Alyosha: History, Personality, and Relationship With Zossima

Abstract

In “From the Author,” Dostoevsky Identifies Alyosha as His hero, and although the story is as much about the other brothers as it is about Alyosha, Richard Peace is right in arguing that Alyosha is “at the centre of the novel” (1971, 229). As Peace points out, except for the events surrounding the murder of Fyodor, “there is scarcely one important scene” at which Alyosha is not present (221). Ivan, Dmitri, and Fyodor open their hearts and minds to him, he overhears the conversation between Smerdyakov and Marya Kondratyevna, and we see Father Zossima largely through his eyes. The account of Zossima’s recollections, conversations, and exhortations in Book VI (“The Russian Monk”) is presented as having been compiled by Alyosha. As Peace observes, it is through contact with Alyosha that such characters as Rakitin, Katerina Ivanovna, Grushenka, Lise Hohlakov, Captain Snegiryov, and Kolya Krassotkin “reveal their true natures” (229). It is Alyosha who reconciles Illusha and his classmates and who sounds the novel’s final note with his speech at Illusha’s stone.