CHARACTERIZATION Essay Example For Students

CHARACTERIZATION Essay The main characters of Dostoevskys novel The Brothers Karamazov are, as the title suggests, the members of the Karamazov family, if it can indeed be called such. The only things that the members of this family share are a name and the Karamazov curse, a legacy of base impulses and voluptuous lust. References to this tendency towards immorality are sprinkled heavily throughout the novel; phrases such as a brazen brow and a Karamazov conscience, voluptuary streak, and Karamazovian baseness abound. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the father of the brothers Karamazov, is the embodiment and the source of this immorality. In him Dostoevsky creates such perversity and depravity that one can feel no positive emotions for the man. His physical appearancehe is flabby with small, suspicious eyes and a long, cavernous mouth with puffy lips, behind which could be glimpsed small fragments of black teethaccurately reflects his foul, disgusting character. He has no respect for himself; he enjoys playing the part of the shameless buffoon for attention, even though the attention he receives is negative. Because he has no respect for himself, he can have no respect for others, either. He has no respect for women, for example; he is a despicable voluptuary, and he satisfies his lust at any cost. He drives his wife to madness by bringing women of ill-repute into their house right in front of her. Even more shockingly, he rapes a mentally retarded woman, who later dies giving birth to his illegitimat e son, Smerdyakov, who grows up as his fathers servant.Fyodor is even more blatantly disrespectful to his three legitimate children.After his wifes death, he abandons them, for they would have been a hindrance to his debaucheries. He is never a true father to any of them. When his oldest son, Dmitry, becomes an adult, Fyodor is even so cruel as to deny Dmitry his inheritance and instead use the money to seduce Grushenka, with whom his son is in love. It is Alyosha, the youngest brother, that is most successful in escaping the curse of the Karamazovs. Miraculously, he is almost the complete opposite of his father; he is an easygoing lover of mankind whom everyone likes. When the reader first meets Alyosha, he is a young monk of strong faith, a disciple of the Elder Zosima; he is the embodiment of Zosimas teachings that one must love man unconditionally and not condemn mans actions. Indeed, Alyosha treats everyone he meets with respect and love, and consequently everyone responds to h im in the same way. He tolerates anything without censure, even the filthy lewdness of his father. As a result, even his father grows to be sincerely fond of him.Alyosha plays the role of the mediator in the novel. Dostoevsky deliberately creates Alyosha as a static character who undergoes few changes, and, therefore, he is the stable, solid character around whom the conflicts of the novel unfold. He moves in and out of these various conflicts and attempts to ameliorate the existing tensions and solve the problems. And, indeed, the other characters open up to him and trust him because of his refusal to judge them and their actions. Alyosha is not a Christ figure, however, nor is he a mere holy fool. He is, in fact, a real Karamazov , and he has more credibility as a mediator because as a Karamazov, he knows and understands the lowest depths of the soul. The ability that he has to understand the depravity inherent in man gives him, and therefore the reader, great insights into the personalities and motives of the other characters. For example, it is Alyosha that guesses that Katerina Ivanovna does not truly love Dmitry, and that she acts out this false love only so that she can, out of pride, observe her heroic sacrifice of faithfulness and reproach Dmitry for his unfaithfulness. Dostoevsky uses Alyoshas insights into the minds of others as a unique way by which to develop his characters. Ivan, the second youngest of the brothers, is much different from both Fyodor and Alyosha. Ivan is a cold and haughty yet brilliant man incapable of forming lasting relationships with anyone; his intellect is the only thing he values. He rarely talks to anyone about anything but his ideas; he is, as Dostoevsky describes him, a man who needs nothing but the resolution of his ideas. As Dostoevsky develops Ivans character, however, one sees that it is his intellect, the very thing that he most prizes, that is the cause of anguish and eventual madness. Ivan, unlike Alyosha, does change in the course of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Ivan, although he is a self-proclaimed atheist, is struggling with conflicting views about God. He struggles with this interior conflict during the entire course of the novel, and his inability to resolve it causes him to slowly change from a rational, albeit confused, man to an incoherent, delirious one. At the end of the novel, at Dmitrys trial, Ivan is so deranged that he has to be dragged out of the courtroom, kicking and fighting and howling with a loud voice. After the courtroom scene Ivan immediately comes down with a severe fever, and he lays in a state of unconsciousness for the remainder of the novel. Dostoevsky ultimately leaves Ivans fate unresolved. It is Dmitry, the oldest of the brothers, that is, in a way, the central character of the novel. Dostoevsky creates in Dmitry a dual character that is the most complex of all of the major characters, and therefore the most human. Dmitry is the brother most driven by the Karamazovian virtues of unrestraint and depravity. At the same time, however, Dmitry is an honorable man capable of the noblest of impulses. This duality in character is summed up in his conflict between his reverence for his betrothed, Katerina Ivanovna, a noble, beautiful, educated girl, and his passion for Grushenka, a woman of questionable morals. Several of Dmitrys actions as well help to develop his paradoxical character. For example, when Dmitry first meets Katerina, she is in desperate need of money; Dmitrys first thought is to use money to seduce her. When Katerina comes to collect the money, however, Dmitrys sense of honor causes him to simply give her the money along with a reverential and most heartfelt bo w. Mountains EssayTHEMEOne of the major themes of The Brothers Karamazov is the idea that life without God can only lead to destruction. Dostoevsky develops the theme largely through the description of Ivans struggle between acceptance and renunciation of God; Ivan is, in fact, a representation of the Western world, which has dealt with the same struggle for centuries. Ivan believes that mans suffering and unhappiness are caused by the freedom that God gave him to choose between material objects and heavenly rewards. Most men cannot differentiate between material objects and life, however, and thus the decision torments them. Ivan, therefore, believes that man should establish a state of government akin to socialism, in which God is abolished and in which obedience and material wealth are emphasized; the government would, in other words, take away the freedom which so torments man and reinforce the belief that material wealth is, indeed, life. Dostoevsky warns, however, that a mans renunciation of God will eventually destroy him. He may be made falsely happy, for a while, but he will soon realize, as Ivan does, that without God there can be no virtue. He will both descend into madness and despair, as Ivan does, and destroy himself and others, as Smerdyakov does. Dostoevsky emphasizes that it is only those that decide to live for God, as Dmitry eventually does, that can truly be happy. Dmitrys unhappiness and despair throughout much of the novel stems from his preoccupation with material objects, especially money. It is largely because of this preoccupation that he commits the immoral actions that he does. It is only at the end of the book, when he renounces his past sins, accepts God, and begins to live for Him that he becomes truly happy. He realizes that he may now rise up in joy, for his soul has been brought from the den of thieves into the light. POINT OF VIEWThe point of view of The Brothers Karamazov is that of an impartial, omniscient narrator, a narrator that is never developed as a character in the novel. Dostoevsky uses the omniscient point of view out of necessity; for the reader to truly comprehend Dostoevskys ideas, the reader must know every characters perception of every aspect of the novel, not merely the perceptions of one character. If Dostoevsky had, for example, written the novel from the point of view of Alyosha, the novel would have lost a great deal of its meaning. The reader would not have been able to so clearly comprehend the inner conflict with which Ivan struggles, for example, and thus the reader would probably overlook one of Dostoevskys major themes. It is also important that Dostoevsky uses a first person omniscient point of viewthat is, an omniscient narratorrather than a third person omniscient point of view. Although Dostoevsky never develops his narrator, the narrator still serves to draw the reader into the novel. The narrator establishes a familiarity with the reader and puts the reader at ease. Additionally, the narrator tells the story excitedly and sometimes almost impatiently; he is constantly getting ahead of himself in his impatience to tell the story. The reader, whether he knows it or not, adopts this excitement himself, and thus becomes more eager to learn the outcome of the story. SETTING AND ATMOSPHEREDostoevsky purposely reveals little about the basic setting of the novel. He merely reveals that the story takes place in a relatively small provincial town in Russia, and he forces the reader to infer the time period in which it is set from his descriptions of historical events. Dostoevsky deliberately describes his setting vaguely in order to emphasize that the themes and ideas of the novel are so universal that they transcend time and place. Although Dostoevsky reveals almost nothing about the setting of the novel, he is still able to develop an almost tangible atmosphere of tension and tragedy through his choice of words. Dostoevsky establishes the atmosphere in the first sentence of the novel; he states that Fyodor Karamazov is to die a tragic and fishy death. He reinforces the uneasy, dire atmosphere throughout the novel with subtle yet descriptive phrases; he says several times, for example, that a catastrophe is about to occur, and that the Karamazov household reeks of foul play. The words and actions of the characters exude anxiousness and despair as well, and therefore help to contribute to the development of the tense and oppressive atmosphere. Dmitrys impassioned vows that he will kill his father, for example, serves to heighten tenseness and suspense. Similarly, the scorn inherent in all of Ivans words and actions adds to the negativity of the atmosphere. STYLEDostoevskys style is very realistic and straightforward. He almost never uses flowery or poetic language or figures of speech; his language is simple and spare, as if he tried to eliminate all that wasnt absolutely necessary. Similarly, he is unpretentious in his choice of words. He generally states things in the simplest terms possible. Contrastingly, however, his sentences are often fairly complex; despite their complexity, though, they are easy to understand and thus do not detract from his simplicity and straightforwardness. Because the book consists largely of dialogue, Dostoevsky changes his style frequently, for each of his characters has a unique style of speaking that complements his character. Dostoevsky writes Ivans dialogue, for example, in a very verbose, complex style that reinforces Ivans characterization as an intellectual. He writes Dmitrys dialogue in a very random, disjointed style that underscores Dmitrys tendency to allow his passion and his emotions to cloud his logic. Finally, he writes Alyoshas dialogue in a simple style very similar to his own, as Alyosha is himself simple and unpretentious.O