Classics Considered

Previously:  Book I ,  Book II ,  Book III ,  Books IV & V ,  Book VI And now we (unavoidably) head into spoiler territory... In these three parts - "Alyosha," "Mitya," and "The Preliminary Investigation" - we learn that Grushenka, while attempting to escape with her former seducer, becomes convinced that it is Dmitri "Mitya" Karamazov she really loves.  He pursues her and interrupts her elopement by throwing a raucous party, squandering hundreds (or is it thousands?) of rubles which he claims he stole from Katerina, his ex-fiancee.  Meanwhile, when his father Fyodor is found dead and 3000 rubles missing from his bedroom, all evidence is against Mitya.  He is found and interrogated; he himself claims no alibi.  In fact, he confesses he  was at his father's house, but ran away before committing the murder that was in his mind.  Nothing else Dmitri or the witnesses say can corroborate his alleged innocence, and he is arrested as ...

At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept thinking that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours … But afterwards I thought one might find a wealth of life even in prison. Dostoyevsky has been on the brain lately, which means his unhappy character Prince Myshkin is always in the background, too, somewhere.  I can understand his wish for "walking straight on" without stopping, trying to escape reality, his illness and eccentricity which separate him from the world.  It's the last line that makes it, though - finding life and liberty "even in prison."  And I think there is something even stronger than Stoicisim in those words, because he doesn't just say life , but a wealth of life . Does Myshkin find this wealth in the prison of his life?  I don't know, but hi...