One Little Onion An Analysis of the Antithetical Moral Positions of the Virtuous Emblem and the Atheist Discourse in Dostyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

Date of Award

2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Schatz, David

Keywords

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Karamazov, Religion

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

My thesis explores the various objections and affirmations of the Christian religion as personified in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. I have chosen to approach the work from the angle of an unfiltered reader response. I seek to understand what Dostoyevsky's novel communicates to the reader and how the reader might naturally respond to the text rather than what the novel says about Dostoyevsky's personal intent. In using this method, I hope to demonstrate the ways in which Dostoyevsky draws his characters as various incarnations of a single spiritual conflict, and how, as the story unfolds, he uses the events of the novel to comment on various ideologies within the text. I begin by dissecting Ivan Karamazov's atheistic revolt against Christianity; then, in illustrating the thesis-antithesis pattern of the novel, I explore the spiritual response to Ivan's rebellion through the character Alyosha and the virtuous image. Finally I examine the eldest brother Mitya as the battlefield within which the preceding arguments and counter-arguments clash.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS