Prestige · $2.99/month
Chapter audio, theme analysis, and downloads
Fyodor Dostoevsky
0:00 / 0:00
Ippolit closes with the historical method, turning to Grushenka's first lover. Mitya, who lives in the present, had treated the rival as remote fiction until he grasped that she had concealed him. He resigned himself with sudden respect for her right to love, even after parricide. Then he planned suicide: pistols at Perhotin's, a feast at Mokroe, a toast to her happiness, then brains dashed out at her feet so she would remember his love. Conscience torments him, yet Ippolit adds they have Hamlets while Russia still has Karamazovs.
He traces Perhotin, the shop, the drivers, and Mitya crying to a peasant that he was driving a murderer. At Mokroe, drink, dance, and Grushenka briefly stifled fear, guilt, and even the pistol he forgot. He learned she loved him and had rejected her lover only when nothing was possible. He hid half the money in the house like a man on the road to the scaffold who fancies infinite life until the last turning. On his knees before her he forgot the arrest until it came.
I can picture him, and only for a moment. One of the lawyers asked, as it were incidentally, the simplest question. Wasn't it Smerdyakov killed him? We shall rejoice, he says, at any new fact, and be the first to repudiate the charge. At arrest he blurted compromising words, then fenced with denial and Grigory's blood alone. Asked about Smerdyakov he swung to the opposite extreme until Grigory's open door shattered him and he shouted that Smerdyakov did it. The little bag, he says, was in the darkness too. Ippolit demolishes the little bag: torn shirt, landlady's cap, forgotten details that catch romancers. Justice cries out; he will welcome any real fact for the prisoner.
His peroration invokes Russia's fatal troika racing towards destruction while Europe watches in horror. Acquittal would heap hatred and justify parricide in foreign eyes. The speech ends without applause; Ippolit nearly faints. Mitya sits clenched, murmuring at Rakitin when her name is smeared. The gallery debates psychology, troika rhetoric, and vanity; the court adjourns briefly and Fetyukovitch mounts the tribune.
A strong closer can make your private choice feel like a public betrayal. Ippolit traps Mitya with Grigory's open door until he shouts that Smerdyakov did it, then invokes Russia's fatal troika while Europe watches in horror.
Before you accept guilt or mercy under group pressure, separate what the evidence proves from what the speaker needs the room to feel.
This chapter
Trapped with the open door, Dmitri shouts that Smerdyakov did it, late and bare, because the sequence has begun to feel like fate. He can resign himself to her first lover and still not resign himself to the wrong hands. The hall's horror is noise around a man trying to put the paperweight back on the person who swung it.
Continue this thoughtThe Court Prefers the WishFetyukovitch rises and speaks simply, like a man among friends. He may turn to pathos later, but he opens directly. There is an overwhelming chain of evidence against Mitya, yet not one fact that will stand criticism if taken separately.
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is The Wish That Stood Trial.
The card below names the pattern this chapter proves — carry it with you into Dostoevsky's monastery, tavern, and trial.
The Wish That Stood Trial
Ippolit closes with Mitya's planned suicide at Mokroe: pistols at Perhotin's, a feast, a toast to her happiness, then brains dashed out at her feet so she would remember his love. Conscience torments him, yet the prosecutor adds they have Hamlet in Russia too.
Key Insight
The wish and the performance are the evidence the room keeps. Dmitri's honour requires him to say he meant it; the speech treats that want as the murder.
Chapter 88
The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor’s Speech. Ippolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition, beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into a dissertation on Grushenka’s “first lover,” and brought forward several interesting thoughts on this theme. “Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of every one, collapsed, so to speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What makes it all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought of this formidable…
Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.
Purchase the complete book to access all chapters and support classic literature
Available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book formats
Other theme-by-theme analyses from this book.
Sit in the tavern while Ivan returns his ticket, then hear a cardinal in Seville explain why people prefer bread to freedom.
Hear Zosima cheapen beautiful feelings, then watch Alyosha do the work at Ilyusha's stone.
Watch a sentence about God leave Ivan's mouth and become a paperweight in the old man's room.
Stand with the boys at the stone and ask whether this house can stop repeating the father.
Follow Ivan from one reptile will devour the other to a hanging and a devil who talks like a poor relation.
Deep diving the literary elements.
Guides, life skills, and the full library.More ways to read The Brothers Karamazov: guides, life skills, and the wider library.
Unlock study guides and downloads, early access, and exclusive content — and support free access for everyone.
