Final Paper

Ivan’s Human Condition.

The idea of God haunts Dostoevsky’s classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Although this book is often read as a murder mystery novel, when read this way the majesty of the story is often missed. Dostoevsky wrote the story in this style to keep a captive audience while he allowed his characters to flush out religious and societal issues, including idea of theodicy, and justify a God who allows the torture of the innocents. Throughout the novel, readers might perceive these themes, but they take center stage in book five, Pro and Contra, where Ivan talks to Alexey about theodicy, the Church, and God. The conversations between these two men divulge some of the greatest arguments against the Church and God’s “world” that have ever been conceived. Oftentimes, these arguments are falsely thought to have come from extended hours of logical thought. In fact, Ivan’s arguments do not stem from deep contemplation, but rather from his “vicious mole of nature.” Ivan, along with Dmitri and Alexey, is infected by a raging sensuality that controls his every decision. Only in Ivan, however, does this sensualism take form in argument; in the other two brothers, actions are determined by this vice. Ivan’s thought process is never fully understood unless it is seen less as logic and more as a chain of passionate thought driven by the “Karamazov curse.”

            Ivan argues against God because he is in a war with him, a war in which he searches for the answers to the world and his life story. In Ivan’s eyes, God has abandoned him from the time he was a child. “At ten years old Ivan had realized that they were living not at their own home but rather on other peoples charity, and their father a man of whom was to disgraceful to speak” (8). From a very early age, Ivan realized he was different; he never accepted the loving care others bestowed upon him. Throughout his childhood, an image of an orphan plagued Ivan, stirring in him ideas involving God’s torment on the earth. Ivan struggles to justify his unhappy fortune of a parentless childhood. "Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end... but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature ... And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears.” (222)  In God’s creation of the world Ivan, and every other tortured child, was the sacrifice that had to be made in order to ensure the success of mandkind. This is not an idea yielded by hours of contemplation, but rather a burning pain that seared in Ivan throughout his life. Ivan feels God is not a creator but rather a torturer, and God chose Ivan out of all the children in the world to spitefully target. Ivan’s pure brilliance and raw hatred allow him to conceive an argument that justifies his loathing for the world. In refusing to accept his torturous fate, Ivan began to question not only God’s creations, but also every faction that man created for the worship of God.

            To Ivan, man is the reason God has failed; man is the great implementer of torment and injustice. "I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness." In man’s creation of entities that are pure evil, he is able to justify to himself and why mankind always must struggle to suppress the desire to do evil.  Ivan formulates this idea because Ivan, along with the rest of humanity, also must try to resist the impulse to do terrible things. “ The formula all is Lawful I won’t renounce” (244). Ivan supports the theory that everything any man does is lawful because he, too wants to take advantage of this principle. Ivan is governed solely by his emotions; this allows him to validate his actions and ward off remorse. Ivan’s emotional drive forces him to rationalize his dark thoughts, but this is not enough; he must also understand why the Church exists to taint this darker side of humanity.

To Ivan, the Church seems to refute all unjustified acts. This irks Ivan because he does not adhere to a higher moral standard; instead he follows a standard he sets for himself. Since the Church counters Ivan’s view of the world and morality, he must find a way to ruin the Church in order to prove his morality is more justified than that of the bible. “We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children… They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear as chicks to the hen” (239-240). Ivan attempts to portray how the Church is based on power, and that its primary goal is to control all of humanity. In this, he confirms the Church is the most immoral of all entities. Ivan’s proxy preaches of how the Church would kill Jesus so they could keep the power in the hands of the Church. Jesus teaches people to take freedom, not bread, and therefore the church cannot have Jesus alive because they preach bread, not freedom (238). The Church wants to control the world in order to promote its own moral standard, but to do this the Church must enslave the world. Ivan cannot stand for this because he has to set and follow his own course; a course that will allow his sensualism to reign over every cell of his being. Ivan disproves the church’s morality in order to confirm that all humans, himself included, are the cruelest of all animals, and that anything created by humans must be equally cruel  (221).

The curse of being a Karamazov controls the entirety of Ivan’s thought process. Ivan most undergo mental gymnastics so he might find a way to prove this taint is not only bestowed upon him, but all members of humanity. He must demonstrate how even the most pure of all of humans creations are flawed. The world could have not been created by God, too much turmoil occurs on Earth. Ivan shows the world that only deep contemplation allows the justification of an inescapable inherent condition. Unfortunately, Ivan never can prove he is correct; he is not representative of the entire human population, he is only representative of himself. Ivan’s desperate validations do not validate a human condition, only a Karamazavian taint.