The Prosecutor's Speech. Sketches Of Character — The Brothers Karamazov

Ippolit Kirillovitch opens his swan song: trembling, sincere, dying of consumption, he believes Mitya guilty and quivers for the security of society. He tells the jury Russia has grown accustomed to horror, cites press reports of fashionable murderers, and mocks the troika galloping toward no rational goal while the hall briefly applauds. Even hostile ladies admit the impression; he almost faints when he finishes this movement.

He sketches the Karamazov house as a drop of Russia. Fyodor is cynical individualism and apres moi le deluge; Ivan, through Smerdyakov, taught that everything is lawful; Alyosha nearly fled into monastery timidity; Mitya embodies the broad Russian soul, Schiller and tavern brawls, nobility when unopposed and baseness when broke. The prosecutor retells Katya's four thousand as a test Mitya failed, quoting Rakitin on degradation paired with generosity.

He attacks the fifteen-hundred bag story as psychologically impossible for a Karamazov: a man who took three thousand in shame would peel off roubles at the first tavern temptation, not carry honor in his breast for a month while jealous of his father. Mitya's own formula, scoundrel not thief, becomes proof of self-deception in Ippolit's hands.

The speech turns from character to money and fixed ideas, passing toward the medical experts on the three thousand obsession. Kirillovitch has made the trial sociology; conviction and applause run ahead of the facts he has not yet fully argued in this first section of the speech.