In his youth, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is a coarse, vulgar man whose main concerns are making money and seducing young women. He marries twice and has three sons: Dmitri, the child of his first wife, and Ivan and Alyosha, children of his second wife. Fyodor Pavlovich never has any interest in his sons, and when their mothers die, he sends them away to be brought up by relatives and friends. At the beginning of the novel, Dmitri Karamazov, who is now a twenty-eight-year-old soldier, has just returned to Fyodor Pavlovich's town. Fyodor Pavlovich is unhappy to see Dmitri because Dmitri has come to claim an inheritance left to him by his mother. Fyodor Pavlovich plans to keep the inheritance for himself. The two men swiftly fall into conflict over the money, and the coldly intellectual Ivan, who knows neither his father nor his brother well, is eventually called in to help settle their dispute. The kind, faithful Alyosha, who is about twenty, also lives in the town, where he is an acolyte, or apprentice, at the monastery, studying with the renowned elder Zosima. Eventually Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich agree that perhaps Zosima could help resolve the Karamazovs' quarrel, and Alyosha tentatively consents to arrange a meeting. At the monastery, Alyosha's worst fears are realized. After Fyodor Pavlovich makes a fool of himself by mocking the monks and telling vulgar stories, Dmitri arrives late, and Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich become embroiled in a shouting match. It turns out that they have more to quarrel about than money: they are both in love with Grushenka, a beautiful young woman in the town. Dmitri has left his fiancée, Katerina, to pursue Grushenka, while Fyodor Pavlovich has promised to give Grushenka 3,000 rubles if she becomes his lover. This sum is significant, as Dmitri recently stole 3,000 rubles from Katerina in order to finance a lavish trip with Grushenka, and he is now desperate to pay the money back. As father and son shout at each other at the monastery, the wise old Zosima unexpectedly kneels and bows his head to the ground at Dmitri's feet. He later explains to Alyosha that he could see that Dmitri is destined to suffer greatly Many years previously, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov fathered a fourth son with a retarded mute girl who lived in town as the village idiot. The girl died as she gave birth to the baby, who was taken in by servants of Fyodor Pavlovich and forced to work as a servant for him as well. Fyodor Pavlovich never treats the child, Smerdyakov, as a son, and Smerdyakov develops a strange and malicious personality. He also suffers from epilepsy. Despite the limitations of his upbringing, however, Smerdyakov is not stupid. He enjoys nothing more than listening to Ivan discuss philosophy, and in his own conversations, he frequently invokes many of Ivan's ideas-specifically that the soul is not immortal, and that therefore morality does not exist and the categories of good and evil are irrelevant to human experience.
About the Author: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoïevski (as Fedor or Theodore in French) is a Russian writer, born in Moscow on Nov. 11 (October 30) in 1821 and died in St. Petersburg on February 9 (January 28) 1881. It is generally considered one of the greatest Russian novelists, and has influenced many writers and philosophers. After a difficult childhood, he attended a school for officers and binds with the Russian progressive movements. Arrested for this reason in 1849 he was deported to a Siberian prison for four years. Returned lieutenant, he resigned from the army in 1860 and is really committed to writing. Epileptic player in debt and a dark character, Dostoïevski first leads a life of wandering in Europe, during which he became a staunch liberal for his country and especially a staunch patriot, before being recognized his return to Russia in 1871 after the publication of Crime and Punishment (1866) and the Idiot (1868) which opened the period of maturity where the author wrote his most accomplished works: the Eternal Husband (1870) the Demons (1871) and the Brothers Karamazov (1880). Dostoevsky's novels are sometimes called "metaphysical", as the anguished question of free will and the existence of God is at the heart of his thinking, as the figure of Christ. However, his works are not "thesis novels", but novels where dialectically opposed views with different characters who build themselves, through their actions and their social interactions