The emotional, impulsive Karamazov son explains to Alyosha that he is sick with grief - that some time ago, he became engaged to a girl named Katerina, and has recently borrowed 3,000 rubles from her to finance an orgy with Grushenka. The day after the explosive scene in the monastery, Alyosha comes to visit his father and is stopped midway by Dmitri. Curiously, he enjoys talking philosophy with Ivan. He is a strange sort, this Smerdyakov, and lately his epileptic seizures have become more frequent. The child grew up to be an epileptic and now cooks for Karamazov. Years ago, a raggle-taggle moron girl who roamed the town was seduced and bore a child everyone, naturally, assumed that the satyr-like Karamazov was responsible. It is now that Dostoevsky reveals that Karamazov perhaps has fathered another son. He then leaves the monastery and commands Alyosha to leave also. Later, old Karamazov recovers from his astonishment and once again he makes a disgraceful scene in the dining room of the Father Superior. Dmitri then retorts that his father has tried to lure Grushenka into a liaison by promising her 3,000 rubles, and in the midst of their shouting, Father Zossima bows and kisses Dmitri's feet. Fyodor parades his usual disgusting vulgarities, makes a dreadful scene, and when Dmitri arrives late, he accuses his son of all sorts of degeneracy. Ivan, Karamazov's intellectual son, accompanies them to the meeting.Īt the monastery, there seems to be little hope for a successful reconciliation. Finally it is suggested that if there is to be peace in the Karamazov household, the family must go together to the monastery and allow Alyosha's elder, Father Zossima, to arbitrate and resolve the quarrels. The matter is far from ended, though, for Dmitri and his father find themselves instinctive enemies, and besides quarreling over the inheritance, they vie for Grushenka, a woman of questionable reputation. Old Karamazov feigns ignorance of any mythical monies or properties that are rightfully Dmitri's. Those were the early years.ĭmitri comes of age, as the novel opens, and asks his father for an inheritance that, he has long been told, his mother left him. Fyodor could not have been more grateful he could devote all energy and time to his notorious orgies. Their mothers dead and their father a drunken fornicator, they were parceled out to various relatives. None of the Karamazov, boys, however, was reared in the family home. By his first wife, Fyodor Karamazov sired one son - Dmitri - and by his second wife, two sons - Ivan and Alyosha.

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