KARAMAZOV EFFECTS - PART ONE

Well surprisingly, this is not one of my ‘should have been’ anecdotes, I think it’s my way of showing (myself) that I am not actually reading something without getting personal with it, getting to know more of it than what it offers to show. But being the effect-person who gauges with impact and not exactly theoretically, I guess I’ll have to go ahead with sizing it up as it presented itself to me. A foreword, though: This is not a review or a critical analysis. I’m just describing experience and thought-process on an almost purely-personal basis.

I’m done with Part One, as of now (the book constitutes of four equally weighted parts, or somewhat so-so) and what I’m past is the introduction, familiarization of characters, a sort of bloat-up, an explanation of what’s been happening and an exquisitely underplayed disposition of what is to come, which left me guessing and wishing but not entirely sure. And ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (by Fyodor Dostoevsky) is not a suspense story, I would hardly call it suspense, because while the course of the story is pretty much laid out in front, it is just the events constituting it that provoke further read, which they do (at least in me) without the higher burden of having committing to a the idea that ‘a thing begun needs to be done’. It is not the anticipation, but the hope and empathy shared that I find is taking me ahead, in a story that has this multi-faceted edge of dealing with a lot more things than it is supposed to.

I wouldn’t go forth and call it ‘complete empathy’, actually. I doubt if it could be called ‘empathy’ at any level, it’s somewhat of a bias of an assumed character rather than of one that’s been established and carried on, and I (rightfully perhaps) find myself currently completely biased with the character of Dmitry Karamazov, the oldest son of Fyodor Karamazov, in the father-son battle for the same woman, who is (painfully) established as uncouth although a pacification of suggested innocence is intended, but yet the impression is unfavourable on her part and I slightly hate Dostoevsky for having treaded that line. But I think that’s not true, or at least I wouldn’t want to go ahead and take it to be the absolute, irrevocable truth, because I think while I go ahead and hate the author, I also hate myself for letting myself be caught in the established (am I using that word too much?) tangle of man and two women, I think that’s where I’m flawed, you know, I’m putting myself in that position and not exactly playing by what Dmitry is or is supposed to be, the detached, vengeful, angst-ridden man he is, one who digs deep into the sores on a girl than her pleasantness and punishing her for that, or at least intending to.

Alexei Karamazov was introduced (in the author’s preface) as the ‘hero’, and what do I have to say about that? Well, I’m only a quarter of my way through, and there’s a lot more to come and the youngest definitely shows prospect of being a brilliant human being, perhaps the ‘ideal self’ that I assume myself to be at times, but I think that’s the problem with him – he simply isn’t caught in any trouble of his own, he is loved enough and that gives him scope to love enough and I simply see nothing beyond that. And Dmitry, on the other hand, is found to be dueling his father (‘Oedipal’, as I’m told) over a girl, and that too one who intends not to puncture him (which could be nobler) but to play according to her whims, the exact definition of a ‘beast’ in earthly terms. While I would forever struggle with Dostoevsky for having given birth to such a person (I mean ‘person’ and not a ‘woman’, I’m not implying at sexism), on the other hand I find myself siding with Dmitry, for it’s me that’s living as him.

Part One came to end with a letter of astounding innocence, not unexpected but yet a surprise. And I’m wishing for more of that kind of solutions, if I can be silly enough to state that.