Rakitin

Who He Is

Rakitin is a seminarian of about twenty-two, a protege of the monastery, who waits in the corner of the elder's cell with an attentive face and a calculated respect (ch. II of Book II). He is a friend of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, who loves him even knowing that he is restless, envious, and considers himself honest only because he would not steal money from the table (ch. VIII of Book II). He is the son of a priest and carries the origin as a wound: when Alyosha asks, in the monastery's avenue, whether Grushenka is not a relative of his, Rakitin explodes with shame and hatred and defends himself like a commoner before gentlemen who think themselves noble (ch. VII of Book II). The novel only confirms the kinship at the trial: Grushenka is his cousin, the daughter of a sister of his mother, and he had asked her not to tell anyone (ch. IV of Book XII). He wants to rise, and the pen is his instrument: the text attributes to him the pamphlet Life of Elder Zosima (ch. II of Book XII) and the anonymous article Rumors about Mitya's case (ch. II of Book XI), and he plans a third, to prove that Mitya could not help but kill (ch. IV of Book XI). The trait that defines him is reading others accurately and measuring everything by what the situation yields him.

Trajectory

In ch. VII of Book II, after Zosima tells Alyosha to leave the monastery when he dies, Rakitin intercepts him in the avenue of pines. He wants to know what the prostration before Mitya meant, and already has the answer that suits him: the old man sniffed out a crime and made the gesture so that, in any case, it could be said afterwards that he had prophesied. He foresees a crime between the father and Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov and answers Alyosha's certainty that Mitya despises Grushenka:

He then sums up the family in three categories, a phrase that reduces each Karamazov to a type:

He moves on to Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, to whom he attributes the desire to win Katerina Ivanovna and her dowry, and attacks the theory Ivan upheld in the cell, reducing it to schoolboy vanity:

His anger has a personal cause: Ivan, in Katerina Ivanovna's house, had predicted for him a career as an archimandrite or as a magazine editor in Petersburg that would end with him owning a building, and Rakitin learned of it from inside Grushenka's room, listening to Mitya recount it. In ch. VIII of Book II he sniffs out the abbot's lunch menu in the kitchen without an invitation, and it is he who shows Alyosha that his father orders him to move out of the monastery today.

In ch. I of Book IV he arrives at the hermitage with Madame Khokhlakova's letter about the miracle of the widow Prokhorovna and gets ahead of things: he sends a monk to give the news to Father Païssy before Alyosha hands over the note. The text leaves open why, eagerness to be noticed among the monks or caution about standing well with the monastery should Alyosha's master really be a saint. After Zosima's death, the same lady sends him to the hermitage to write to her every half hour what happens (ch. I of Book VII).

In ch. II of Book VII he finds Alyosha lying face down under a tree and reads his pain through the only rule he has, that of rank advancement:

He offers sausage and vodka and proposes Grushenka's house, for two gains that the narrator separates: to see the fall of the righteous man and to receive twenty-five rubles. In ch. III of Book VII the scene leaves his script. Grushenka throws him the money, begins to treat him as a lackey, and he, who expected the fall and instead saw Alyosha call her sister and hear the fable of the onion, asks angrily on the way out:

With the boys, he appears as a borrowed source. In ch. III of Book X, Kolya tells Smurov that he is a socialist, repeating an idea of the seminarian, and in ch. VI of Book X he names Rakitin when Alyosha asks him which fool he has been spending time with. In ch. I of Book XI, Alyosha attributes to Rakitin Mitya's new talk about the poor boy, and Grushenka corrects him: the one who disturbs Mitya is Ivan. In ch. II of Book XI, Madame Khokhlakova attributes to him the article in Rumors and says that she threw him out after a scene in which he had brought verses about her sick foot.

In ch. IV of Book XI, Alyosha runs into Rakitin at the prison door, sulking: Mitya, as a joke, had asked him not to forget the others, and Rakitin shouted that this was for the Karamazovs, a race of serfs. Mitya tells Alyosha that Rakitin taught him that thought comes from nerve fibres in the brain and that, instead of philosophising, he should attend to civil rights or the price of meat. He also says that Rakitin had his eye on a hundred and fifty thousand rubles at Madame Khokhlakova's side.

In ch. II of Book XII he testifies like a man who knows everything and attributes the tragedy to serfdom and Russian disorder, until he is applauded, but he slips when he calls Grushenka Samsonov's mistress. Fetyukovich asks him whether he is the author of The Life of Elder Zosima and then about the twenty-five rubles he never returned, and Mitya shouts "Bernard!" and accuses him of borrowing money, of being a careerist and of deceiving the bishop. In ch. IV of Book XII Grushenka says where the twenty-five rubles came from, and the revelation of the kinship knocks down what remained of his eloquence; and in ch. IX of Book XII Mitya murmurs "Bernards" on hearing him cited in the prosecutor's speech. In ch. II of the Epilogue Mitya forbids him to enter the hospital, and he tries twice.

Themes Embodied

Rakitin speaks of science, of socialism and of civil rights, and the novel always places him beside those who suffer over the same matter, so that the measure becomes visible. He reduces "everything is permitted" to schoolboy vanity (ch. VII of Book II), teaches Mitya that thought is a nerve fibre and that one loves humanity without God, and Mitya, scorched, answers with the hymn (ch. IV of Book XI), and he lends Kolya ideas that Kolya repeats without having read them (ch. VI of Book X). The theme he carries is that of Reason taken as a trade and as a ladder, in counterpoint to Ivan, and that of Faith measured as rank (ch. II of Book VII).

Rakitin sees accurately what is there and gets wrong what weighs. He is right that the crime is in the air, that Mitya's contempt for Grushenka does not free him from her (ch. VII of Book II), and that Alyosha understands more than he admits. He is wrong where he can only see interest: he reads rank where Alyosha sees supreme justice violated (ch. II of Book VII), and he expects Alyosha's fall where the opposite happens (ch. III of Book VII). What he hides, his origin and his cousin, is what the court exposes (ch. IV of Book XII); the man who is ashamed of Grushenka is undone by her, and the shame from the beginning, in the monastery avenue, gains its final scene there.

Divergent Readings

For Joseph Frank, in Frank - 07 - Karamazov and death, Rakitin is the other side of the ideal that Ivan embodies:

There are two ways of reading the seminarian, and the text supports both. On Frank's, he is the proof that the humanitarian ideal, separated from its source, serves as a mask: what Rakitin says about civil rights and serfdom (ch. II of Book XII) is the speech that earns him applause, and the hidden kinship unmasks him (ch. IV of Book XII). On the other reading, he is a resentful man who never offered any ideal and uses whatever idea is at hand to wound: the defence of the peasants against the monks, the socialism that Kolya repeats, the article on the determinism of environment (ch. IV of Book XI). Against the first reading, the text does not show Rakitin preaching an ideal and later betraying it; it shows a man who speaks of it when it suits him. Against the second, the same Rakitin who charges twenty-five rubles is the one who tells Alyosha that contempt does not spare Mitya (ch. VII of Book II), something the novel confirms, and the charge of careerism comes from Mitya, who is on trial.

Relationships

• Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the friend who loves him and whom he accompanies to watch him fall, in ch. II of Book VII and in ch. III of Book VII, and who disarms him without rebutting a single thesis.
• Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: the brother from whom Rakitin collects confidences and to whom he teaches the science of the nerves (ch. IV of Book XI); in prison they exchange the insult of a race of serfs (ch. IV of Book XI) and at the trial Mitya calls him Bernard (ch. II of Book XII).
• Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: the rival who mocks him and to whom he attributes the will to win the fiancee and the dowry (ch. VII of Book II).
• Grushenka: the cousin he hides, who pays him twenty-five rubles for bringing Alyosha and exposes him at the trial (ch. IV of Book XII).
• Elder Zosima: the master of Alyosha, of whom he says he sniffed out a crime and about whom he wrote a biography that the court recalls (ch. II of Book XII).
• Kolya Krasotkin: the boy who repeats his ideas without having examined them (ch. VI of Book X).