Discussion Questions

The narrator says that the eccentric, almost always only particularity and isolation, sometimes keeps within himself the core of the whole. What does he suggest, with this, about the place of the hero he has chosen in relation to the age in which he lives?

The narrator cannot say whether Fyodor Pavlovich laughed or wept on learning of the death of his first wife, and concludes that both are possible. What does this refusal to choose say about how he asks the reader to judge a man like this?

It is a servant who looks after Mitya, not the father nor the mother's family, and each relative forgets him for a different reason. What does this say about who answers for a child in this family?

Ivan never wrote to his father, out of pride, contempt, or coldness, and then goes to live in his house. What does the narrator offer as a way of understanding this change, and what does he say remains unexplained?

The narrator says that Alyosha does not want to judge people and that everyone loves him without his seeking it. What is there in this way of not judging that leads Fyodor Pavlovich, who distrusts everyone, to say that he is the only one who did not condemn him?

Alyosha reacts to the meeting with fear for the elder, not for the inheritance or the family quarrels. What does the text show, in this chapter, about what he considers most fragile and most worthy of protection?

Fyodor Pavlovich lives in excess and without restraint, while Alyosha refuses any half measure and asks for complete faith. What does the narrator suggest the son has inherited from the father, if the two are not alike in any way?

Miusov tells himself, before entering the cell, that he will become irritated, argue, and debase himself and the idea. Why does someone who foresees so well what he will do fail to prevent it?

Fyodor Pavlovich says he is a buffoon out of shame, and Zosima answers him not to lie to himself. What does the text show, in this scene, about the difference between lying to others and lying to oneself?

Zosima tells the mother not to seek consolation and to weep, and soon asks her to return to her husband the same day. What, in her mourning, does he separate, and what does he leave intact?

Madame Khokhlakova confesses that she would only serve the sick if she were paid with gratitude, and soon realizes she was expecting to be praised for the confession. What changes, in Zosima's reply, between dreamed-of love and active love?

Ivan states that if everything were Church, the excommunicated criminal could not tell himself that he is not an enemy of Christ, and Zosima says that the true punishment is already in the conscience. What does each one put forward as the brake on crime, and where do the two explanations touch?

Zosima kneels before Mitya at the moment he asks what a man like the father lives for. What did the gesture interrupt in this scene, and what does the text say the elder still hoped to understand?

Ivan maintains that without immortality there is no virtue and, when the elder says he suffers from an unresolved idea, he confesses that he was not entirely joking and silently asks for the blessing. What does the text show, at this moment, about who he is before the elder and before the others?

Rakitin says that Mitya despises Grushenka and cannot leave her, and Alyosha, silent, says he understands. What, in the scene, shows what Alyosha understands, and what does Rakitin draw from it against him?

Fyodor Pavlovich returns to the lunch after deciding to leave, because he remembered the buffoon's role he had promised to play. What does the text show, in this chapter, about the difference, in him, between shame and revenge?

The meeting was called to deal with a division of property and never dealt with any money at all. What did each of those present (Fyodor, Mitya, Ivan, Miusov, Zosima) lay bare in place of the division?

Fyodor Pavlovich wakes the servant at night from time to time just to look at his face and exchange an idle word. What does he seek in Grigory, in this need, that he does not seek in anyone else?

Grigory defends the master against the rumor and names another culprit, and at the same moment takes the boy in as a child of God. Why does he defend Fyodor Pavlovich and, at the same time, raise the child the town blames him for?

Mitya says that in moments of greatest shame he recites the poem about the goddess Ceres and man, and that this has never corrected him, because he is a Karamazov. What, in his account, links the hymn to joy with the fall head first?

At what point in the scene with Katerina Ivanovna does Mitya stop climbing the staircase of which Alyosha spoke, and what makes him stop?

Mitya says that legally the father owes him nothing, but morally he does, and sends Alyosha to ask for three thousand rubles knowing the father will not give them. What does he seek with this request, beyond the money?

Mitya says he believes in the miracle and, at the same time, that he will kill the old man if Grushenka goes to him. How does the text place these two sentences side by side?

The narrator says that Smerdyakov stores up impressions without knowing what for, and that one day he may set fire to the village or set off for Jerusalem. What does the chapter give, in Smerdyakov's own gestures, to support that image?

Smerdyakov's argument is perfect in its steps and hideous in its end, and Ivan observes him with extreme curiosity. What does the argument of the mountain show about what kind of faith, or of unbelief, Smerdyakov starts from?

Fyodor Pavlovich asks his sons, one after the other, whether there is God and immortality, and then says that the elder is a Jesuit who does not believe. What does he want from the sons' answers?

Fyodor forgets that Alyosha's mother was also Ivan's, and Ivan, angrily, reminds him. What does this slip and this answer say about Ivan's place in this house?

Ivan says he will not let the murder happen, but he reserves for himself full freedom in his desires. How does the distinction between what he will do and what he wants change the way Alyosha looks at him?

Katerina Ivanovna reads the word "greet," repeated, as bravado and as hope. Where does the text show that her reading serves what she needs to believe?

Grushenka leaves telling Alyosha that she made the scene for him. What does the sentence show about what she thinks of him, and what does he do in front of her?

At the crossroads Mitya says he thought of hanging himself on the willow and that, when he heard Alyosha's footsteps, he felt love. What changes in him between the image of the willow and the game of money or life?

Lise asks Alyosha not to look her straight in the eyes, so that she will not laugh. What does the letter show about how she sees herself and how she defends herself?

The elder tells the monks that no one is holier for living there and that each is guilty for all, just as the cell fills with people waiting for a miracle. Why does the lesson come at this hour, and what does it answer to the monks' expectations?

The monk from Obdorsk hears Ferapont tell that he caught a devil's tail in the door, and still he leans toward him. What does he seek in Ferapont that he does not find in Zosima?

Fyodor proposes paying Mitya a thousand or two thousand to disappear and, in the same conversation, gives up: he gives nothing. What, in Alyosha's answer about the three thousand, makes the old man back down?

Alyosha kisses his father's shoulder and says it was unintentional, and Fyodor asks whether he thinks the two of them will not see each other again. What does each of the two understand from that gesture?

Alyosha, bitten to the bone, does not strike back and asks the boy what he is guilty of before him. What does that question assume about the person asking it?

The six boys throw together at one boy, and they laugh when Alyosha steps in front of him. What binds them together, and what leads them to choose this target?

Lise wrote to Alyosha as a joke, wants the letter back, and when he says he believed everything, she laughs and calls him mad. What did she expect him to answer?

Madame Khokhlakova says she does not want to suggest anything and, in the same breath, claims that Katerina Ivanovna loves Ivan and convinces herself she loves Mitya. What changes in the way Alyosha will look at the room next door?

Katerina Ivanovna asks for Alyosha's opinion as if she were going to decide on her own, but first she says she has already decided and that Ivan approves. What does she want to hear from him?

Ivan has just said that Katerina never loved him, and he leaves. A few minutes earlier, Katerina had changed her mood on learning that he would travel. What did each expect from the other in that room?

The captain offers to cut off four of his own fingers instead of whipping his son, and when Alyosha says he understands the boy, the captain nearly comes undone. What, in Alyosha's understanding, disarms him?

Varvara Nikolayevna calls her father a buffoon and asks him to stop, and the father looks at her with approval. What does each of the two want from the clowning?

The captain explains why he does not challenge Mitya or take him to court, and each reason is a person who depends on him. What changes, for his honor, when the motive is the upkeep of his dependents?

Before crumpling the notes, the captain dreams aloud of what he will do with them, and then asks what he would have told the boy had he accepted them. What changed between the dream and the gesture?

In Book IV, Alyosha twice tries to help, in Katerina Ivanovna's drawing room and in the captain's hut, and both times the gesture ends in offense. What does each failed attempt show about how each person receives help?

Ilyusha swears to kill Mitya when he grows up and, in the same conversation, dreams of fleeing with his father to another town. Do the two hopes exclude each other?

Alyosha tells Lise that the captain will accept the money the next day, and Lise asks whether predicting his soul like that is not contempt. What does Alyosha rely on to say that it is not?

Alyosha confesses to Lise that he may not believe in God and, soon after, speaks of the pain of losing the master. What relationship does the text suggest between the two sentences?

Smerdyakov tells a girl that he would rather have been killed in his mother's womb, and tells Alyosha that he fears Dmitri will kill him. In which of the two conversations does he speak more truthfully, and what does each audience give him?

Alyosha goes after Mitya because he senses a catastrophe he cannot name, and he meets Smerdyakov, who gives him the only trail he has. Why is the information handed over with a request for secrecy?

Ivan says he loves life with his guts, before any logic, and Alyosha answers that one must love it before understanding its meaning. What does each of the two call loving life?

Ivan recognizes Cain's answer before Alyosha says it. Why does he name it first?

Ivan begins to speak of God in the most foolish way possible, and says that foolishness is honest and intelligence is a scoundrel. Why is the subject treated this way by someone who calls himself intelligent?

Ivan says he cannot love the neighbor up close, and that children can be loved even when dirty, which is why he chooses to speak only of them. What do children have, in his argument, that adults do not?

Alyosha answers "shoot him" to the general's case and, soon after, says his brother has forgotten who can forgive. Is there a contradiction between the two answers, or does the same pain speak in both?

Ivan says he wants retribution here on earth, that he wants to see the doe lie beside the lion, and that he returns his ticket. What does he want and not have, and what does he refuse, if he does not refuse God?

The Inquisitor calls the lie that he and his people will have to tell to men their suffering. Does that suffering make him more or less responsible for what he does?

The old man waits for the prisoner to say something, even something bitter and terrible, and the prisoner gives him a kiss. What did the old man expect to hear, and what does the kiss give him in its place?

Alyosha accuses the Inquisitor of not believing in God, and Ivan says that he has finally got it right. What changes in the poem if the Inquisitor does not believe?

Ivan sees Smerdyakov on the bench and understands that the afternoon's anguish was him, and that the lackey is also in his soul. What connection does the text suggest between what Ivan feels and what Smerdyakov tells him on that bench?

Smerdyakov never proposes anything to Ivan: he describes what he would do, does the arithmetic, gives information. What responsibility falls on the one who understands what was not said and acts as if he had not understood it?

Ivan goes up to his room without speaking to his father, listens to the old man from the stairs twice during the night, and in the morning leaves, without going to Chermashnya as he had told the servant. Which part of what Ivan does in these two days does he know he is doing, and which part escapes him?

Fyodor teaches Ivan to read Gorstkin's beard to know whether he is lying, and does not notice the anger of the son standing before him. What irony does the narrator build with these two readings of people?

Smerdyakov never proposes to Ivan what he should do, and Ivan never answers clearly: at the gate he says he is leaving, and in the tarantass he says he is going to Chermashnya. In this exchange, who says what they want?

Zosima sends Alyosha to look for Dmitri without saying what there is to prevent, and afterward explains that he saw in his face an entire fate. Why does the master leave the disciple not knowing what to do?

The narrator warns that Alyosha's manuscript mixes the conversation of that night with others. What does the reader gain, and what does the reader lose, in hearing the elder's life through a disciple who writes it from memory?

Zinovy strikes the orderly on the eve of the duel and, in the morning, thinks that his unease comes from having struck him, and not from fear of dying. What made Markel's phrase, heard at nine years old, return at the moment it returned?

The visitor leaves it to the last hour to say that he had returned to Zinovy's house to kill him. What does this say about the distance between deciding to confess and accepting to be judged by the one who knows?

Markel asks forgiveness of the servants and the birds, and Zinovy asks forgiveness of Afanasy and of his rival. What changes when the request for forgiveness is made to someone who does not demand it?

Zosima says that the freedom of the world is slavery and that the monk's freedom is the renunciation of needs. Does this answer strike at what the Inquisitor claimed about freedom, or does it answer a different question?

Zosima tells us not to judge anyone before recognizing oneself guilty of the same crime, and to take upon oneself the sin of all. If guilt belongs to everyone for everything, how does one distinguish the victim from the executioner?

Zosima defines hell as the suffering of no longer being able to love and, at the same time, prays for the suicides. Do these two ideas fit together, or does his love go beyond what the Church admits?

Father Paissy calls the impatient waiting for a miracle frivolity and confesses only to himself that he too is waiting. What changes in the scene of the smell for the reader who knows this when Paissy rebukes the monks and then Ferapont?

Alyosha says that he does not rebel against his God, but that he does not accept his world; Rakitin reads in it the sulk of one who did not receive his promotion. What separates Alyosha's refusal from a simple disappointment, in the two statements?

The narrator says that on that day Alyosha forgets his brother Dmitri and the two hundred rubles promised to Ilyusha's father. What does the forgetting show about the way he loves the master, and about how exclusive that love was?

Grushenka warns that she is not good and that she may take a knife to the meeting with the officer, and at the same time says that she has waited her whole life for someone to love her not only out of shame. What, between Alyosha's arrival and the arrival of the note, changes in what she wants, and what does not change?

Rakitin goes to Grushenka's house for two gains: to see Alyosha's fall and to receive twenty-five rubles. What does he receive at the end of the night, and why does the shame of the twenty-five rubles irritate him more in front of Alyosha than the money consoles him?

In the dream Zosima tells Alyosha that many at the feast gave only an onion. What does the image do to the idea of merit that the crowd demanded of his body that morning?

Alyosha wakes, goes out, and kisses the earth without knowing why, and later says that someone visited his soul. What does the text leave unexplained, and what does it show, so that the change counts as a conversion and not as a consolation?

Mitya says he would rather even kill and rob than fail to repay his debt to Katya, and in the same chapter he goes to offer a merchant his rights to a village. What does the difference between the phrase and the gesture show about the way he weighs what he owes?

Samsonov points to Lyagavy as a mockery, the priest suspects and keeps silent, the watchman is indifferent. In the chain that leads Mitya to lose a day and a night, who could have stopped him, and why does none of them do so?

Madame Khokhlakova promises three million and then says she has no money at all. What does each of the two want to hear in the conversation, and why does neither listen to the other?

The text follows Mitya up to the moment he takes the pestle out of his pocket, then resumes the scene with Grigory already on the ground. What does the reader know, and what does the reader not know, about what Mitya intended to do in that second?

Mitya tells Perkhotin that Madame Khokhlakova gave him the three thousand rubles, yet in the previous chapter she denied him everything. What effect will the lie have on whoever hears it later, and what does it hide from the one who tells it?

Mitya asks the coachman's forgiveness for everything, and Andrei tells him he has nothing to forgive and that he is only afraid. What kind of forgiveness is Mitya seeking, and why does the coachman's answer not satisfy him?

Mitya offers the Pole money to leave, and then refuses to take back what he lost at cards. What changes in the way Grushenka sees him, between one gesture and the next?

On seeing the policemen, Mitya shouts "the old man and his blood" and hears "parricide." What does each person present understand by "the old man" at that moment, and how does one person's cry serve as evidence for the other?

Grushenka says that Mitya stole nothing and that her money pays Katya's, and Mitya only answers that he would give his life to know "of this blood." What does each of the two understand, at that moment, by paying what is owed?

Perkhotin decides to go to the ispravnik only after hearing Madame Khokhlakova deny the money. Why is her denial, and not the blood on Mitya's hands, what convinces him to act?

The prosecutor and the judge already have a version of Mitya before they hear him: the braggart who kills himself after a spree. What in Perkhotin's account makes this version so easy to accept, and what does it leave out?

Mitya cooperates because Grigory is alive and because he believes candor will save him, and it is that candor that takes away his first ground. At what point does his goodwill stop serving him in the first ordeal?

Mitya refuses to say whom he owed the three thousand rubles, and then declares sarcastically that he took the pestle to kill his father. What does each of these answers reveal about how he understands what the law has a right to know?

Mitya only admitted that he jumped on Grigory out of pity, and the prosecutor heard the same gesture as coldness. What would Mitya's account need to contain for the same action to be read in another way?

Stripped and dressed in Kalganov's clothes, Mitya passes from humiliation into a monologue in which he swears that a guilty man would not hide. What does being stripped change in what he says next?

Mitya explains to the prosecutor, in terms of scoundrel and thief, a scale the other man finds small. What does the law see, and what does Mitya see, in the same division of the money, and why can neither of them see what the other sees?

The dream of the cold child mentions neither Fyodor Pavlovich nor Grigory. Why is the guilt that runs through Mitya that night for another's suffering, unrelated to the crime, and not for the blood he knows he has spilled?

Mitya wakes moved by a pillow placed by an anonymous hand, and the town will see in him the man with the pestle. What does the stranger's gesture do to the image the inquiry is building?

The commissioner, the innkeeper, and the judge treat Mitya, now under arrest, like a stranger, and only the people and Kalganov answer him. What changes in the way each one treats him, and what does that say about what each has already decided about him?

Kolya tells the others that he feigned a faint on the rails, and only much later admits to his mother that he really fainted. Why does he need his reputation for fearlessness to rest on a version he knows to be false?

Kolya argues that he plays with the little ones because he likes them and that no one may ask him to account for it. As he leaves, he demands from Agafya an oath on the salvation of her soul. At what point in the chapter does he take care of them, and at what point does he command?

Kolya lies to a peasant, telling him that at school boys get beaten, "to console him," and then tells Smurov that only he knows how to speak to the people. What did the peasant, who calls him "dear boy," seem to have understood about the boy?

Kolya says he cut off relations with Ilyusha in order to educate him, and in almost the same breath says that by not going to forgive him he had "private intentions." What intentions could they be, according to what Kolya himself says about himself?

At the gate, Alyosha tells Kolya that Ilyusha said he was sick from having killed Zhuchka. Inside the room, Kolya begins by asking about the bitch and declares her lost. Why does he choose to stage the loss before the return?

Every time Kolya grows excited, he takes Alyosha's silence for contempt, and the narrator says that if Alyosha spoke, the excitement would stop right there. Why does he not speak?

Alyosha tells Kolya that he is already different from everyone else because he confessed without shame something bad and even ridiculous. Why is the confession, and not the ideas, what sets him apart?

Ilyusha asks his father to love another boy in his place, and the father answers, away from his son, that he does not want another. Why does the son make the request, and why can the father refuse it only where the son cannot hear?

In Book X, Alyosha never refutes any of Kolya's ideas. What does he do instead, and what does the conversation produce?

Grushenka reads Mitya's jealousy as a maneuver to put the blame on her, and Alyosha reads it as irritated love. What does each one know about Mitya that the other ignores?

Madame Khokhlakova asks Alyosha to get the truth out of Lise and tell it to her mother, and Lise has called him to speak to her alone. To whom does Alyosha owe his candor, when the two of them ask him for the opposite?

Lise asks Alyosha whether the man to whom she told the story of the boy and the compote despised her, and hears that he despises no one, he only believes in no one, and that whoever believes in no one despises, her included. What did she want the answer to be?

Mitya says he will go to Siberia for the boy of his dream because everyone is guilty for everyone, and at the same time he says he did not kill his father. How do the two things fit in the same speech?

Alyosha tells Ivan that he did not kill, and Ivan answers that he knows he did not. Why does a sentence he says he already knows shake him so much that he breaks with his brother?

Ivan is relieved on concluding that the guilty one is Mitya, and not Smerdyakov, which the narrator says is the opposite of what one would expect. What exactly is he relieved of?

Ivan swears to Smerdyakov that he set out for Chermashnya with no hidden motive, and, alone in the street, asks himself what for he went. What does he answer?

Smerdyakov tells Ivan that the only third between the two of them is God, Providence. Why does a man who killed because "everything is permitted" invoke God when confessing?

Smerdyakov returns the money because he no longer has a plan for his life, and Ivan, pocketing it, says he will show it in court. What do the two of them expect from the same bundle of banknotes?

Ivan repeats that the visitor is only a part of him and, at the same time, that the devil tells him what he never thought. How do the two things fit in the same defense?

The devil says that his method is to lead Ivan back and forth between faith and unbelief until he wants the desert. What does this plan assume about Ivan?

Each time Ivan says "he is the one who said it," Alyosha asks him whether it was not he himself. Why does Ivan need the sentence to belong to the devil?

Alyosha sees Ivan's illness as the torment of a proud decision. What, in the decision to give himself up to the court, makes it proud rather than humble?

Mitya admits the drunkenness and the debauchery, denies the theft and the murder, and is warned to answer only what he is asked. What does the hall do with this candor?

Fetyukovich proposes no alternative version; he only stains each witness. What does the narrator say the hall expects of him?

Herzenstube says that the young Mitya laughed and wept when he thanked him for the nuts, because the Russian often laughs where he should weep. What, in the rest of the trial, confirms or contradicts this observation?

Alyosha has no other proof of his brother's innocence than his face, and he says so before the court. What leads him to testify this way, rather than remain silent?

Ivan leaves the room, and after four steps stops, smiles, and returns to hand over the money. What makes him come back?

Katerina hands over the letter she had hidden in order to protect Mitya, and hands it over again in order to protect Ivan. What changed between one decision and the other?

The prosecutor uses the "breadth" of the Karamazovs to explain how the same man can be noble and vile. Why does the argument serve the defense equally well?

The prosecutor says that what Mitya wrote drunk had already been thought out sober. What does this reasoning do to everything he shouted in the taverns during the month?

Smerdyakov wrote only that he kills himself "so as not to blame anyone," and the prosecutor sees in this proof that he was not guilty. What else could the same phrase mean?

The prosecutor reads Mitya's question, "who killed my father, if it was not I?", as the cunning of a man who anticipates the interrogator. What other reading does the same sentence allow?

Fetyukovich says that psychology "proves whatever one wishes," and uses it in the same speech. What part of what he claims still stands without it?

Fetyukovich says that, without proof that the money existed, there is no theft. What part of the case does he leave untouched in denying the theft?

The lawyer maintains that Smerdyakov woke at Grigory's cry, heard from the master what had happened, and conceived the plan there. The reader knows that the servant planned everything in advance. What does the lawyer's reconstruction get right, and what does it get wrong?

Fetyukovich defines a father as "he who begot and deserved it." Would that definition apply to Fyodor Pavlovich in relation to Alyosha, or only to Mitya?

Mitya forgives Katerina Ivanovna at the moment he is sentenced. What in Book XII prepares this gesture?

Both speeches explain the same crime with the same facts, and neither listens to what Mitya says about himself. What does each one need him to be?

Katerina tells Alyosha that the courtroom scene was the work of her fury and, almost in the same breath, wants him to persuade Mitya to flee. What does she want to do with the guilt she has just confessed?

Katerina asks Grushenka's forgiveness and then says she did it to punish herself. What does she expect from Grushenka's answer, and what does she get?

Alyosha promises the boys that he will remember every face, "even thirty years from now." What makes such a promise possible to keep, or impossible?

In Book X, Kolya comes to Ilyusha with second-hand ideas; here, beside the stone, he asks Alyosha a question without pose. What has changed in him between one scene and the other?

Ivan says he does not refuse God, he refuses the world God created, and respectfully returns the ticket of admission. Alyosha says, after Zosima's death, that he too does not rebel against his God and only does not accept his world. What separates Ivan's refusal from Alyosha's, if both use the same words?

In the poem, the Inquisitor hopes for a word, even a bitter one, and the prisoner gives him a kiss; the old man opens the door and sends him away, and Ivan says the kiss burns in his heart, yet the old man remains with the same idea. Does the kiss answer the Inquisitor, or only silence him?

Mitya struck Grigory, wanted to kill his father and did not, and accepts the sentence for having wanted to. Smerdyakov struck the father; Ivan left for Moscow after telling the servant he would go to Chermashnya. Who, in the book, is the murderer: the one who strikes, the one who desires, or the one who consents to the departure?

Smerdyakov tells Ivan that he wanted someone else to do the killing, that he left like one who says "I do not stop you," and that Ivan is the legitimate murderer; in confessing, he calls God in as the third party between the two of them. Ivan repeats to Alyosha that "he said it" and that the devil is cruel, and Alyosha asks him whether it was not he himself. What does the insistence on "he is the one who said it" protect, and what does it reveal?

Zosima answers Ivan's rebellion with a life, that of Markel, with the duel and the mysterious visitor, and with a doctrine that each one is guilty for all; but he does not cite the case of the child hunted by the dogs. Does the answer reach Ivan's question, or does it run alongside it?

Mitya accepts going to Siberia for everyone's sake in Book XI and sings the Underground Hymn, and in the Epilogue he confesses that he cannot bear the guards' familiar "thou" and wants to flee. Alyosha tells him that the cross is not for him. Is the cross a burden he refuses out of weakness, or a guilt he can carry only if it is truly his?

The prosecutor and the lawyer explain the same crime with the same facts, and each needs Mitya to be simple, a calculator or an impulsive man; no one in court listens to what he says about himself. The jury of civil servants, merchants and peasants, which the room had judged incapable of the case, condemns him without mitigating circumstances. What does the jury understand that the room does not?

In the Epilogue, Alyosha tells the boys that the strongest thing for life is a good memory, and that they will rise from the dead to tell one another what has happened. Kolya, who in Book X spoke of God as a hypothesis, asks the question without posing. Is the good memory an answer to Ivan's rebellion, or a wager that leaves it unanswered?