Congrats, ye mighty ‘marching band! It’s the final week and this week’s page count target is pretty straightforward — we’re racing toward the back cover.
When you’ve finished and posted your closing comment, be sure to drop me a note at “poetry at cecilvortex dot com” with your shipping address to stake your claim on a custom magnet (not actually guaranteed but likely) to pull loose paper toward fridge doors.
Big thanks to you all for taking this ride. I’ll confess that I get a huge kick out these ‘marches, and I hope youse do too. See ya round the next bend in the trail….
-Cecil
I love the way it wrapped up. The end of the epilogue is as good as any literary coda, equal parts Mitya/Grusha’s “the story continues” and Alyosha’s “remember this moment”. The defense attorney got off to a *great* start, then completely flubbed; but the verdict was certainly not his fault, and Mitya got what he deserved, whether he killed Daddy or not.
But I was gravely disappointed that nobody actually died at the end. Book XII, Chapter 1 is titled “The Fatal Day.” By itself, that could be metaphor, but when the trial started, I recall the narrator mentioned the trial as a “fatal” event or day. I can’t find the quote, and it’s bugging me because all the way through the trial I was certain I had been told someone would die. When Katya anguished, I expected Mitya to leap over a table to wring her neck. Or Ivan to fall into convulsions. Something!
Being a chronic ‘novel’ reader, this ending was a let-down. But though we’ve been led to believe justice was not done, Mitya was moving ahead with plans to escape with his beloved via America and ending up back in his beloved Russia, keeping the possibly unjust conviction from being a tragedy. And I must say the defense attorney fit right in with the brothers Karamazov — totally incompetent, just like most of the other characters.
I’m still puzzled about the narrator.
The March has been great, Dan. Thanks for leading us on…would never have completed this tome without you inspiring us ever onward by dangling the magnet in front of us.
The Hollywood Alternate Ending.
I’ve been unhappy with the author ever since he chose to kill off Smerdikov (p. 650). I don’t think it’s credible, given how Smerdy is portrayed, that he would have the strength of character to off himself. I think he’d really want to hang around to see how his plot played out in court.
Smerdy’s removal puts the defense attorney in an impossible situation. He tries to sell an alternate theory with Smerdy as the killer, but ends up with a “kitchen sink” defense: “My guy didn’t do it & if he did he should be forgiven.” Fetyukovich forgot that while he may be able to hold contradictory ideas in his head, the less sophisticated jurors cannot, and so he sets himself up to lose. And we know how Hollywood hates sad endings.
So my alternate plot keeps Smerdy alive & he’s called as a prosecution witness. In the defense’s cross there is a “Perry Mason moment” where Smerdy breaks down & confesses all, when he can’t explain how three thousand rubles were found on his person (since Ivan refused to take the money away, but notified the cops instead).
Charges against Dmitri are dropped. He and Grushenka marry & emigrate to the US where they convert to Judaism. They become known for their lavish parties, but are also major benefactors, establishing Temple Beth Svetlov on 5th Avenue. Although they talk frequently of it, they never set foot in Russia again.
Alexei quietly leaves Russia after his memoirs are found & published, revealing Elder Zosima to have been his lover as well as his spiritual inspiration. He settles in France, converts to Roman Catholicism, teaching young men as a member of the Jesuits.
Ivan also emigrates, but to Germany, where he falls in with some radical socialists. He returns to Russia in 1905, but is killed shortly thereafter in the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Smerdy is sentenced to the mines, but escapes from the train traveling to Siberia. However he has a grand mal seizure from the stress of his escape. As he lays unconscious in the wilderness snow, his body is eaten by wild dogs.
First off I want to thank my fellow marchers. This was my first time to do this, reading is usually a pretty solitary thing. I got much more out of this from the comments – especially about some obvious things that I missed for whatever reason. Not to mention that I probably would have given up long ago if I did not desperately need an refrigerator magnet.
I was trying to understand the ending particularly relative to Alyosha, since he was billed as the Hero. Even remembering that his heroics were not supposed to be evident till after the sequel – which was never written. My conjecture is that the point of the final scene in the “speech at the stone” is that Alyosha was thinking of the contrast between Ilyusha’s actions relative to his father (who would strain any son’s ability to be proud) and the actions of the Karamazov brothers relative to their father. Ilyusha suffered greatly in his efforts to defend his father. The Brothers were not so proud of theirs and were disloyal- perhaps even including Alyosha though someone with a better memory or insight than me would have to figure that out.
As someone who quietly dropped out some ten weeks ago, my congratulations to anyone who finishes this beast!
Maybe its just the joy of completion talking, or the prospect of probably getting a fridge magnet (I have already picked out where it will probably go), but I enjoyed the book. Not that I didnt like Old Man’s version (if you added 800 pages to it, it might be considered a great book).
I felt like the book and FD had a lot to say, and there were some big ideas in there relating to religion and politics and humanism and freedom of thought.
In the trial, I found it interesting how the attorneys talked about the perception of Russia, as if Russia was on trial. “They have their Hamlets, we have only Karamazovs.” Will Russia follow the course of Europe, or stand apart? It reminded me of the exhibit of Chagall and the artists of the Russian theater I saw recently at the Jewseum in SF. Although at a different time, it seems the artists and writers of that time were also very concerned about how greed and money and break with tradition were ruining their society.
I also found it interesting how Illyusha becomes the heroic figure. Heck, his body doesnt even smell, like Zosima’s did. I remember thinking it was strange how he and the boys were introduced to us somewhat randomly in the middle of the book. But the memory of Ilyusha standing up for his father is probably one Ill remember even after Ive forgotten the rest of the book. Does that mean salvation is in store for me, as Alyosha suggests?
Even if not, thanks Cecil Vortex for another great DM!
I have to say that I’m in the camp who found the ending a let-down. I’m not so disappointed that no one died, but really, do these people never learn anything?
I like the Old Man’s alternative ending much better.
Still Have 40 pages to go….must..not…read…comments about how it ends…until I read the ending.
I can’t believe I read the whole thing! What a struggle this one has been for me, and I’m not sure why. With other Deathmarches, I’ve read ahead and had an itchy trigger finger waiting to post without spoiling anyone else’s read. With this one, I’ve felt like I’ve been barely crawling, humming along to Ol’ Man River like so: “Ol’ Man Mitya, oh Ol’ Man Mitya, the pages be heavy.” At any rate, despite my weekly whining, complaining, and general orneriness during this march, I’ve really enjoyed FINISHING THE DAMN THING. And most of all, I appreciate Cecil for steering us and my fellow marchers for their commiseration and keen insights. I also think alternate endings should be a requirement for the last post (Brilliant end, Old Man in Kansas), but I’m glad I didn’t have to come up with one this time. I just think it’s a good idea, especially for people more energetic than myself. Thank you, thank you ALL!
Hooray! As an idealist Alyosha fan, I liked the sentimental ending chapter, but I mostly like being finished. Throughout, I had to keep looking for things to like about this book. Roberto and I had an almost daily conversation about why this is supposed to be one of the great books of all time, and, since I think I helped influence Cecil to choose it, I felt like I had to defend it. Roberto, whose idea of good writing is a Salinger short story, just did not appreciate the blather, and at times, I couldn’t have agreed more.
But I also found myself many times over the last couple of months saying “Dostoevsky has something to say about this”–mostly about the big questions of good and evil, and how the world works. I wish I had taken the time to find out more about what was happening in Russia and how the book portrays a turning point in their history, since that also seems to be important. Next time I’m getting the Norton
critical edition.
Thanks, Cecil and everyone. Hope to see you again here someday.
Let me join the chorus of thanks to Cecil for organizing and leading us on this march! And thanks, too, to my fellow marchers, who week in and week out had me thinking, “Wow, I’m stupider than everyone else!” with their cogent comments. 🙂
I had the same feelings as Bob D. above about the final chapter: seeing the death of Ilyusha, and Aloysha’s moving words as essentially a counterpoint statement to all the tragedy we’ve just witnessed.
I like, too, that there is a smidgen of hope for Mitya, and that Dostoevskly just left it open that way for us to imagine. No doubt Mitya would have found some way to screw up his own escape, so I’m glad we didn’t have to read about it. 🙂
Thanks again to all! Yay for magnets!
well, whew!
Congratulations to everyone who made it through, and also to those who tried their best and just couldn’t make it happen for one reason or another. This was a perfect book to Deathmarch: historically important and not without its charms, but also presenting a unique set of difficulties. It was especially interesting to see the diversity of opinions–pretty much every part of the book was loved by some and hated by others, and isn’t that the beauty of life’s rich pageant?
I myself was one of the few who liked almost all the sections, but it was definitely trying to get whiplashed around in so many different directions. I also have a soft spot for the overwrought, borderline ridiculous, somewhat caricatured version of the Russian people presented here–but since it’s a Russian writing it, it’s OK, right?
Yes, the ending was unsatisfying–who ends a book with the death of a child, inspirational speech or no?–but I think actually it was no ending at all, but more a setup for a sequel. Where will Alyosha go from here? Will Dmitri escape? Will Ivan recover? Will Kolya Krasotkin grow up to be Leon Trotsky? We shall never know these things, unless Dostoevsky’s descendents put out an officially licensed continuation a la “Gone with the Wind.” I wonder of he left behind any notes as to the future direction of the story.
No time for that research at the moment; instead, a quick copy-and-paste from Wikipedia: “In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, the eccentric Eliot Rosewater, a science-fiction savant, says that ‘everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoevsky’. ”
i enjoyed it. found it honest and moving, especially in the details–the way that the audience at the trial knew the prosecutor had been crushed inside. mama and the little cannon and the broken flowers.
very glad to have read it at last.
Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Finished at last. Thanks for the march, never would have gotten through it otherwise. I know exactly where I would have stopped, but then so do you (You got it-Grand Inquisitor.) Overall I liked it. I’m not so sure about the ending. I agree, it was more of a non-ending. It was peaceful in the end.