Why does smerdyakov kill fyodor

Finally, Smerdyakov may simply feel a desire to do evil. A page novel is something of a commitment, but I approached this one with an open mind and a daily subway commute. When the novel ends, Ivan is feverish and unconscious, having been taken home by Katerina to recuperate, and his future is uncertain. Although Dostoevsky began his first notes for The Brothers Karamazov in April , the novel incorporated elements and themes from an earlier unfinished project he had begun in entitled The Life of a Great Sinner.

Though Dmitri longs to be redeemed by suffering, and has, in a sense, accepted the idea of his punishment, he agrees to the escape plan so that he will be able to remain with Grushenka. He will have to flee to America, but he says he will not spend his entire life away from Russia. One day, he will return. Dostoevsky was intimately familiar with two major philosophies: that of Orthodox Christianity and of Utopian Socialism.

Each had its own specific and finely tuned understanding and justification of suffering, and each prescribed its own remedy. Why are Russian novels so long? Because they are just a part of Russian literature, and apparently a few really high-educated and turns out, emotional people nnot alive for some years simply decided non-Russians should read these works.

Many people might say that Russian music seems so sad to us because we are native speakers of this language. But people who say things like that are actually a little bit wrong.

Russia is known all over the world for its thinkers and artists, including writers like Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and ballet dancers like Rudolf Nureyev. You should read not one book but books: Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Both novels are among the best works of literature in the history.

If War and Peace too long for you, read just Anna Karenina. Recalling Durkheim, his would be a practical suicide, perhaps even fatalistic. Prison would not drive him to suicide but seeing no point to life would.

All of his writings and stated beliefs, however, are hypocritical. So from both sides, then, people claimed Ivan for their own beliefs. Why are you taking it so seriously? Furthermore, Ivan is also caught between innocence and guilt. This might be seen as a perversion of the elder-novice relationship explained at the beginning of the novel: the novice, in seeking the freedom of obedience, gives his will to the elder.

Thus, he is able to lead a freer existence unburdened by his selfish wants To resolve the issue of duality, Smerdyakov the tool completes the entire cycle by killing himself. In his own suicide, he relieves his unwitting elder, Ivan, from the same fate—and so releases him. Ivan, however, does not go unpunished, for he descends into madness, argues with devils, and thus lives out his punishment.

Smerdyakov himself is perhaps the most complex case of duality and suicide in the novel, not least because he is the only one to actually commit suicide. By his very nature, he is caught between : he is the product of rape by one of the most corrupt men in Russian literature of an innocent holy fool—perhaps the only true holy fool in the novel—Stinking Lizaveta.

However, in a way that ends up being plausible for Alyosha, it is clear that it is impossible for Smerdyakov to make his two sides from each parent meet, with such stark disparity between them.

He also displays clear traits bequeathed to him from them both. Not that he was shy or ashamed of anything—no, on the contrary, he had an arrogant nature and seemed to despise everyone…. Though Smerdyakov does not outwardly seem to be overly conflicted by these two very disparate sides of himself, it is clear that he has long been ready to end the life of a father who has not recognized him as his son, and who has endowed him with such a foul nature.

Though Smerdyakov claims he was just doing as Ivan bid him to do, it is obvious that this was grossly premeditated. In killing his father, it is possible to imagine that he is killing that awful side of himself that hangs cats and implicates innocent men in murder.

Even if that is not fully the case, it seems that this murder plot has been the whole driving force of his life: with it complete, he cannot turn to his holy fool side, having used his falling sickness for evil. For him, with the murder and subsequent suicide, the circle is neatly closed. Murder is the final reconciliation between his identities, having corrupted his innocent side in the deed.

Suicide, for all four brothers, serves as a possible reconciliation between disparate identities, between righteous and ruinous paths; between pride and shame; between hypocritical statements and their truthful roots; between innocence and guilt; and between legacies from polar-opposite parents.

For Dostoevsky, what is most important is suicide and madness as a method of atheism: what saves Alyosha and Mitya is their reconciliation with God, and what condemns Ivan to madness and Smerdyakov to death is distance from God and perhaps literal closeness to their devils. Moreover, Durkheim explicates several types of suicide, each of which may be seen as a separate method for one of the Karamazov brothers. Britlinger, Angela, and Ilya Vinitsky. Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture.

University of Toronto Press: Toronto. Dostoevsky, Fyodor M. Pevear, Richard, and Larissa Volokhonsky. The Brothers Karamazov. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, Morrissey, Susan K.

Paperno, Irina. Cornell University Press: Petersburg is dedicated to drawing a picture of the great Russian writer as a person with a focus on his work habits, on his concerns, and particularly on his family life. The first thing that came to mind was that Smerdyakov killed himself out of ambition and malice, as if he wanted Ivan to find himself alone and realize he was the only real murderer at least the only one still alive. I thought he made a purpose out of playing this prank on Ivan, a purpose he thought was worth dying for.

Maybe he felt like he lacked value, he was indifferent to life, but nonetheless he was angry at the privileges his brothers had. So he decided to show his brother he's no better, and then give his life away just like returning his ticket to God. Again, by actually returning the ticket he was able to do what Ivan only dreamed of having the strength for. Or maybe he didn't believe in God at all, but still wanted to show Ivan he's braver and could do the things Ivan was afraid of even admitting.

Anyways, I feel like it all revolves around Ivan, even the murder. Smerdyakov was obsessed with Ivan's opinion of him. I want to know what everybody else thought of Smerdyakov's suicide, I'm really excited to learn about how other readers understood this scene.

I agree with your take. Smerdyakov could only get out of Ivan's shadow by doing what Ivan couldn't, but since his existence was defined by his detestation of Ivan, he had nothing left to live for. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more.