The Brothers Karamazov

So I just finished the Brothers Karamazov and I am dying to have some conversations about it in order to work through my thoughts and better understand everything that took place in the book and especially understand things I did not pick up on.

First things first, one of the biggest thoughts I have had while reading is the complexity of talking about the book in general. It feels like in order to start talking about the book in a thematic and analytic way there is no easy place to start. It appears to me that much of the book, in terms of its themes, are dialectical in nature. Therefore, building a foundation for one's analysis is not so easy, you begin at one place with a specific endpoint in mind, yet that endpoint is required to begin in the first place. I am curious to know if anyone else has had the same experience.

In any case, much of what I have been thinking about has to do with the propositions Dostoevsky puts forth about the meaning(lessness) of suffering. Throughout the story I believe it is clear there is an idea that suffering is not only profound, but also meaningless. We see this communicated from Ivan the most. For example, In both chapters "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor", Ivan contemplates the suffering he has experienced/witnessed and says that this suffering is pointless and nothing more than manure for other people's harmony. It is clear that Ivan is angry and distraught over the suffering he mentions in these chapters and cannot come to terms with it. In this way, I believe Dostoevsky uses Ivan to represent the part of us who also struggles to come to terms with life's suffering.

I believe Dostoevsky gives us an answer to said meaningless in Ivan's conversation with the Devil. Within the chapter, the Devil mentions how he was "pre-temporally" assigned the position of negator because Hosannah is not enough for life to thrive. Jesus needs to pass through the "crucible of doubt", or else there would be no events, and life would be one long church service. However, he mentions he does not want this role, and would rather find salvation and cry out "Hosannah" as well. He further mentions that while he knows there is some kind of secret being kept with regard to his current position in the universe, he also knows that if he were to know this secret, suffering would cease to be, as would everything else. It is from this that I believe it is precisely in sufferings meaninglessness that suffering gains its meaning. If we knew why we were suffering, we would no longer suffer; we would have nothing to grapple with. Without suffering, what would life be? This idea echoes sentiments of the Devil from the same chapter; he says, "They suffer, of course⁠ ⁠… but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?"

This proposition is hard to process. It is a weird instance where an answer is really no answer at all; reaffirming the dialectical nature of the book itself. It is a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If you were to hypothetically uncover the meaning of your suffering, then you would immediately cease to suffer and be unfulfilled. Alternatively, you stop trying to find the meaning of your suffering and embrace misery. The answer is more than likely to embrace suffering, and this is shown throughout the whole book; how we love to suffer and would not stop suffering even if given the choice. I think this is what makes suffering so profound, not that you experience misery in the first place​

​, but that the feeling of misery is preferable. This reminds me of something Jordan Peterson said, probably in relation to TBK, about embracing suffering: "The only way out is through. You take more of the thing that poisons you, until you turn it into a tonic that girdles the world around you."

There is a lot more I have to say on this, because so much is connected, but I am hesitant to put too much into one post. I also fear this might be a very surface level analysis and discussed already, however, again, this is for my own processing and a starting point for me to better sort through my thoughts. Please let me know what you all think and even more so anything else you connect to this.