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The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. Dostoyevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel. Since its publication, it has been acclaimed all... More

The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. Dostoyevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel. Since its publication, it has been acclaimed all over the world by thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Cormac McCarthy, Kurt Vonnegut, Peter Kreeft and Pope Benedict XVI as one of the supreme achievements in literature.
Dostoyevsky began his first notes for The Brothers Karamazov in April 1878. Several influences can be gleaned from the earliest stages of the novel's genesis. He was very affected by the Russian philosopher and thinker Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov.[citation needed] Fyodorov advocated a Christianity in which human redemption and resurrection could occur on earth through sons redeeming the sins of their fathers to create human unity through a universal family. The tragedy of patricide in this novel becomes more poignant when seen as a reversal of this ideology. The brothers in the story do not resurrect their father but instead are complicit in his murder, which Dostoyevsky expresses as complete human disunity.

Though Dostoyevsky was influenced by religion and philosophy in his life and the writing of The Brothers Karamazov, a personal tragedy altered the work. In May 1878, Dostoyevsky's three-year-old son Alyosha died of epilepsy, a condition inherited from his father. The novelist's grief is apparent throughout the book; Dostoyevsky named the hero Alyosha, as well as imbuing him with qualities which he sought and most admired. His loss is also reflected in the story of Captain Snegiryov and his young son Ilyusha.

Another experience led to his choosing patricide to dominate the external action of the novel. In the 1850s, while serving his sentence in Omsk, he met three brothers that represented the perfect fraternal union in expiation. They had committed a crime obeying the order of the firstborn, Alei, whose innocence and sweetness captivated the novelist from the first moment he met him.

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