The Brothers Karamazov

As I knew very well when getting into Fyodor Dostoevsky, this book has a lot to it, I definitely recommend using some free study along guides and or take notes if you really want to retain stuff. But trust me it’s not a big deal if you don’t, you will definitely feel a pull to his work and desire to pick it back up. This will be a book I’ll come back to for the rest of my life, I can already tell! It’s got so much to it, and I’m not sure if I’m giving myself up here or not but it’s even got parts that had me cracking up. I love this book, ugh! So real, so modern still somehow in the humorous aspects despite the setting and time period, so deep but still light enough. Just UGH!!!

Definitely worth the time and energy to read! And as someone who isn’t religious I think it’s got a ton of things we can still apply to life. (For me when it talks about god, good and hope I just see them all as hope really for love to prevail in the world one day. And believing in humanity one person at a time to hopefully come round to goodness that’s in them.)

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Love rant:

I love his ability to make the characters all really human and super relatable. I also enjoy how he does make yoh sort of understand and like everyone a bit regardless of what plot tool they serve as, a fav thing of mine when writers don’t stick to the black and white archetypes. They feel like your watching them, like real humans living this out when reading and you can relate to so much in them and this humanness in any given moment struggles with.

The eternal fight between “good” and “bad”, “holy” or “inane” lives. Are we born to “sin” — once on the path to one can we ever change? Is there anything truly to even change if we are inherently destined for something? Or are we even fated for anything or just jostling about on this rock floating in space in some half-hazed dreamy dazed dance of chaos until death?

Welp, no one really knows but his writing explores all those wonderings! Those secret human thoughts and feelings we all grapple with. More than this, he still leaves most hopeful in something “good” even in the midst of coming to rub elbows for such a long while while reading, with such “bad”characters doing such unsettling things.

Like one of my favorite books (The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt) says, “Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?”

The full scene, alone, is worth reading the entire book for imho. Lol anyways enjoy your read and your existentialist spiraling, I’m sure it’ll bring you round to a great deal of good.