#The Brothers Karamazov | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gegengestalt · 1 day

Text

131 useless or often forgotten facts in The Brothers Karamazov!

This 27 of April is the second anniversary of the day I finished this book for the first time. To do something special, I reread it over the last 20 days and as I did it, I compiled little things that are easy to forget in these 1000 pages filled with food for thought. Let's go!

1. Mitya fought in a duel, though it's most likely that nobody died in it.

2. Ivan's journalist pseudonym is "Eyewitness".

3. Alyosha, in his own words, came back to Skotoprigonyevsk to visit his mother's grave.

4. Fyodor Pavlovich owns several taverns in the district.

5. Grigory was the one who gave Sofia Ivanovna a proper gravestone.

6. Alyosha is one deduction away from becoming a communist.

7. The Brothers Karamazov begins in late August.

8. Kalganov is supposedly Alyosha's friend. This is never mentioned ever again.

9. Kalganov gave one coin to some beggars and told them to divide it among themselves.

10. There is a rumour that the previous elder beat people with sticks. This is false.

11. Alyosha is the only person in the monastery who knows that Rakitin is an atheist, and keeps his secret.

12. Four years ago, Pyotr Miusov divulged a fake story about a saint making out with his own decapitated head. Fyodor never forgot.

13. Madame Khokhlakov is only 33 years old. She has been a widow for 5 years, meaning Lise lost her father at age 9.

14. Zosima's serenity in front of the woman who confesses to a murder may foreshadow his later recollection of having a murder confessed to before.

15. Zosima likes to make jokes.

16. Lise and Alyosha last saw each other two years before.

17. Reminder that Grushenka met Mitya because Fyodor wanted her help to throw Mitya into a debtors' prison.

18. Kuzma Samsonov is the mayor of Skotoprigonyevsk.

19. Ivan rambled to Dmitri and Katerina about how he thinks Rakitin will be a failed journalist turned landlord.

20. Fyodor Pavlovich's house is filled with rats.

21. The Miusov family had their own private theatre.

22. Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya was a bit over 142cm/4'7 tall.

23. In 1842 there was a runaway convict called Karp commiting crimes in Skotoprigonyevsk.

24. Marya Kondratievna's mother is missing a leg.

25. Mitya ghosted a girl in real life.

26. Katerina's mother died when she was young.

27. Mitya had a fever for two weeks once because of a spider bite.

28.Mitya thought Grushenka was "nothing striking" the first time he saw her.

29. Mitya was squatting in his neighbour's rented room.

30. Fyodor Pavlovich has a portrait of the former provincial governor in his house.

31. Fyodor Pavlovich goes to sleep at 3- 4AM, like Dostoyevsky himself.

32. Sofia Ivanovna was being courted by a rich man called Beliavsky while she was married.

33. Who was the woman coming from the alley that Mitya mistook for Grushenka? I still wonder.

34. A cheap glass jar was destroyed during Mitya's frenzied break- in.

35. Katerina sends two detailed reports a week to her surrogate mother figure who lives in Moscow.

36. Katerina has an aquarium.

37. Alyosha sleeps using his monk habit as a blanket.

38. Father Ferapont survives eating nothing more than 1,6kg of bread a week.

39. Ivan had told his father about his feelings for Katerina, for some reason.

40. When Alyosha kissed his father, he had the impression that Alyosha was thinking that it was their last conversation.

41. Madame Khokhlakova owns three houses as property.

42. Madame Khokhlakova and Katerina Ivanovna are supposedly great friends.

43. Ivan reads Schiller when nobody is looking.

44. One of Snegiryov's daughters, Varvara, is invested in feminism.

45. Captain Snegiryov's childhood friend is a lawyer.

46. Mitya spilled cognac over the table of the summerhouse.

47. Smerdyakov sings in falsetto.

48. Marya Kondratievna is the only one who ever calls Smerdyakov 'Pavel Fyodorovich'.

49. Ivan uses Smerdyakov as a messenger.

50. Dmitri and Katerina had been engaged for around six months.

51. Ivan's right shoulder looks lower than the left one when he walks.

52. Smerdyakov often moves the tip of his right foot from side to side when he stands (adorable).

53. Dmitri's favourite death threats are "pounding in a mortar" and "breaking legs".

54. Grigory suffers from paralysis three times a year.

55. The real name of 'Lyagavy' is Gorstkin.

56. Zosima's real name is "Zinovy".

57. There was actually another old German doctor before Herzenstube and he was named Eisenschmidt.

58. Zosima has known Brother Anfim for forty years.

59. The Bible is thrown once.

60. Madame Khokhlakova asked Rakitin to go to the funeral as her eye.

61. Alyosha was hiding behind the grave of starets Iov, who lived 105 years.

62. Zosima was harshly criticized for telling a monk hallucinating to take his meds if praying doesn't work.

63. Both Grushenka and Rakitin are children of deacons.

64. Samsonov is the only person that Grushenka seems to be completely and clearly sincere with.

65. Likewise, Samsonov only trusts her when it comes to counting money.

66. Samsonov has the entire first floor of his house for himself.

67. Mitya tells many of his secrets to his landlords, who are fond of him.

68. Alongside eggs and bread, Mitya grabbed and ate a piece of sausage that he "found".

69. Mitya and Perkhotin first met at the Metropolis tavern.

70. Mitya's dueling pistols are his "most prized possessions".

71. Madame Khokhlakova apparently borrows money from Miusov.

72. The brass pestle was 17 centimetres long.

73. Mitya spent exactly 300 rubles in food and alcohol in Mokroye, and it would have been 400 if Perkhotin didn't help.

74. Mitya gave a glass of champagne to a kid.

75. The owner of Plotnikov's shop is called Varvara Alexeievna.

76. Two thousand villagers live in Mokroye.

77. Trifon Borissovich makes his younger daughters clean up the messes of every guest of the inn.

78. Pan Wroblewski is 190cm / 6'2 tall.

79. Madame Khokhlakova gets a migraine whenever she has to talk to Mitya.

80. The ispravnik's elder granddaughter is called Olga, and the night of the murder was her birthday.

81. The prosecutor's wife seems very interested in sending for Mitya often, for reasons he doesn't know.

82. Mitya does not know that the epidermis is the outer layer of the skin.

83. Nikolay Parfenovich is the only person in the world who trusts Ippolit Kirillovich.

84. Mitya often dreams that a person that he fears is chasing him and searching for him.

85. Nikolay Parfenovich wears a smoky topaz ring on his middle finger.

86. Pan Wroblewski is a dentist without a license.

87. Kalganov had visited Grushenka once before, but she seemed to dislike him for some reason.

88. Kolya's father died when he was a little baby.

89. There was a plot going on in the background about the doctor's maid having a child out of wedlock.

90. Rakitin often talks with Kolya. Seems like the only person who takes his ideas seriously is a literal child.

91. Smerdyakov and Ilyusha met and talked to each other.

92. Alyosha rarely gets colds.

93. Katerina befriended Snegiryov's sick wife.

94. Kolya was taken to a judge for teaching a guy how to efficiently crack the neck of a goose.

95. Kolya is against women's rights.

96. Mitya and Grushenka spent five weeks secluded and away from each other after the arrest.

97. Grushenka went to see Grigory to try to convince him that the door wasn't open.

98. Rakitin made up in an article that Madame Khokhlakova offered Mitya 3k rubles to run away with her.

99. Madame Khokhlakova doesn't remember Rakitin's patronymic, and calls him "Ivanovich" instead of "Osipovich".

100. Madame Khokhlakova didn't know of the judicial system reform until two days before the trial.

101. Lise sent chocolates to Mitya in jail, even though there's no reference to them ever interacting before.

102. Alyosha has had the same dream about the devils that Lise has.

103. Alyosha is friends with the jail inspector, who often discusses the gospels with him.

104. Mitya spent two entire nights awake since he discovered ethics.

105. Ivan cleans his own room.

106. Smerdyakov shared a hospital room with an agonizing dropsy patient.

107. Mitya's letter had the bill on the other side.

108. Smerdyakov uses garters with his stockings.

109. There is an apple tree in Fyodor's garden.

110. One of Ivan's "most stupid" thoughts is being the fat wife of a merchant.

111. Ivan had a friend named Korovkin when he was 17, the one he told the story of the quadrillion kilometres to.

112. Ivan has another poem named Geological Cataclysm.

113. Alyosha was the first person the distraught Marya Kondratievna ran to.

114. Ivan is mistaken for "the eldest son" twice in the trial.

115. Grigory did not remember he was in 1866.

116. Rakitin knows "every detail" of the biography of Fyodor Pavlovich and all the Karamazovs.

117. Grushenka's surname, Svetlova, means "light".

118. Mitya once dropped 100 rubles while he was drunk.

119. Ivan saw not just the Devil, but people who had died while he walked in the street.

120. Ippolit Kirillovich died nine months after the trial, the first and last day he received applauses.

121. Marfa is dismissed as a suspect simply because they can't imagine her killing.

122. There is a partition wall in Mitya's lodgings.

123. Mitya mostly stopped staring at the floor during the prosecutor's speech whenever Grushenka was mentioned.

124. Fetyukovich bends forward in an unnerving manner when he speaks.

125. An 18 year old street vendor committed axe murder earlier that year.

126. The verdict was given past 1AM, making the trial last almost 16 hours.

127. Katerina kept the sick Ivan in her house knowing it could possibly be harmful to her reputation.

128. Rakitin tried to sneak in to see Mitya in the hospital twice.

129. Lise sent the flowers that adorn Ilyusha's coffin, and Katerina paid for the grave.

130. Snegiryov cries seeing his late son's little boots the same way one of the women at the monastery in the beginning of the book did.

131. At the end, Alyosha mentions "leaving the city for a long time" soon. Where to? We don't know.

If you read this far down, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing all of these down.

#the brothers karamazov #fyodor dostoyevsky #I had made a thread on twt about this but decided to post it all at once on tumblr

39 notes · View notes

fedyaplushie · 3 days

Text

an analysis of the fyodor breakdown scene—the truth, an act, or something else entirely?

warning: !!minor spoilers for the brothers karamazov!!

To believe Fyodor is an honest person is the way of the fool, but to mistrust every word he says and view them as lies will not put you in a better position, either.

By dismissing every dialogue of his, you are still, in a way, putting trust in him. Putting trust in the fact that he is a liar. And thus, you may miss out on important, vital information.

He could be hiding some specks of truth in his words, in his actions, and you will never know, because you already marked him as a liar. Yet he is most definitely not a truthful person, either.

So, it is hard to know... when is he lying? When is he telling the truth? When is he leading us to believe that a truth he told is actually a lie?

With Fyodor, it is very difficult to tell, and one of the moments that proves this the most, is the infamous Fyodor breakdown scene from Chapter 108.

Many people have already discussed the Fyodor breakdown scene which has led the fandom to two major conclusions: either he is genuinely being plagued by a second personality (be it via possession or otherwise), or the entire scene was an act, as Fyodor himself claimed.

I myself have thought about this scene many times, and even wrote up my own thread, in which I discussed the possibility of Fyodor suffering from a real mental breakdown after seeing the note, and then quickly coming up with a bullshit lie of having a second personality to throw Sigma off-guard and claim the upper hand, which he was in need of after showing such a vulnerable side to one of his enemies.

As of right now, I have not yet discarded that possibility, for I want to remain open-minded, no matter what curveballs Asagiri may throw at us. However, I wanted to consider other options, too. We always talk about whether Fyodor was acting or not, but what if there's more to it?

Let's break down the scene:

Sigma shows Fyodor, while holding him at gunpoint, the note he found on the ground of the Meursault hallways, the one which has the Russian translation for "help me" written on it.

Fyodor inspects the note before suddenly scooting back and screaming, leaving Sigma confused. He keeps muttering "help me" to himself, continues screaming, until he goes silent, waits a few short seconds, quickly shoots up and asks Sigma, "What year is it?"

The inclusion of that question has definitely rung alarm bells after recent chapters have revealed that Fyodor may or may not be much older than any other mortal human being—it is at least fair to assume that he was somehow alive centuries ago, if his memories are to be believed.

However, I'm much more interested in what happens next...

He speaks of a demon. The demon that is his ability, the ability that took over him due to his own weakness. He switches from using "him," to refer to the demon, to "I," implying that the demon is a part of himself.

Some have taken this to mean that he is possessed in one way or another (especially with the most recent chapters), but I would like to offer up a different interpretation.

Let's assume the entire scenario was genuine... I am not able to answer who may have written the note or why a Russian "help me" would be enough to trigger Fyodor, but let's assume it did, and his breakdown was real.

My thought was, what if this entire spiel with Sigma came as a result of his own mind?

He has allegedly lived for a long time, seeing himself as a servant of God in his quest to bring humanity to the promised land. Living so long, following such a goal so strictly, would have a toll on one's mind, no? We don't know what Fyodor was like before his ability and/or his immortality manifested, so who's to say that serving such an abstract goal for such a long time wouldn't cause one to have a distorted sense of self?

Moments ago, he was screaming and curled up on the floor. It wouldn't be unlikely that such a moment of mental vulnerability would cause his more distorted sense of self to show itself. Especially when one considers that he asked Sigma what year it was the moment he calmed down, he was clearly quite confused over his surroundings.

So, my conclusion was, that the one he calls a "demon" could simply be referring to the parts of himself that his inner self, deeply buried within, despises, or, maybe more accurately, fears the most. Someone whom he can mentally shift the blame onto, speaking of the demon and his ability as if they were one and the same. If the manifestation of his ability (which many believe is what is causing him to be potentially immortal) was what originally caused him to think that he must have been chosen to fulfill some grand quest, then that makes it all the more likely.

In short, with this interpretation, I do not believe he is possessed. I don't think he has a second personality, either. Both the demon/ability and Fyodor himself are parts of Fyodor, with this scene giving insight into what he truly thinks of himself—a feeble being who was easily overcome by his weakness, and the temptation of his ability and viewing himself as a servant of God.

And then there's the part with the Sword Kladenets (if we're to assume that he was telling the truth about their holiness and that the part about it being a simple guard's knife was a lie), where he asks Sigma to kill him, which is a whole other aspect to consider, if my interpretation is correct...

The one thing that throws me off is how quickly Fyodor came back from all of this, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he could easily overcome such vulnerable states and act as if it was nothing. We're talking about Fyodor, after all.

Now, I've held this interpretation for quite a few months now, yet I waited until now to bring it up. Why? Simply because my interpretation had no basis. There was, as far as I was aware, nothing to back my thoughts up, and I didn't want to talk about something I myself barely believed in. This interpretation was solely an idea, maybe a gut feeling, but it was never solid in any way.

Until very recently, when a friend of mine texted me to talk about a scene in The Brothers Karamazov... the scene where Ivan Karamazov speaks with the devil. And the scene which Asagiri himself has stated served as an inspiration for Fyodor's character.

Yet that scene is not Ivan's first encounter with the 'devil.' He strongly implies throughout the book that he has had multiple encounters with "him," yet it is not until that very scene—the scene Asagiri which was referring to—until we, as readers, are able to experience it ourselves, through his—Ivan's—lens.

In this scene, Ivan experiences a hallucination as a result of his illness (delirium tremens)... a hallucination where the devil is speaking with him.

The "devil"—whom Ivan acknowledges as an embodiment of his own "thoughts and emotions, though only those that are most loathsome and stupid."

Sound familiar?

Well, I could go on and on about the "Ivan speaks with the Devil" scene and how well it fits into my interpretation of Fyodor's breakdown scene, but this analysis is already quite long, so I may save that for another day...

But I believe I have reached my point—that my interpretation, which I developed solely through gut feeling and creativity, sounds eerily similar to what Ivan experiences, especially in the scene we are privy to... the scene which, once again, has been confirmed by Asagiri to have served as an inspiration for Fyodor's character.

Yet, despite this, I am not entirely convinced, though definitely more than I was before.

While my interpretation may be correct, it's also possible that Asagiri is pulling an UNO Reverse Card and that, while the BSD scene truly could be inspired by the TBK scene, Fyodor was only using the mention of a demon as a lie to throw Sigma off, while in Ivan's case, it was 'genuine.' It is also entirely possible that Fyodor did have a talk with the devil—a.k.a. the part of himself he loathes the most—at some point in the past, and used that experience to make his lie more convincing. Who knows, maybe I'm looking into this way too much and those two scenes have no relation to each other, whatsoever!

"People are quick to believe they are thinking of their own free will. [...] we trust that everything we discover is valuable. We're loath to believe that our thoughts are being controlled."

And thus, we start looking for meaning in panels and dialogue that are either red herrings or don't even have any meaning at all... I am wary of that. Which is why I have elected to stay open-minded, instead of believing in only "one true theory."

But I still want to have some faith in my interpretation and that is why I am sharing it with you. Even if I end up being wrong, I am happy to be able to share my thoughts!

(Forgive me, if I am not the first one to share this idea. Due to spoiler warnings, I have avoided any Fyodor analysis posts, that contain TBK in any way, therefore, I am unaware of the content of said posts.)

Thank you so much for reading this far! I appreciate it!

Shout-out to @/xKolyaMxxx (Twitter) for giving me the motivation to write this analysis by sharing and discussing a similar idea with me!

Huge thanks to @creantzy for making me aware of the content of the TBK scene, for sharing photos of the English translation of the book, and, most of all, for discussing this topic with me, and helping me out a lot!

#bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd fyodor #fyodor dostoevsky #fyodor dostoevsky bsd #fyodor dostoyevsky #fyodor dostoyevsky bsd #the brothers karamazov #ivan karamazov #long post

16 notes · View notes