Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Crime and Justice
In the context of the novel’s larger exploration of sin,
redemption, and justice, a major motif in the novel is the idea
of crime and criminal justice. The crimes portrayed in the novel
are also sins, or crimes against God, and the novel presents them
in such a way as to suggest that human beings are not capable of
passing judgment on one another. The only true judge, as we see
in the aftermath of Dmitri’s wrongful conviction, is the conscience.
Images of criminal justice in the novel occur most prominently in
the debate between Ivan and the monks about ecclesiastical courts,
in the story of the Grand Inquisitor, and in Dmitri’s arrest, imprisonment,
and trial.
Redemption Through Suffering
A central part of Dostoevsky’s exploration of spiritual
redemption is the idea that self-knowledge is necessary for a person
to be redeemed. As Zosima explains in Book I, only when a man knows himself
and faces himself honestly can he come to love others and love God.
The principal way to arrive at that self-knowledge is through suffering.
Suffering can occur either through the grief and guilt of sin, or,
as in the case of Grushenka and Ivan, through the agony of illnesses
that are metaphors for spiritual conditions. Apart from the sufferings
of Grushenka and Ivan, the other major embodiment of this motif
in the novel is Dmitri, who suffers through the misery of realizing
his own evil before he can embrace his goodness. When Lise willfully
slams her fingers in the door, she provides another, bitterly ironic
instance of the motif. Lise wants to punish herself for being wicked,
but her idea of suffering is so shallow, vain, and ridiculous that
it is not really a serious attempt at redemption.
The Profound Gesture
Although The Brothers Karamazov is fundamentally
an exploration of religious faith, the novel supports the idea that
the choice to believe in God cannot be fully explained in rational
terms. Profound, inexplicable gestures often take the place of argumentative dialogue.
These gestures defy explanation, but convey a poetic sense of the
qualities that make faith necessary and satisfying for the human
soul. Examples of these profound, enigmatic gestures include Zosima
kneeling before Dmitri in Book I, Christ kissing the Grand Inquisitor
in Book V, Alyosha kissing Ivan in the same book, Zosima embracing
the Earth just before he dies in Book VI, and Alyosha kissing the
ground after his dream in Book VII. Each of these gestures can only
be partially explained. Zosima, for example, kneels before Dmitri
to acknowledge the suffering Dmitri will face. But none of these
gestures can be fully explained, and their ambiguity is a way of
challenging the rational paradigm that Ivan embraces.
