Satans And The Brothers Karamazov Essay, Research Paper

In & # 8220 ; On Dreams, & # 8221 ; Freud asserted that feelings of guilt, if repressed from consciousness, necessarily surface in unconscious symptoms, such as incubuss or lunacy. Although aperson may quash his scruples, the guilt is simply displaced to another portion of themind, and finally, this pent-up affair must return. In the plants of Dostoevsky, acharacter & # 8217 ; s guilt frequently manifests itself in dreams by showing the character & # 8217 ; s purelydevilish self or his worst frights. Not merely does the character himself assume in dreams atotally demonic nature, but the existences he encounters do besides. Whether the Satan appearsliterally, as in Ivan Karamazov & # 8217 ; s instance, or in the similitude of the character & # 8217 ; s victim, as in thecase Stavrogin, the mere fact of the Satan & # 8217 ; s outgrowth reveals that the character has failedto elude guilt, a human universal, despite what he thinks or says consciously. In that thecharacter himself is responsible for his incubus, in that he is incapable of get awaying theguilt that plagues him, the character constitutes his ain Satan. Because he is human, hesuffers guilt, and therefore, can non acquire away with his offense. He is non every bit good at being bad Ashe believes. We will hence hold a close examinition of the offenses, the dreams, and thedevils of Stavrogin, and Ivan Karamazov to understand these word pictures of pride and guilt. It is of import when discoursing a dream in a novel to separate between theliterary and psychological deductions of the dream. The dream is evidently thefunctional merchandise of the writer & # 8217 ; s imaginativeness, and therefore, must function a definite intent inthe work. If examined lawfully, nevertheless, as a dream of an existent, non-fictional individual, the dream bears psychological importance and reveals something about the dreamer & # 8217 ; sunconscious. In construing the dreams in Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s novels, we can assumesignificance in every item, but merely in visible radiation of the fact that Dostoevsky, as writer, createdthese dreams for a intent, both literary and psychological. These dreams are non actualproducts of the unconscious, but, on the other manus, deliberate, witting efforts to fillout a certain character & # 8217 ; s psychological science. With a belief that he can exceed human averageness and maintain himself on aplane with the Godhead, in Devils, Stavrogin believes he can heartlessly ravish a immature miss andthen virtually arrange her self-destruction without personal effect. Stavrogin seems toconveniently & # 8220 ; bury & # 8221 ; his humanity, presuming in his chesty hubris that he can transcendhis mortal ego through his ain will and action. But his guilt, emerging from hisunconscious to upset his dreams, reminds Stavrogin, of his indisputably human nature. Inhis confession to Tikhon, Stavrogin describes the dream that continuously haunts him: I saw before me ( Oh, non in world! If merely it had been existent! ) , I saw Matryosha, emaciated, with hectic eyes, precisely as she was when she stood at my doorshaking her caput and raising her bantam small fist at me. Nothing had of all time tortured meso! The pathetic desperation of a incapacitated ten-year-old kid with its undeveloped mindthreatening me. . .but faulting merely herself, of class. Nothing like this had everhappened to me before. I sat there until nightfall, without traveling, burying thetime. Is this what & # 8217 ; s called compunction or penitence? . . . Possibly it & # 8217 ; s non therecollection of the act that I find so nauseating even now. Possibly even now thatrecollection contains something that entreaties to my passions. No & # 8211 ; what I findintolerable is entirely this image, viz. , her in the room access. . . That & # 8217 ; s what I can & # 8217 ; tstand because that & # 8217 ; s what I & # 8217 ; ve been seeing of all time since, about every twenty-four hours. It doesn & # 8217 ; tcome of its ain agreement ; I summon it and can & # 8217 ; t assist making so, although I can & # 8217 ; t livewith it ( Devils,472 ) . Matryosha, the ten-year-old whom Stavrogin raped and allowed to decease, now invades herrapist & # 8217 ; s dreams to demo Stavrogin that he is non above his humanity. Stavrogin may havebeen able to quash his guilt, but he can ne’er get away it. The guilt gathers new energyfrom the energy employed in its repression, and manifests itself in unconscious symptoms. The dreams of Stavrogin are marked by the visual aspect of their now-vindictivevictim, is diagnostic of the repression of his guilt. Like the victim herself now returning, in dreams, as more powerful, baleful figures, the guilt which the victim symbolizeemerges from the unconscious to likewise hangouts the felon. Stavrogin, nevertheless, efficaciously haunts himself, since his guilt is his human nature reminding him that he hasdone incorrect, and the images, diabolic themselves, are really merchandises of his unconsciousmind, which, it is indispensable to retrieve, is a merchandise of Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s head. Hence, thevictim may look to be the existent Satan in these dreams, but when examined in light ofFreud & # 8217 ; s theories of dream and repression, it can be found that Stavrogin is unconsciouslyresponsible for these Satans, and therefore, is the existent Satan himself. What motivates Stavrogin to perpetrate such a random, heartless offense? Stavroginmakes a point of proving the bounds of acceptable behaviour, of moving randomly to see whatpeople will make. Despite the sentiment of many characters in the book, he is non insane, harmonizing to the last sentence of the book. Shatov inquiries him: & # 8220 ; Is it true that youclaimed non to see any aesthetic difference between a juicy, beastly buffoonery and a

heroic effort, even the forfeit of one & # 8217 ; s ain life degree Fahrenheit

or the benefit of humanity? Is it true thatin both extremes you found identical beauty and equal enjoyment?” (Devils, II, 7, 268).Shatov hones in on Stavrogin’s pretentious disrespect for boundaries, and his drive tosurpass them, and in fact a trait he shares with most of humanity, the very trait that allowsand encourages him to rape Matryosha. Stavrogin’s pride, which allows him to assume thathe can rape without guilt, that he can surpass human nature, is also obvious in hisinfluence on Kirillov and Shatov. Stavrogin crosses boundaries not only by incorrectlyassuming that such transcendence is attainable for humans, but also by fostering in hisdisciples conflicting ideals. He teaches both to go beyond the restrictions of time anddeath, but only along different paths: Kirillov should seek to abolish God, but Shatovshould pursue God. Pride allows and motivates Stavrogin to believe that he can transcendhis mortality in his quest of the divine, but his dreams remind him that he cannot. Thispursuit of godly power, in the end, only highlights his human restrictions. As a result ofhis pride and the associated will to transcend human nature and gain power, each commitsa crime without considering consequence. Therefore, he represses this guilt, whicheventually emerges from the unconscious in the form of devil-ridden dreams. Exaggerated pride inspires Ivan Karamazov to commit a crime of sorts as well.Motivated by his intellectual pride, Ivan trespasses on divine territory with his extravagant,athiestic theories, arrogantly assuming knowledge of the cosmos and superiority overgodly forces. In Part One, conscious, of course, of his own athiesm, he smugly asserts,”[E]very earthly State should be, in the end, completely transformed into the Church andshould become nothing else but a Church” (Brothers Karamazov, 53). Also, “There is novirtue if there is no immortality” (Brothers Karamazov 60), and hence, “everything islawful.” He toys with people’s minds by broaching these grandiose theories on the”correct” order of Church and state, faith, and immortality, for he himself does not evenbelieve in God. It is this pride that then encourages this murder. Unlike Stavrogin, Ivan’s “crime” isnot literal or definite, like murder or rape. He has committed a crime only in that hethinks he has committed a crime; in other words, he did not literally murder his father,but, with Smerdyakov’s encouragement, Ivan comes to believe that he effected the death ofhis father by silently wishing for it and by preaching his lofty, nihilistic ideas. In their thirdmeeting, Smerdyakov accuses Ivan, “You murdered him; you are the real murderer, I wasonly your instrument, your faithful servant Licharda, and it was following your words Idid it” (Brothers Karamazov, 590). Whether consciously or not, Ivan believes that heparticipated in his father’s death. Thus, he might as well have actually murdered Fyodor,for he experiences the same guilt, the same psychological trauma. Although Ivan tries to persuade himself that he is not to blame, his true feelings ofguilt are evident in his dream encounter with the “devil.” Ivan has repressed his guiltyfeelings in hopes of avoiding them. He has displaced his guilt by divorcing his “good” self,the self that maintains his innocence, from his “bad” self, the devil self, the dark, doubtingalter-ego who supports Smerdyakov’s claim that Ivan, in fact, is to blame for his father’sdeath. When faced with the devil, Ivan accordingly cries out, “You are the incarnation ofmyself, but only of one side of me . . . of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiestand stupidest of them” (Brothers Karamazov, 604). He has repressed or denied his guilt,but only temporarily and only from his consciousness. His guilt lives on within hisunconscious, symbolized by the devil. Just as the dreams of Stavrogin reveal hisundeniable, unconscious belief in his own guilt, Ivan’s encounter with his own devil in hisdream, and his admission that this devil is in fact a part of himself, reveals that his guiltremains, despite his attempts to deny or repress it. The intellectual, urbane devil of Ivan’s dreams preys on his insecurities, forcing himto question and defend his innocence. Emerging from Ivan’s subconscious and manifestinghimself in a hallucination, the devil is both external and internal, physical andpsychological. He is a physical embodiment of Ivan’s deepest fears, yet he exists withinIvan himself. Stavrogin likewise encounters a devils dual in nature and function; indreams, each character continuously faces not only his own devilish self, himself as ahardened criminal in the act of commiting his crime, but also his victim, reborn as a sort ofdevil in dreams to psychologically punish the murderer. Ultimately, each character is hisown devil; the pride that permitted him to commit such a godly action has fathered theguilt that now plagues his unconscious. Guilt is a universal throughout humankind, andmerely completes the psychological equation originating with excessive pride: if one daresto assume that he can transcend his humanity and enter the divine sphere, and commits acrime accordingly, guilt, emerging unconsciously in dreams, will eventually remind him ofhis human roots. Bibliography Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Trans. Constance Garnett. Ed. Ralph E.Matlaw. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Devils. Trans. and Ed. Michael R. Katz. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1992.