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Fyodor DostoevskyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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This section covers the following chapters: “They Arrive at the Monastery,” “The Old Buffoon,” “Women of Faith,” “A Lady of Little Faith,” “So Be It! So Be It!,” “Why Is Such a Man Alive!,” “A Seminarist-Careerist,” and “Scandal.”
Fyodor, Ivan, Miusov, and Kalganov (a young man from Moscow and friend of Miusov’s) arrive at the monastery for the meeting with Father Zosima. Dmitri is running late. Fyodor acts “like a buffoon” (41), and Miusov berates him. Alyosha is very upset while Ivan sits watching with curiosity. Zosima tells Fyodor not to be ashamed, to decrease his drinking, and “above all, do not lie to yourself” (44). Fyodor begins to like Zosima.
Father Zosima leaves to see a group of women who rapturously receive his blessings and request his guidance. A grieving woman seeks his counsel: Her three-year-old child died, and her husband began drinking heavily. Zosima tells her to return to her husband and to “rejoice” because her child is in heaven (49). A woman with a baby gives 60 kopecks for the elder to give to someone who is in need.
Madame Khokhlakov, a wealthy, relatively young widow, and her daughter, a paralyzed 14-year-old named Lise, visit Father Zosima to receive advice and healing prayer. Lise giggles, apologizes, and shyly admits that she is giggling at Alyosha, who is her childhood friend. When Madame Khokhlakov confesses to Zosima that she suffers from a lack of faith, Zosima tells her that while no one can prove God’s existence, she can still become convinced through “active love.” He says, “Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul […] This has been tested. It is certain” (56). Madame Khokhlakov struggles to understand the concept of active love; the idea of tirelessly loving one’s neighbor seems thankless to her, and she confides that she’s exhausted by giving kindness to others who never show appreciation. Zosima responds by distinguishing “active love” from the more insubstantial “love in dreams”:
I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science (57).
When Father Zosima blesses Lise, she says she misses Alyosha. He says he will send Alyosha to see her.
Ivan summarizes his essay on ecclesiastical courts for the monks; the essay argues that there should be no separation between church and state and that religious authorities should administer all law. Miusov disagrees vehemently, stating that what Ivan is suggesting is “socialism,” a “utopian dream,” and “the dream of Rome” (63-64), referring to the Roman papacy. Ivan, however, says that such powerful ecclesiastical courts would make people less likely to break laws, because lawbreaking would then be a crime against God. With this argument, he suggests that a person keeps the law not because they have a conscience but because they believe their actions impact their immortal soul. Ivan confesses to Father Zosima that he believes “there is no virtue if there is no immortality” (70), meaning that if the soul is not immortal, humans might as well live for their own pleasure. Zosima concedes that Ivan’s plan may very well reduce crime—however, he states that rather than helping criminals, the merger of church and state would further alienate criminals and cause “the loss of faith” as they would not have the church to turn to in their despair, since they would be excommunicated (65).
When Dmitri arrives, he and his father argue viciously. The details of the dispute emerge: Fyodor enlisted Grushenka’s help to have Dmitri imprisoned for debts to Fyodor. After meeting Grushenka, Dmitri fell in love with her and left his fiancée, Katerina. Dmitri says that Fyodor also is in love with Grushenka and that Fyodor’s jealousy over Grushenka is the real reason he is disinheriting Dmitri. Fyodor feels that Dmitri’s account paints Grushenka in a bad light, and, becoming enraged, he defends her, saying she is “holier than all” of the monks at the monastery (74).
Father Zosima’s bow at Dmitri’s feet inspires much curiosity. Rakitin, a seminarian, theorizes that Zosima believes there will be a crime and that he prophetically “marked” Dmitri as “the criminal” (78).
A dinner is planned with the monks and the Karamazov family. Fyodor says he will not attend because he is embarrassed. Later at the dinner, however, just as they are seated to eat, Fyodor suddenly bursts in, accusing the monks of various hypocrisies and abuses of power.
Literary critics have compared Dostoevsky’s character dynamics to destabilizing chemical reactions: The author routinely situates psychologically or socially disparate characters in volatile proximity, resulting in those characters’ telling and sometimes explosive responses to one another. Book 2 features several such disparate characters and shows how the Karamazov family interacts in the uncomfortable situation. Fyodor, who could not be any less monastic, reacts vividly to the religious elders. Before the meeting with Zosima, Fyodor alleges that the elders meet with women for licentious reasons, and he further annoys an already-annoyed Miusov. Fyodor’s insistence that the elders must not be so holy or pure is a topic he brings up every time the monastery is mentioned in his presence; his pathological hedonism causes him to believe that everyone else is similarly fixated on seeking pleasure and that it’s impossible that anyone would willingly observe chastity.
Miusov’s pride is a barrier to his respect for the elder Zosima. He has recurring negative ruminations, and the narrator reveals Miusov’s angry thoughts toward the monastery, its monks, and Zosima. Miusov is depicted as a cosmopolitan, worldly man, whom Fyodor sarcastically calls a “Parisian” (Paris, as well as the French language, also signifies Western modernity in Dostoevsky’s work), and he views the monastery as a sham. He has only come for self-interested reasons: He is a landowner and has taken legal action to stop the monks from wood-cutting and fishing in the forest (84). The whole group’s irreverence indicates that they understand neither the “favor” they have been shown nor the normal behavior of “deep reverence” that is expected from monastery visitors (42).
Even the men living at the monastery reflect difference within an institution that others may assume is monolithic. Some of the monks are suspicious of Zosima, while others don’t understand his approach to divine healing. Father Paissy, one of the monks, asks Zosima how he can be “so bold to do such deeds” (55), referring to Lise’s healing; Zosima, however, doesn’t estimate himself so highly. He notes that Lise isn’t healed yet, that healing would likely take time, and that even if she does improve, something other than prayer might have caused it—and, finally, Zosima says that he himself does not heal anyone and that it is instead God who would do it. Such divine healing is neither immediate nor sensational, which starkly contrasts with prevailing notions of the miraculous. Moreover, when Madame Khokhlakov points out how cheerful the elder is and that he cannot possibly be so ill, Zosima tells her that “people are created for happiness […] all the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy” (55). This, too, contrasts with the dour seriousness of some of his fellow monks, who advocate for a more solemn attitude toward life. This contrast suggests that true spirituality is not asceticism but a joy caused by complete faith in God’s will; such faith involves not a wholesale denial of the world but a disciplined embrace of it. Because Zosima epitomizes this ideal, he attracts love and reverence from many, even skeptics like Fyodor who otherwise might despise the elder.
Father Zosima’s idea of divine healing—that it is likely accretional and certainly not a spectacle—directly corresponds with his idea of love itself. He expresses this notion of “active love” in a speech that, aside from Book 5’s “Grand Inquisitor” and Ivan’s prefacing remark about God’s “ticket,” is the novel’s most famous and crucial passage. When Madame Khokhlakov brings up her despair at how difficult it is to love those who are ungrateful and do not reciprocate, Zosima states that this is normal, but he surprises her when he says that if she shows kindness only “in order to be praised, […] your whole life will flit by like a phantom” (57). Moreover, “active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed,” while “active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science” (57).
This idea of love, though not cynical, is far from idealistic. It suggests that love is not a grand, one-fell-swoop revolution but rather a protracted, even laborious daily practice that often goes unnoticed and that endures despite life’s irrevocable imperfection. “Active love” is, for example, a continual patience and charity with others whom one finds irritating in highly particular ways; it is the love of persons, not the love of humanity. The comparison of love to a “whole science” is ultimately what will drive Alyosha’s character, as he wants more than anything to understand love. Zosima comforts Madame Khokhlakov by saying that he believes she is sincere and good at heart, and he gives her the same advice that he gave Fyodor earlier: Do not lie to others or yourself.
Ivan’s idea of love is different. Concerned with the lofty entity of humanity, he is idealistic and revolutionary in spirit. His thesis—that the state must raise itself to the level of the Church and that this would better reform criminals—reveals his desire to engineer love and to perfect humanity through political systems. In other words, Ivan longs for humanity to orchestrate its own salvation, even if that salvation is a form of tyranny; this is among Dostoevsky’s many portrayals of utopian aspirations. Zosima, whom the author intends as a model of genuine salvific love, is less interested in eradicating sin than in extending redemption to the individual personhood of the sinners themselves. The political debate also highlights the nature of Ivan’s suffering; Zosima understands that Ivan, inwardly tortured, is simply entertaining himself with his academics and that he is truly “in despair” (70) over the question of whether there is any virtue or goodness in the human soul. Ivan’s inner conflict eventually leads to his famous poem, “The Grand Inquisitor,” foreshadowed by Father Paissy’s comment on the “third temptation of the devil” (66).
Rakitin provides a foil to Alyosha. Alyosha sees himself and Rakitin as somehow similar, as he states that he and Rakitin can understand each other’s thoughts; yet Rakitin is a liberal, with references to liberals of their day, such as in his question, “[W]hat’s the meaning of this dream?”—a reference to one of Dostoevsky’s literary rivals of “liberal” beliefs (78). Rakitin has a “restless and covetous heart” (85) and holds a grudge against Ivan. In his response to Alyosha’s defense of Ivan’s character, Rakitin says, “Literary theft!” (81), a foreshadowing of the “Grand Inquisitor” chapter. Rakitin may be full of spiteful conjecture, but Ivan’s unexpected cruelty toward Maximov as he leaves highlights that Ivan is not as he appears. This lends credence to Rakitin’s belief that Ivan is not as “disinterested” and “noble” as he seems (80).
By Fyodor Dostoevsky