Nature of the crime in The Karamazov BrothersSay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essay The central act of The Brothers Karamazov is the murder of Father Fyodor Karamazov. As such, the novel could be considered a detective story whose aim is to discover who committed the heinous act of parricide. However, at the heart of any crime story are three important elements: first, the process of discovering who carried out the crime, the whodunit part; secondly, it is a question of determining what this individual is responsible or guilty for; and third, verification that the crime was committed according to the free will of the individual. This novel, however, does not fulfill any of the three elements of the traditional detective story. Instead, Dostoyevsky sets out to write in The Brothers Karamazov a crime in which more than one person is guilty, but where it is also unclear what each person is guilty of; it is a story that examines the hypothesis of free will and the implication this has on our judgment of crime. While the story begins with Ivan's theory that "if there is no immortality of the soul, then... everything is lawful" (90), it eventually swings to the other extreme : “everyone is truly responsible towards all men and for all men. and for everything” (328). However, Dostoyevsky, through the novel's indeterminate ending, rejects these two extremes and suggests that the real nature of crime and guilt lies somewhere between two theories. The first element of crime that Dostoyevsky examines and rejects is the traditional "whodunnit" part of a detective story, that is, the idea that there must be a single person who caused and carried out the crime. . However, in The Brothers Karamazov, the line between the guilty and the innocent is not so easy to draw. It is true that there is a trial in which Dmitri Karamazov, the older brother, is accused and found guilty of the father's murder. Although all the evidence seems to point otherwise, it turns out, as Dmitri has always proclaimed, that he "is innocent of [his] father's blood" (870). The real murderer is Fyodor Karamazov's illegitimate son, Smerdyakov, who confesses to Ivan that "I killed him" (725) and shows him the three thousand rubles he also stole. At this point, a traditional murder mystery would have been solved. Smerdyakov is the killer and the culprit of the crime. However, in this story, the murderer sincerely maintains his innocence. Smerdyakov said to Ivan: “You are the murderer! I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was by following your words that I did it” (721). Smerdyakov was inspired by Ivan's theory that "everything is permitted" (730) without God, and believed that Ivan "wanted [him] to do it and left [to Chermashnya] knowing all this" (725). Suddenly, what seems like a simple murder mystery becomes much more complicated. Who is responsible for the crime? Dmitri confessed at one point that he “intended to kill [his father], and perhaps I really could have killed him” (590). Ivan eventually accepts his implicit guilt in the crime, because “if [Smerdyakov] is the murderer… then I am the murderer too” (714). Indeed, the whole town wanted and rejoiced at Fyodor's death, as Lise points out, “everyone likes that he killed your father” (673). Dmitri was the one convicted of the crime at trial, but in a way, isn't everyone partly guilty? Everyone wanted old Karamazov dead – is it so important who did the physical act? If everyone is guilty to some extent, this raises thequestion of knowing exactly what each person is guilty of. Is Dmitri guilty of the same thing as Smerdyakov or Ivan? Obviously, Smerdyakov is guilty of physically committing the murder, but he did it because he thought he was following Ivan's orders. But what exactly is Ivan guilty of? To have a philosophy according to which “anything is permitted if there is no God”? Smerdyakov tells Ivan that by going to Chermashnya "for no reason, simply on [his] word, it shows that you had to expect something from me" (712). But is Ivan guilty of simply leaving the city at Smerdyakov's request? This murder demonstrates that it is difficult, if not impossible, to attribute responsibility for a crime to someone. Everyone's actions are so intertwined with those of others and influenced by so many factors that it makes no sense to say that one person is responsible for the murder. Dmitri, although he did not physically kill his father, decides that he is also guilty after having a dream in which babies cry from hunger and cold. Dmitri asks “why is the baby poor?” » (657) and accepts that “it is for this baby that I am going to Siberia. I'm not a murderer, but I have to go to Siberia! (657). Dmitri thinks he is somehow responsible for other people's suffering. Here he rejects Ivan's philosophy – that if everything is permitted, then no one can be guilty or responsible for anything – instead, Dmitri embraces a concept of shared responsibility that arises from the belief that we We are all interconnected and our actions impact many others. This is a philosophy advocated by Father Zossima who believes that “everyone is truly responsible towards all men and for all men and for everything” (328). As the moral compass of the novel, Father Zossima seems to tell us that we are all implicated in the injustice of this world. However, another way of saying that we are all responsible for everything is that each of us is responsible for nothing. In other words, Father Zossima's theory removes the individuality of crime and guilt – if we are already responsible for "everything", then where is the responsibility of the one who commits a crime? Thus, we can see that Father Zossima's and Ivan's theories are actually two sides of the same coin – both acquit the individual of responsibility for the crime. For a person to be guilty of a crime, they must commit that crime according to their free will, but the concept of free will is attacked several times in The Brothers Karamazov. Most famously, Ivan, in his story of the Grand Inquisitor, states that “nothing has ever been more intolerable to a man and a human society than freedom” (286). Humans need bread and material security, instead of free will and the burden that comes with the autonomous exercise of their minds and judgment. Ivan believes that we are all weighed down by "the fearful burden of free choice" (289) and are looking for someone to take that burden off us and want to "[be] led like sheep again" (292). “All that man seeks on earth,” according to Ivan, is “someone to worship, someone to guard his conscience and…universal unity” (293). Thus, for Ivan, submission and obedience to a higher authority is the ideal antithesis to the burden of free choice. However, not only Ivan, but also Father Zossime also advocates the rejection of individual autonomy in favor of obedience to a higher authority - this is what the system of elders is based on. An elder is someone “who inserts your soul, your will, into his soul and his will” (27). When you choose your elder, you "renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete.?