Grace

This unlike my last few blogs is not pure garbage, so if you are another student browsing through my posts, READ THIS ONE!!

Dostoevsky’s description of the work of grace in Alyosha’s life is believable, especially within the framework and message of the Brothers Karamazov. Zosima had a capacity to tolerate, accommodate, and forgive people which was brought about and made possible by an undying active love for humans. Dostoevsky strives to articulate the idea that in seeing the beauty of life, one sees the face of God. Thus, after witnessing the opposite of beauty, the face of the devil, humanity succumbing to the temptations and giving up freedom, Alyosha sinks to despondency, and only reawakens upon seeing beauty once again, in this case, in the eyes of Grushenka.

Grushenka’s struggles reaffirm the question beseeched earlier by the Grand Inquisitor, to what extent are humans responsible for making the immoral decision? Grushenka has suffered beyond anything Alyosha has had to experience and he extols her for not being resolute, as Alyosha believes he himself would be, to kill the man and deny God. Although Grushenka, at no point, directly reveals a belief in God, Alyosha does observe genuine compassion and love in her heart, which is in it of itself essentially love for God. Alyosha is amazed by her ability to still see beauty and the possibility of forgiving the officer who has plagued her mind for the past five years, when he himself was so adversely affected by the response to Zosima’s death. Grushenka, upon encountering, for the first time, true understanding and empathy, sees the same grace that Alyosha sees in her in Alyosha.

Contrastingly, Rakitin presents a foil to the two’s optimistic grace. He sees an underground man in both of them, and he sees all that is “wicked” in Grushenka. His acrimonious sentiments shield him from the ascetic human comprehension that glows from Alyosha and Grushenka. He struggles to actively love, and for this reason, he rejects and denies God, which is clearly what he has done by the mere fact that he sought to break down Alyosha through Grushenka.

The redemptive quality of suffering and the grace of God are ideas that are difficult to articulate, and it is because of this aspect Dostoevsky, perhaps, strives in describing them beyond all authors, for his strength is in character interactions. Furthermore, by using a character such as Grushenka who appeared to be unequivocally evil just one hundred pages ago, and to whom I even gave the title of “a selfish and rotten scoundrel,” Dostoevsky powerfully outlines our own inclinations to not see the beauty in the world. For many of us reading the chapter where she does not kiss Katerina’s hand, quickly passed judgment without contemplating the complexity of character that is Grushenka.