Young Minds Wrestling with Big Ideas — The Brothers Karamazov

In the passage while the doctor examines Ilusha, Kolya asks what he will say and calls medicine a fraud while Alyosha quietly answers that the boy is dying. Kolya wanted this meeting for a long time, sorry only for the sad circumstances, and fumbles toward warmth when Alyosha smiles and presses his hand.

Kolya performs: mystic Alyosha must be cured by life, God is a hypothesis who would have to be invented, Voltaire and Candide half-read, socialism at fourteen, Christianity as slavery, Christ in the revolutionists' ranks, Rakitin and a scrap of Byelinsky, women subject to Napoleon, America mean. Alyosha does not mock; he says the phrases are borrowed, cites the German on the Russian schoolboy who corrects star maps he does not know, and hears Kolya brag then wince.

The talk turns honest: Kolya fears contempt, admits conceit kept him from Ilusha, calls himself a beast, says he is profoundly unhappy and ready to overturn the world. Alyosha tells him not to be like every one else even if he is the only one, warns vanity has infected his generation, and says he will be unhappy yet bless life. Kolya calls it a declaration of love; both blush as the doctor's face appears at the door.