When Parents Abandon Their Children — The Brothers Karamazov

Some parents do not attack their children; they forget them. After Adelaïda's death, Fyodor abandons three-year-old Mitya not from malice but because the boy slips his mind while the house fills with debauchery and theatrical grief. Only Grigory the servant changes his shirt; the mother's kin forget him too for a year. If Fyodor had remembered, he would have shoved Mitya back to the cottage as an obstacle to partying.

Worldly cousin Pyotr Miüsov returns from Paris, takes up Mitya's cause, and becomes joint guardian over the small house and land his mother left. Fyodor plays dumb, looking as if he barely knows which child Miüsov means. Miüsov secures his revenues and hurries back to Paris, leaving Mitya with Moscow relatives he also forgets when February 1848 erupts. The boy is passed along again before the narrator moves on.

Mitya alone grows up believing property awaits him. At majority he meets Fyodor, grabs ready cash and vague agreements he cannot audit, and lives wildly on debt until he returns four years later to settle accounts. Then he learns his father has already paid out the entire inheritance in installments and prior agreements, leaving him with nothing and perhaps owing money. That shock feeds the catastrophe the narrator is about to tell.