The story of the book centers around the murder of Fyodor Karamazov, a perverted drunk who is as unlikable as he is wretched. Why Reading Brothers is Well, Well Worth It And if you do not read the book all the way through the end, you will be left wondering: Why did I just read a book that praised the atheist and left the Christian looking dumbfounded? Throughout the book, Ivan proves himself to be the intellectual superior of the two. Ivan represents the cool, sophisticated, intellectual rejection of traditional faith (Ivan is trained at a university in Moscow), while Alyosha represents the simple, child-like faith of the Church (Alyosha is a novitiate at Russian Orthodox Church in a small town). The very font in this edition is small (and the book already very large!) that it can feel daunting to simply crack the book open.īut what may be most puzzling to Christian readers is how Dostoevsky–himself a devout Christian–subjects Christianity to severe scrutiny through the assaults made upon it by the character Ivan, leaving Alyosha with no response.

The explosive, dramatic, and perverse characters are jarring and often alienating Dostoevsky’s penchant for describing pathetic and emotionally painful scenes is unsettling and the labyrinthine story with the ever-shifting Russian names, dense monologues, and frequent allusions to 19th century Russian culture can be difficult to follow. Dostoevsky’s writing can seem strange at points. The Brothers Karamazov can be an intimidating book to read.

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