The Brothers Karamazov, Is It Worth the Pain?
Don’t Let Pretentious People Steal Dostoyevsky From You
When it comes to books like Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, people usually fall into two camps. Those who read them to look smart at networking events, and those who avoid them out of spite for the ‘white males with beards’. I think both camps are missing the point and so are missing out on an experience worth rethinking these stands.
If you’ve ever thought about picking up one of these “big name” books, or so-called ‘Western Canon’, but weren’t sure if you want to ‘be that person’ or if you would survive the experience, I’ve got some thoughts that might help you pick the right titles and get the most out of them.
I just finished The Brothers Karamazov, and I came to a few conclusions:
1) Some numbers:
I understood maybe 15% of the book
I probably misunderstood around 10%
I probably completely missed the remaining 75%
the book was painful to read around 40% of the time,
it felt ‘mid’ about another 40%
and the remaining 20% was absolutely gripping
2) I am pretty sure most of the negative experiences connected to my experience of reading this book come from my end of this interaction and not Dostoyevsky’s lack of talent
3) The 15% I understood was worth the struggle
Would I recommend this book?
If you’re curious about reading the Western canon, I wouldn’t start with The Brothers Karamazov. Some people say these books just dress up obvious ideas in difficult language. Whether or not that’s true, if you already suspect it, you’ll definitely feel that way with this one.
Some of the alternatives that are easier to start with:
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (1850 years old self-help book, M. A. is the Tim Ferriss of Rome, beautiful and easy to read meditations)
Voltaire, Candide (Satirical and funny while quite philosophical and easy to read)
Plato, Apology (Socrates’ trial speech; easy to follow core book of Western thought)
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (A short, pre-romantic novel told through letters, a personal favorite of 16-year-old me:))
Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (if you want to stick with Dostoyevsky)
It’s Not You, Fyodor, It’s Me
To demonstrate how much I struggled with this piece, it took my dyslexic brain about five months to get through it, even though I read almost every day. I’ve caught myself multiple times not understanding words, sentences, and sometimes multiple pages. At times, I would be reading for ten minutes without fully understanding what was going on.
Nevertheless, I don’t regret getting through it one bit. I know once I gain the courage again, I’ll come back to this book two or three more times in my life, and even then, I know I probably won't grasp all that’s in it. But that’s okay.
These are some of the attitudes I’ve heard from peers: that these authors are outdated, privileged (therefore not relatable), and overrated. While I find some of those arguments logical, I think they miss some nuance. I tend to agree with some materialist explanations in other domains, but when it comes to literature, this way of thinking doesn’t apply.
It’s like asking how a baroque opera singer from the 17th century could be great if she had no knowledge of vocal cords or sound waves. She didn’t need that knowledge; what mattered was her ability to deliver emotions through her voice
I think the most convincing argument against this narrow materialist view isn’t in logic. It’s in reading. A good book, no matter the century, can change how we feel about our relationships, shift our attitudes, or open us to new perspectives. When asked to explain how, we are often left speechless because so much of what books give us works on a subconscious level. Their value often hides in a space we can’t fully access with rational thought.
The distinction between the so-called "canonical literature” and ‘fun to read’ commercial fiction. These works have moved people across cultures and centuries; they have proven to be time-transcendent.
Of course, there is intellectual pretentiousness around them; there always has been. And yes, they largely reflect the views of a narrow, privileged portion of society. Nevertheless, to think that they hold no value means being blinded by ignorance and might cost us many profound insights about humanity essential for co-creating a better world for tomorrow.
In other words, I think the right mindset for reading these canonical works, even when, or especially when, they are challenging, is to assume the problem lies more likely in me than in Dostoyevsky or Voltaire.
A Brief Interpretation of My Favorite Passages
I deliberately didn’t search for any scholarly interpretations of The Brothers Karamazov before writing this post. If you want that, read Elizabeth A. Blake, George Pattison, or Diane Oenning Thompson. I want to offer you an example of what you might take from a book of this kind, even if you might think you didn't absorb most of it:
These are some of my notes I wrote down next to a few passages while reading, and later expanded them for this post:
Page 44 - Lying to Oneself
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect, he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love, he gives way to passion and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.”
This illustrates my earlier point: it’s not that the reader would never have thought this before if Dostoyevsky didn’t show them. Instead, it is precisely because the reader already knows it that this (or another) passage evokes something in them. Reading this book is like looking into a mirror that Dostoyevsky designed, but it is up to the reader where in the mirror they look.
Page 653 - Lise on Evil
“‘Why do evil?’
‘So that everything might be destroyed. Ah, how nice it would be if everything were destroyed!’
[...]
‘Wouldn’t it be so nice, Alyosha?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a craving to destroy something good or, as you say, to set fire to something. It happens sometimes.’
[...]
‘There are moments when people love crime,’ said Alyosha thoughtfully.
‘Yes, yes! You have uttered my thought; they love crime, everyone loves crime, they love it always, not at some “moments”. You know, it’s as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about it ever since. They all declare they hate evil, but secretly they all love it.”
I noted this passage down because I think it is the moment that sets the scene for Dostoyevsky’s case in favor of theism. Up until this point, the book has been fairly descriptive, without much indication of his views on religion. However, this is a turning point. By this time in the book, we know Ivan’s famous line:
“Without God everything is legal.”
But Lise hints at the fact that there is a will to do evil in people, which raises the question: What happens if we remove God from the equation? Ivan doesn’t expand much on the implications of his own idea at first, but his less sophisticated friend Raskin has a clear idea. He says that one should just ‘do good’ after God is out of the picture:
“You’d better think of the extensions of civic rights, or even of keeping down the prices of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.”
Dostoyevsky might not have known about neuroscience, but what he is hinting at here is something we are still hearing to this very day. Paraphrasing Raskin: “One can do good things without believing in God.” To which Dostoyevsky, through Mitya, replies: “It’s not so simple.”
“‘Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat, if it suits you, and make a rouble on every copeck.’ [...] ‘But after all, what is goodness?’ [...] ‘Ivan has no God. He has an idea.’ [...] ‘Then everything is lawful, if it is so?’ He (Ivan) frowned. ‘Fyodor Pavlovitch, our papa,’ he said, ‘ was a pig, but his ideas were right enough.’ That was what he dropped. That was all he said. That was going one better than Radkin.” (page 666 (coincidence?))
The complexity of thought in this passage strikes me, and it was passages like these that made the book worth reading for me. Ivan claims that “the laws that religion creates can be created without God.” Mitya responds by asking, “But how likely are we to create them, and obey them, without belief in God?” If a great self-help book gives one answer to life’s problems, a great novel gives one question to wrestle with. And the questions Dostoyevsky poses in this book are some of the hardest to answer, but also the most important to ask.
Conclusion
I’ve shared these amateur interpretations to show that you don’t need to be a literary critic, or the kind of person who brags about their “understanding of Dostoyevsky” at networking events, to find value in canonical literature. A good book should enrich us, even in small but meaningful ways. All you need is the right mindset, a bit of curiosity, and maybe, with some time, a decent pair of glasses.
