A summary ofThe Grand Inquisitor excerpted from Anne Fremantle’s Introduction toThe Brothers Karmazov (the full introduction is available atFreemantle; additional material is atBrothers K.) You are encouraged to read the full text of “The Grand Inquisitor” even though you may find the language somewhat antiquated.It is available here. Note: There are three brothers and a half-brother in Dostoevesky’sThe Brothers Karamazov.This famous chapter contests Alyosha (or Alexei) the youngest, a Russian Orthodox novice just entering the monastery, and Ivan (or Vanya) “the dialectian,” more subtle and pragmatic, and in this context representing the un-believer. It is Ivan who is the most completely articulated of all the characters, and the one in whom Dostoevsky has expressed himself most fully; it is Ivan who tells Alyosha the story ofThe Grand Inquisitor. This, he explains, is a “fantasy,” a “poem,” although unwritten and in prose. Ivan has been describing to Alyosha, in sadistic detail, the sufferings of innocent children: the little girl of seven whom her father enjoys beating; the girl of five dirtied by both her parents; the boy of eight torn to pieces by the dogs of a general who deliberately sets them on the child. The agony of these children proves to Ivan's “Euclidian” mind the utter absurdity of the divinely created order of things, according to which “eternal harmony” will be established only after suffering has been inflicted on the defenseless little victims of human brutality. Ivan refuses to accept this “fabric of human destiny, “wants no share in it, and therefore “most respectfully returns Him the ticket.” Not even Christ who, as Alyosha points out, has suffered “for all and everything,” can make Ivan change his mind. Ivan's answer to Alyosha is The Grand Inquisitor. What is its meaning? At the first, most obvious level, the story sets the person of Christ against the church founded by him. In particular, the story is an attack upon the Roman Catholic Church-not an attack on “the whole of Rome,” as Alyosha points out, but on the Grand Inquisitors in its hierarchy. Be it noted, however, that, in the eyes of Ivan, the Grand Inquisitor is right, and Christ is
