Like Children

Today I have just a couple of last notes on The Brothers Karamazov. The internet helped me out on the first one, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t see this one sooner. Dostoevsky’s novel about the dysfunctional family and all their very grown-up vices includes long sections about neighborhood boys. These boys talk about pets and get in trouble at school and do a lot of things that don’t seem to have much to do with the question of who killed Fyodor Pavlovich or which lover Grushenka will settle on. But, as the wisdom of the web points out to me, they are children, and Ivan’s great question has to do with the suffering of children. Clearly Dostoevsky intended for the reader to make some connections.

Although I’ll have to continue to ponder this issue, two points of contact have come to mind. First, the children may be innocent, but they are not sinless. The Bible supports the distinction in its twin teachings that children are born in sin (see for example Ps. 51:5) and that nevertheless they do not have the ability to distinguish good and evil (see for instance Deut. 1:39). The neighborhood boys display both notions pretty clearly, so we may be expected (or invited?) to learn that Ivan’s question may assume a purity that children simply do not have.

Second, the ending section in which little Ilyusha dies (if you haven’t read the lengthy book, you’ll forget I said that before you reach the end!) shows that the suffering of children, like any human suffering, can bring about great good. I understand that suffering itself is bad; otherwise God would not promise to do away with it in the future kingdom. But if I willingly submit myself to the pain of exercise, dieting, waiting for the purchase of a toy, or visiting the dentist, all for the sake of a greater good, I can begin to see that God might view the death of Ilyusha – who is happy to be going to Heaven, after all – as an acceptable cost for the salvation of several other boys. Could I have made a world in which this were so? Well, that’s Ivan’s great question, and I have to say that I, as currently constituted, definitely could not. But then God has baked it in to me that I shouldn’t kill a child. Still, if I accept that the government has a right to incarcerate, say, an armed robber for ten years while I have no right to lock someone in a shed for even a day, I must admit the possibility that while I have no right to kill a person as the result of a philosophical calculation, God does have not just the power but the right to take human life.

I promised a couple of last notes about Karamazov, and my first one became so involved it turned itself into three paragraphs with two enumerated subsections. My second final note is much shorter. Dostoevsky knew and loved the works of Dickens. He especially liked David Copperfield and often called himself and his wife Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. I haven’t read about any special affinity of Dostoevsky for A Christmas Carol, but Alexei’s plea to the boys never to forget the kindness and courage of the departed Ilyusha is so extremely reminiscent of Bob Cratchit’s tearful family enjoinder during Christmas Future, I can’t believe Dostoevsky didn’t intend his scene as a case of flattering plagiarism.

(Really, Blogspot Editor? You don't know the word "enjoinder"?)