from it, it depends on the hands (chapter X of Book XII). The theme he carries is also that of Family, in the definition of a father as one who begot and has earned it (chapter XIII of Book XII), resting on the story of the boy without boots and the nuts (chapter III of Book XII).
The lawyer is right about the fact and wrong about the path. He attributes the crime to Smerdyakov, which the reader knows to be true, but he reconstructs the servant's decision as the impulse of a single night, when the servant had planned it in full (chapter XII of Book XII); and he asks for an acquittal in the name of mercy, not innocence, which gives Mitya's guilt the form of the effect of someone else's gesture, when in Book XI it is his own choice (chapter IV of Book XI, chapter XIII of Book XII). Neither of the two speeches, his or the prosecutor's, hears what Mitya says about himself: each needs Mitya to be simple in order to close the thesis (chapter XIV of Book XII).
Divergent Readings
The book stages two readings of what the lawyer does. For the prosecutor, the thesis that a father must earn the title is a threat to the family and to the foundations of society:
Но если отцеубийство есть предрассудок и если каждый ребенок будет допрашивать своего отца: „Отец, зачем я должен любить тебя?“ — то что станется с нами, что станется с основами общества, куда денется семья?, but if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child should begin to question his father: "Father, why must I love you?", what will become of us, what will become of the foundations of society, where will the family go?
In the room, however, it is the lawyer who comes out on top: he answers with dignity, and the ladies consider the prosecutor crushed forever (chapter XIV of Book XII).
From the prosecutor's reading, the defender is a sophist who dissolves the father into a contract (chapter XIV of Book XII). From the defender's own reading, the definition of a father is the only one the court can use so as not to treat as a parricide a man raised like a wild animal (chapter XIII of Book XII). The text sustains both and adds a third: the room applauds the thesis and the jury ignores it, which shows that his eloquence does not decide the verdict, and on the stairs one hears that the muzhiks defended his place (chapter XIV of Book XII).
Relationships
- Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: the client who does not believe him (chapter IV of Book XI) and who, in the end, thanks both orators and asks that they not believe the doctors (chapter XIV of Book XII).
- Hippolyte Kirillovich: the adversary he fears and to whom he returns psychology, the novel and the troika (chapter X of Book XII, chapter XI of Book XII, chapter XIII of Book XII).
- Rakitin: the witness he dismantles with the question of the twenty-five rubles (chapter II of Book XII, chapter IV of Book XII).
- Grigory: the witness he tries to ridicule without giving an inch on the gate (chapter II of Book XII).
- Smerdyakov: the dead man to whom he attributes the crime, without knowing that the servant planned it (chapter XII of Book XII).
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the brother who hires him and whom he questions about the last conversation with Mitya (chapter IV of Book XII).