Comparing Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov And Crime

A majority of Dostoevsky’s novels study constraints to human freedom, such as money, power, illness, and sexual desire (Bird 23). An extrusive theme that appears in tandem with these constraints that can be seen in The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment is whether crime is simply an object of fact or whether it is caused by social factors. This begs the question of whether characters are in control of their own decisions or if their society determines their actions (Auweele 286). This internal struggle of characters over their autonomy reflects that Dostoevsky saw that the only thing that could save his country from mobs and angry masses was individual personality. In The Grand Inquisitor, he illustrates that masses are not personal

Dostoevsky’s chronic gambling problem, developed by social and mental factors in his life including poverty, led him to write about his own struggle against the world for self autonomy (Kingma 910). In the novel, Dostoevsky describes the life and mental atmosphere around gambling. Although its surface level reflects the title, deeper meaning is found in Dostoevsky’s perceptions of autonomy through gambling (Kingma 891). Dostoevsky couples this with the use social class distinctions to demonstrate different levels of freedom. An example is Alexei Ivanovich, the teacher in the novel, who identifies himself with the mob and poor people who do not have as much control over their freedom as the elite (Kingma 888). The book concludes with the realization that the danger of gambling is not in the game but in the lack of self control that comes with it (Kingma 895). The underlying context of autonomy in The Gambler and other novels demonstrate Dostoevsky’s combination of fiction and life experiences in his novels while also shedding light on gambling that is relevant today for analyzing people with gambling problems (Kingma