The Father in the Luggage
Alyosha stops a gang stoning a boy across a ditch. The outnumbered child fights back, then bites Alyosha's finger to the bone when he will not retaliate. The boy is Ilyusha, already carrying a father's humiliation into the street. The next generation has started its own war with stones.
Key Insight
A father's shame does not stay in the cottage. It becomes a schoolyard. Ilyusha bites because loyalty to a humiliated parent has nowhere else to go. Cycles look like children's games until you see whose honour they are defending.
