Brothers Karamazov

To start off this year of reading I will tell about Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I really started it in December but I finished the majority of it in January. Plus I want people to know that I read such a long and challenging book.

I liked this book to a point. The first third is really good because it brings out philosophy of the author while telling the story. The next third goes more just into the story. Which you know what happens in the story within the first few chapters. The patriach of the Karamazovs is supposedly killed by one of his sons. So the book deals a lot with the horror of patricide but the last third deals with the mystery of whether or not the son actually killed his father. He denies it of course but can he be believed since he is such a scoundrel and has pretty much said that he has wanted to kill his father.

Like I said I like the first third the best. It talks a lot about how society pretends to hate violence but really they create it in order to make their lives more interesting. Which I think is so true. Personally I myself abhor violence but how many times do I want to see the gruesomeness of a car accident or like to watch action movies. I don't want to be apart of the violence except to the point of being able to witness it.

My one other gripe about the book is that sometimes it veers a little to tell a story that doesn't really have anything to do with the main plot. So once you finally get into the story it pulls away (yes building suspense but not every effectively) to something else introducing new characters and so by the time you rejoin the main narrative you have to contemplate what the point of that was.

Here are some of my favorite passages. There were a lot dealing with religion but too many to get into or explain. So these just deal with the ways of man. And they are rather long as well so bear with me.

"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself as well as for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal, in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying---lying to others and to yourself. A man who lies to himself, for instance, can take offense whenever he wishes, for there are times when it is rather pleasant to feel wronged--don't you agree? So a man may know very well that no one has offended him, and may invent an offense, lie just for the beauty of it, or exaggerate what someone said to create a situation, making a mountain out of a molehill. And although he is well aware of it himself, he nevertheless does feel offended because he enjoys doing so, derives great pleasure from it, and so he comes to feel real hostility toward the imaginary offender..."

"Today everyone asserts his own personality and strives to live a full life as an individual. But these efforts lead not to a full life, but to suicide, because, instead of realizing his personality, man slips into total isolation. For in our age mankind has been broken up into self-contained individuals, each of whom retreats into his lair, trying to stay away from the rest, hiding himself and his belongings from the rest of mankind, and finally isolating himself from people and people from him. And, while accumulates material wealth in his isolation, he thinks with satisfaction how mighty and secure he has become, because he is mad and cannot see that the more goods he accumulates, the deeper he sinks into suicidal impotence. The reason for this is that he has become accustomed to relying only on himself; he has split off from the whole and become an isolated unit; he has trained his soul not to rely on human help, not to belive in men and mankind, and only to worry that the wealth and privileges he as accumulated may get lost. Everywhere men are turning scornfully away from the truth that the security of the individual cannot be achievd by his isolated efforts but only by mankind as a whole."

"And what we must fear above all is our growing general tolerance of crime, rather than this or that criminal act committed by an individual. What is the reason for our indifference, for our strangely mild reaction to certain crimes that are the signs of the times and that promise us an extremely unenviable future? Are we to look for it in our cynicism or in the premature exhaustion of the intellect and the imagination of our still very young, yet already decrepit, society? Does it lie in the weakening of our moral principles or simply, perhaps, in a lack of such principles? I cannot answer these questions, disturbing though they are. I can only say that every citizen out--indeed, must--concern himself with them."

"But now we are either horrified at what we see or we pretend we are horrified, while in reality we relish the spectacle, as connoisseurs of strong and eccentric sensations that rouse us from our cynical and lazy apathy; or else we are like children who wave off frightening apparitions, bury their faces in their pillows, and wait until the frightening phantoms are gone, so that they can quickly forget them in their games and cheerful laughter. But there comes a moment when we, too, must face our reality soberly and thoughtfully, examine both ourselves and our society, and try to understand the problems facing this society of ours, or at least come to grips with those problems."