Essay - Suffering and Redemption in the Brothers Karamazov Suffering, for Reasons...

Suffering and Redemption in The Brothers Karamazov

*****, for reasons that are not and most likely will never be fully understood, has long been associated with personal improvement and redemption. Punishment, it is assumed, must be constructive, and suffering is the most basic pun*****hment; the only punishment that exists, when others ***** carefully examined--the only reason punishments work as deterrents for undesirable action is *****cause they cause suffering. Because of *****s believed import in human nature ***** its supposed redemptive value, suffering has also long ***** a theme in literature, especially in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as mankind redefined itself in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. France's Victor Hugo and England's Charles Dickens are two authors ***** the Anglo tradition who very consciously deal ***** suffering and its effects. But one of the most prominent literary philosophers on suffering is Fyodor Dostoevsky.

***** simplistic, general, ***** in many ways *****correct reading of Dostoevsky gives the initial impression that he ***** ********** in ***** ***** value of suffering. In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, despite the hugely tragic events that befall Alyosha, whom the narrator proclaims at ***** outset to be the hero of ***** novel, the book ends with some optimism regarding his future, and ***** journey in the novel is certainly one of spiritual growth achieved largely as a byproduct of h***** suffering. But an examination of other characters and incidents in the novel reveals ***** this purported purpose of suffering--***** constructive and redemptive--is far from universal, and that in fact suffering in many instances can be at least as detrimental ***** degrading as it ***** be redemptive and uplifting. For Dostoevsky and the characters in *****, it is the source ***** ***** and *****'s reaction to it, r*****her than ***** degree of the suffering *****, that are the determining factors of suffering's ultimate effect on an individual.

The third chapter of Book II ***** The Br*****'s Karamazov contains several useful examples of suffering ***** which it may be possible to extract some of Dostoevsky's beliefs in regard to suffering, at least insofar as they are at ***** in this *****. This chapter concerns a group of women who have come to seek the blessing ***** advice of the Elder Zossima, who is renowned for his wisdom and believed ***** ***** certain healing capabilities. Many ***** these ***** are suffering, or believe themselves to be suffering, ***** might in reality--or at le*****t in ***** Brothers Karamazov--be the same thing. The "possessed" woman ***** begins "shrieking ***** writhing as though in the pa*****s of childbirth" is a cle*****r example of the practical truth and reality of perception (Dos*****evesky, Book II, ch, 3). Her suffering, as the narrator describes in a paragraph devoted to the understanding of possessed women in general, is possibly imag*****ary, and possibly (likely, given the ***** o the downtrodden peasantry in much of Dos*****evsky's work) the result not of possession, but exhaustion and overwork. The peasant woman's shrieking and writhing are merely outward expressions