Prototypes of the Karamazov Brothers in Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', 'The Idiot', and 'The Devils'

This study examines the construction of character and the use of idea in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It argues by intertextual analysis of a selection of the author's works that characters are prototypical in idea and image. Each chapter correlates Dostoevsky's use of character and idea with theory derived from Bakhtin's study of the chronotope and the polyphonic novel. To this end, this study examines the characters not as psychological types or pure representations of their ideas but as human carriers of ideas, characters whose ideas undergo testing in their respective novels. In the final analysis, Dostoevsky's characters are distinguished by openended futures, unresolved ideas, and irreconcilable conflict of divergent elements, namely faith, doubt, and passion, three traits represented by Alyosha, Ivan, and Dmitri Karamazov respectively in the final novel.