The Brothers Karamazov

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1879

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Part 3, Book 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Book 8 Summary: “Mitya”

This section covers the following chapters: “Kuzma Samsonov,” “Lyagavy,” “Gold Mines,” “In the Dark,” “A Sudden Decision,” “Here I Come!,” “The Indisputable One,” and “Delirium.”

Dmitri still needs to repay the 3,000 roubles he stole from Katerina, so he asks Samsonov for help. He tells Samsonov that if he gives Dmitri the money, Dmitri will give him the rights to some land that his father owns, saying they will split the profit. Samsonov hates Dmitri, so he tricks him, telling him to make this offer to a merchant named Lyagavy, who, unbeknownst to Dmitri, is already planning to buy Fyodor’s land. When Dmitri finally makes his way to Lyagavy, the merchant refuses Dmitri’s offer, saying, “You contracted for a job and turned out to be a cheat” (378). Confused, Dmitri leaves. He asks Madame Khokhlakov for 3,000 roubles, but she tells him to go work in the gold mines if he wants money. She puts an icon of a martyr, Saint Varvara, around his neck.

Dmitri goes to Grushenka’s and sees that she’s not home. Certain that she has gone to be with Fyodor, an enraged Dmitri takes a brass pestle from their house, planning to use it as a weapon, and goes to his father’s to see if Grushenka is there. He knocks in the secret pattern, and his father comes outside; Dmitri realizes that Grushenka isn’t there, either. Grigory is in the yard, and he catches Dmitri lurking outside. The two men get into a fight, and Dmitri throws the pestle at him. Grigory falls to the ground, bleeding profusely. Afraid he’s killed Grigory, Dmitri runs over to tend to the injury. He wipes up some of Grigory’s blood and, in the process, stains his clothes. He throws the pestle away and runs to ask Fenya again where Grushenka went. She tells him Grushenka left to Mokroye to reunite with her love. Distraught, Dmitri decides he will visit her and then end his own life.

Dmitri has left some pistols with Perkhotin as collateral for a loan. Dmitri now goes to Perkhotin and, to Perhotin’s surprise, shows a large sum of money when he buys his pistols back. Perkhotin remarks on the money, and Dmitri tells him it is about “three thousand roubles” (401). Perkhotin helps Dmitri wash the blood off. Dmitri orders a feast to transport to the same inn in Mokroye where he and Grushenka squandered Katerina’s money a month before. Fenya begs Dmitri not to harm Grushenka. Promising that he won’t harm her, Dmitri leaves for Mokroye.

On the way to Mokroye, Dmitri feels troubled. He wants to admire Grushenka “from afar” one last time (410). He arrives, and Trifon Borisovich, the innkeeper, greets him. Grushenka, Kalganov, Maximov, and two Polish men are there. Grushenka welcomes Dmitri. Maximov is telling amusing stories. The two Polish men are bored, and Grushenka is annoyed with them. Dmitri makes a toast to Russia, and the Polish men get offended. They play baccarat, but Kalganov stops the game because the Polish men are cheating.

Grushenka’s Polish ex-lover calls her “wanton and shameless” now (430). Dmitri attacks them, and Grushenka’s ex leaves. They drink and celebrate with poor villagers. Dmitri finds Grushenka crying by herself. She tells him she loved the Polish man before, but now he seems like a completely different person. Dmitri and Grushenka kiss.

Mikhail Makarovich, the deputy police commissioner, bursts into the room and arrests Dmitri. Fyodor Karamazov has been murdered, and Makarovich suspects Dmitri.

Part 3, Book 8 Analysis

Fate and chance play a role surrounding Fyodor Karamazov’s murder and the false accusation against Dmitri. The elements of fate and chance accrue to create a tragic outcome for the Karamazov family and Dmitri in particular. The tragic quality of Dmitri’s character is emphasized in literary references to tragic heroes.

Dmitri is the least educated of the three brothers, but Book 8 (titled “Mitya,” a diminutive for his name), includes possibly the largest number of literary allusions. There are two references in which Dmitri is compared with two of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes: Othello and Hamlet. The discussion about jealousy and the comparison between Dmitri and Othello suggests Dmitri’s true feelings for Grushenka. Pushkin, a famous Russian writer, is quoted: “Othello was not jealous, he was trustful” (381), referring to the Shakespeare character. In the play Othello, the tragic hero is a general who kills his wife, Desdemona, after being convinced by one of his soldiers that she was cheating on him. This differentiates Dmitri’s jealousy from Othello’s “trustfulness”: Othello’s jealousy was stoked by the rumors he heard from an envious military official, Iago. Dmitri, on the other hand, is jealous when he is apart from Grushenka, but his jealousy disappears the second he sees her. The narrator notes that “jealous men forgive sooner than anyone else” (381). This unique perspective on jealousy presents the trait as not wholly terrible, and it suggests that honorable people can be jealous. The narrator clarifies that though Dmitri is jealous over Grushenka, he would never harm her, even if he did find out that she had wronged him. This distinction helps present Dmitri in a heroic and honorable light.

The allusion to Shakespeare’s Hamlet emphasizes the tragic element of Dmitri’s plight. He compares himself to Hamlet in his despairing sadness over the possibility of losing Grushenka’s love. Dmitri says, “It is I, perhaps, who am Yorick. Yorick now, that is, and later—the skull” (406). Yorick is the jester whose skull Hamlet addresses in the famous graveyard scene when Hamlet considers his own mortality and the value of life. Dmitri’s suicidal thoughts cause him to consider the precarious nature of his life, and the pistol is not for Grushenka or her Polish love, but for himself. His agony relates to his guilt over not paying back his debt to Katerina, his fear that this will keep him from being with Grushenka, and his fear of being rejected by Grushenka. In reality, his terrible fate is connected not to the debt but to his father’s murder.

An additional tragic coincidence is that the exact sum of Dmitri’s debt is the amount of money that Fyodor supposedly placed in the envelope and set aside for Grushenka (mentioned in Book 3). This naturally adds to the impression of Dmitri’s guilt. Another element of chance plays out through time: Dmitri has not spoken with Alyosha and does not know that Grushenka told Alyosha that she is saying goodbye to Dmitri forever. Alyosha, the messenger angel of the novel, fails here; but it is also possible that this was the hand of fate preventing a worse outcome. Alyosha keeps thinking of Dmitri, and Dmitri keeps thinking of Alyosha, but they never run into each other throughout these two crucial days, missing each other by just a few minutes.

The narrator says that Dmitri had never loved Grushenka as much as he did when he was riding in the carriage to meet her in Mokroye. Dmitri and Grushenka’s reunion in Mokroye has greater emotional power because Dmitri’s love for Grushenka has transformed: In the early chapters, Dmitri tells Alyosha that he only loved her for the “curve” of her body (118), but now his love has become “something much higher than he himself supposed and not in passion alone” (381). After Grushenka is bitterly disappointed to learn that her first love has changed dramatically in their five years apart, Dmitri and Grushenka realize that they love each other.

The scene at the inn in Mokroye highlights both the Russian and Polish sense of national pride. This creates friction between Grushenka and her Polish former love. Grushenka laughs at his language, and Dmitri’s toast to Russia causes a fight to erupt between the two groups. The Polish men refer to the events of 1772, when Poland was subdivided by Russia, Prussia, and Austria—an act that caused substantial harm to Poland. The conversation between Maximov, Kalganov, and Grushenka at the inn in Mokroye is also filled with references to Russian culture. This is alienating to Grushenka’s Polish ex-boyfriend and his friend.