The Karamazov Brothers
(Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Main And Essential Minor Characters

Note: For those unfamiliar with it, the traditional Russian custom is to call people by their first name and their patronymic, a variation of their father’s first name.

Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov

Fyodor Pavlovich is a middle-aged entrepreneur and landowner who is one of the wealthiest people in town. He is also an outwardly disgusting, disrespectful, philandering, carousing buffoon. When he isn’t lying, he has moments of honesty and even compassion. And like everyone else, he has the occasional desire to be good and also loved, which probably never would have occurred to him had it not been for his youngest son Alyosha. But then his depravity gets the better of him, and he goes back to his old habits. All this and more made him an easy target for murder.

Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov (Mitya)

In some ways, Dmitry is the central character of the book, being at the forefront of the action and the main suspect in the murder of his father. Fyodor Pavlovich’s oldest son by his first marriage, Dmitry is passionate, active, forceful, and loud. A ladies’ man, spendthrift, and carouser who is easily prone to violence, he is sentenced for his father’s murder even though he didn’t do it. But mixed with Dmitry’s other qualities is a spontaneity and naivety, a big and generous heart that gets him into as much trouble as his other qualities. Yet despite his fate of unjust suffering, these qualities also lead him to real love and the beginnings of a joyful spiritual awakening.

Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov (Vanya) (nickname used only once)

Fyodor Pavlovich’s second son by the same woman who bore his youngest son Alyosha, Ivan is the brilliant university-educated intellectual among the three brothers. Not that his brothers are stupid, but in Ivan, the intellect is dominant, and it gets him into trouble because it cannot provide him with the answers to the big questions in life. His classic Karamazov extremism leads him to the extremist philosophy that “everything is permitted,” but he learns—as he has known for at least a while—that the outcome of this philosophy is disaster. Although he has a nervous breakdown and becomes deathly ill later in the story, he is beginning to acknowledge his more passionate, emotional, and possibly even spiritual side. The book ends before we learn whether Ivan survives his illness to find unity and love.

Aleksei Fyodorovich Karamazov (Alyosha)

Fyodor Pavlovich’s youngest son, Alyosha had much of his mother’s innocence and mystical sense, but he also had the Karamazov passion. That passion was tempered, however, by his extraordinary and effortless natural capacity for active, universal love, as exemplified and taught by his mentor the starets, or spiritual master, who resides at the local monastery where we first meet Alyosha as a part-time monk. Alyosha is the quiet hero of the story, the one who brings people together and facilitates the transformation of suffering into joy. In Dostoevsky’s mind, he is also the main character.

Grigory Vasilyevich and Marfa Ignatyevna

Grigory is Fyodor Pavlovich’s long-time, elderly servant, who is loyal despite his master’s many flaws. Upright and humane but also stubborn, Grigory and his wife Marfa Ignatyevna took in and cared for Fyodor Pavlovich’s neglected children until they were sent to be raised by some relative or benefactor. The couple did the same for Smerdyakov, who eventually became the household cook. Both Grigory and Marfa Ignatyevna were key witnesses of the events surrounding Fyodor Pavlovich’s murder.

Smerdyakov

The offspring of the town idiot girl, Smerdyakov was rumored to be Fyodor Pavlovich’s illegitimate son. Whether that was true or not, Fyodor Pavlovich accepted him into his household when his mother was found dying in his garden’s bathhouse after giving birth. Despite Grigory’s attempts to teach him devotion and respect, Smerdyakov grew up to embody the antithesis of Christian values: amorality, arrogance, presumptuousness, contempt, and wiliness. At the same time, he was extremely honest when it came to money, and Fyodor Pavlovich took an interest in him and trusted him, eventually sending him to cooking school and making him the household cook upon his return. But Smerdyakov was not happy with his station in life, and according to his own private testimony as told to Ivan, he was Fyodor Pavlovich’s true murderer. However, he committed suicide before the trial began, and Ivan was too mentally unstable at the time to reveal the truth in a convincing manner. (See also Lizaveta Smeryashchaya.)

Starets Zosima

The starets is the spiritual master of the monastery outside the town where the story takes place. He is Alyosha’s beloved mentor and the source of much of the monastery’s fame. As a character, he is the mouthpiece for the novel’s most exalted ideas. Chief among these is his insistence on active as opposed to contemplative love, which is why he sends Alyosha away from the monastery and out into the world upon his death.

The starets himself did not begin in a monastery, so he knew the difference between a cloistered life and a life out in the world. Like Dmitry, he had been in the military, and he, too, had experienced jealousy and even almost went through with a duel because of it. But at the last moment, he threw away his pistol, to the surprise of all, and that was the beginning of his transformation from worldly young man to “holy fool.”

Katerina Ivanovna

Proud, willful, beautiful, generous, self-sacrificing, manipulative: all these qualities describe the complex character of Katerina Ivanovna, who proposed to Dmitry after humbling herself to save her father from financial distress (Dmitry, who was usually broke, had received a large settlement sum from his father and loaned Katerina Ivanovna most of it). Their feelings for each other are as complex as their characters, but the short form is that when Dmitry falls in love with Grushenka, Katerina Ivanovna can’t stop obsessing about it even though she knows that he wants to move on. In the meantime, she and Ivan have also fallen in love, but she has trouble admitting it until the end. At that point, she and Dmitry reconcile, not as lovers but as friends, but by then their rocky relationship has already had multiple damaging repercussions. By then, Ivan is also deathly ill, and realizing that she loves him—and also true to her tendency towards self-sacrifice—Katerina Ivanovna moves him to her home and cares for him.

Grushenka (Agrafena Aleksandrovna)

On the surface, Grushenka is curvaceous, willful, volatile, clever, money-grubbing, seductive, and manipulative. But underneath that image, she has her own human problems and pain as well as a strong capacity for love and blunt honesty. Abandoned by a Polish “officer” five years earlier, she became the protégé of the wealthy but mean-spirited Samsonov, who quickly learned to trust her in both business and personal matters. For five years, she silently pined for the Pole but also wanted revenge, namely, to lord over him what she had become, in contrast to the thin, abandoned girl he had left behind. When he returns to propose to her, she is unimpressed. It’s at this point that she truly falls in love with Dmitry, and a new phase begins for them both.

Rakitin

Rakitin is a seminarian at the monastery where we first meet Alyosha, and he’s also a friend of his and a cousin of Grushenka’s, but we only learn this last bit much later when she testifies in court in response to the defense counsel’s questions. True to his arrogant, cynical, self-serving, and ambitious nature, Rakitin had hid both their relationship and his own amoral character, which contrasted markedly with the image he was trying to put forth to foster his goal of becoming a wealthy publisher and writer. Unfortunately for him, he made a few slips that cost him later when the defense counsel brought them up at the trial. First, he took a bribe from Grushenka for bringing her Alyosha, whom she had planned to seduce or at least unsettle. She later testified that Rakitin was always asking her for money, even though he didn’t particularly need it. Second, he weaseled his way into Mrs. Khokhlakova’s confidence and then tried to seduce her with bad poetry, even though she was much older. In fact, he had no real interest in her other than his wealth and career interests. Meanwhile, Mrs. Khokhlakova had taken a shine to Perkhotin, who walked in right at that moment and made fun of Rakitin’s inept poetic attempt. That resulted in Rakitin’s resentment, prompting him to publish an article that included an insulting comment about Mrs. Khokhlakova’s “aging” attractions. So much for Rakitin’s impeccable character and career hopes.

Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin

Perkhotin is the clerk who loans Dmitry ten rubles when the latter goes to him to pawn his pistols. Later, when Dmitry comes to retrieve them, Perkhotin helps him clean up the blood and order the party provisions for Mokroye. He is sympathetic to Dmitry and tries to figure out where he suddenly got a wad of 100-ruble bills and why he’s covered with blood. Still baffled after Dmitry leaves for Mokroye, Perkhotin can’t let go of the problem, so he visits Fenya and Mrs. Khokhlakova to gather more information, finally concluding that he needs to tell the police chief of the night’s events. Dostoevsky saw all this as the beginning of Perkhotin’s great career, worthy of its own sequel, but unfortunately the author didn’t live long enough to write it.

Perkhotin is also the one who foils Rakitin’s feeble attempt to seduce Mrs. Khokhlakova with bad poetry. She was initially unwilling to receive him when he first arrived on her doorstep late at night, his sole intention being to unravel the mystery of Dmitry’s strange recent behavior. But Perkhotin’s conduct and appearance were so impeccable that Mrs. Khokhlakova quickly became a great admirer of his. Although much younger than Mrs. Khokhlakova, he soon became a regular visitor and, in a comic note, inspired unusually flirtatious behavior in his hostess. We never find out where this all goes.

Nelyudov, the investigating magistrate

Nikolai Parfenovich Nelyudov is the investigating, or examining, magistrate. He is present at Dmitry’s arrest and, along with the prosecutor, is the key interrogator in Dmitry’s case. He and the prosecutor stay up until morning asking Dmitry and the other witnesses questions, and Nelyudov is also the one who awakens Dmitry after the transformative dream he had while waiting for the clerks to finalize the records.

Ippolit Kyrillovich, the prosecutor

Ippolit Kyrillovich is the deputy prosecutor, who feels from the beginning that he has been misjudged and underrated in his career, in part because of his love of psychology, which wins him the ridicule of his colleagues. The great challenge and triumph of his career is the investigation and trial surrounding the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich and the accusation against Dmitry. Ippolit Kyrillovich has to go up against the famous St. Petersburg defense lawyer Fetyukovich, and to the surprise of all, he wins in spite of his copious psychological guesswork and ramblings. Still in his thirties, he dies of consumption (tuberculosis) not long after the trial.

Fetyukovich, the defense counsel

Fetyukovich is the brilliant and famous defense counsel brought from St. Petersburg by Katerina Ivanovna (with financial help from Ivan and Alyosha) to take Dmitry’s case, which had already gained national attention. His goal, which he also fulfilled, was to plead “diminished capacity” for his client, even though Dmitry disagreed and persistently denied that he killed his father. Nevertheless, Fetyukovich was thorough and incisive, with an excellent understanding of the issues and full command of the courtroom, so it came as a complete shock to everyone when he lost the case to the less impressive Ippolit Kyrillovich.

Mrs. Khokhlakova and her daughter Lise

Two of the lesser, though not minor, characters are Mrs. Khokhlakova and her fourteen-year-old daughter Lise, who is an old friend of Alyosha’s and will probably become his wife if all goes well. Both Mrs. Khokhlakova and Lise tend towards the rambling, whimsical, and hysterical side of things, with Lise being the cleverer and more manipulative of the two. Lise begins as a wheelchair-bound invalid, but she is in the process of healing as the story progresses. Both characters help to knit the plot together and provide some comic relief.

Staff Captain Snegiryov and his family

Staff Captain Snegiryov and his family play one of the more important roles among the lesser characters, though to be fair, the roles of Snegiryov and his little son Ilyusha (see next description) are not minor. Ilyusha is the little boy who gets into a fight with the other schoolboys and ends up dying at the end of the novel. Part of the little boy’s anger and shame revolve around the incident in which Dmitry drags Captain Snegiryov through the town square by his beard, leaving it scragglier than before and making him the butt of the schoolboys’ jokes. This only compounds the shame that’s already so much a part of the lives of the Snegiryov family, who suffer from poverty, cramped circumstances, invalidism, and mental illness. Only Varvara, the older daughter, is healthy and attending university (unusual for women in those times). She feels the family’s shame acutely, but she also represents the more progressive thinking of the day.

Captain Snegiryov also embodies the difficulties created by the related issues of pride and shame. Having already lost so much, Snegiryov feels unable to provide for his family, a feeling that’s intensified by his deep love for them. He dreams of a new, good life, but when the money comes his way through Katerina Ivanovna’s benevolent gesture, he finds himself unable to take it and resents the offer. Later, he rethinks the situation and accepts it, but in the meantime, he has to struggle with himself.

Ilyusha, Kolya Krasotkin, and the schoolboys

A considerable part of the novel is dedicated to the lives and relationships among a group of Russian schoolboys, of whom two in particular stand out: Ilyusha and Kolya. Kolya is a precocious boy who uses his intellect to distract himself from facing his own and other people’s emotions, but Alyosha’s gentle perceptiveness and honesty begin to help him out of this immature phase. Ilyusha is the sickly son of Captain Snegiryov, who has fallen on hard times and, to make matters worse, was given a beating by Dmitry and dragged through the town square. This created great shame for Ilyusha, whose family had already experienced enough of that emotion, between poverty, invalidism, and job loss. Ilyusha consequently got into a stoning fight with the other schoolboys. He had already stabbed his friend Kolya, and when Alyosha tried to intervene, he bit his finger. Still angry but also filled with remorse, Ilyusha ran home. His illness intensified, and in the end he died, but not before Alyosha managed to effect a reconciliation between all the boys and even turn the tragedy of Ilyusha’s death into a beacon of hope.

Minor Characters

A great many minor characters parade through the pages of The Karamazov Brothers. They play various roles: some are pivotal to the action or help to tie it together; others provide comic relief, illustrate a theme, act as a foil to the main characters, or represent some aspect of the times.

Though not a character in the usual sense, there are hints here and there that the narrator is more than just an objective third person outside the action. While his exact identity never becomes clear, several statements indicate that he is one of the residents of the small town where the action takes place. In Book 1, Chapter 3, he asks why Ivan should have “come to us” around the time of the beginning of the story; and at the trial, he states that he is one of the spectators. But other than narrating and commenting on the action, his role as a character in the story never becomes more than that of silent observer.

Adelaida Ivanovna Karamazov, nee Miusova, was Fyodor Pavlovich’s first wife and Dmitry’s mother. She came with a dowry and inheritance that Fyodor Pavlovich quickly appropriated for himself, which was what gave Dmitry the idea that his father owed him money. Her rocky relationship with Fyodor Pavlovich led Adelaida Ivanovna to flee with her lover to St. Petersburg, where she died young.

Sofya Ivanovna Karamazov was Fyodor Pavlovich’s second wife and the mother of Ivan and Alyosha. Beautiful, innocent, and devout, she was nicknamed the klikusha, a term that refers to a special type of hysteria among Russian women. Alyosha remembers her holding him while praying and crying hysterically before an icon in a darkened room pierced by rays of light—a memory that held special significance for him as a sign of hope in a dark world. Sadly, Fyodor Pavlovich’s degenerate lifestyle was too much for Sofya Ivanovna, and she finally fell ill and died young, like her predecessor.

Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov is a liberal, well-to-do relative of Fyodor Pavlovich’s through the latter’s first wife, who was Miusov’s cousin. Miusov got joint custody of Dmitry early on when Dmitry was still a young boy, but like Fyodor Pavlovich, his main interest in Dmitry was the boy’s mother’s estate. Aside from helping to tie the story together, Miusov has two main functions as a character: to represent the liberal opinions of the time and to act as both a foil and impetus to the antics of Fyodor Pavlovich, whom he despises and whose company he considers beneath him.

Pyotr Fomich Kalganov is Miusov’s young friend, but the similarity between them stops at wealth, elegance, and manners. Kalganov’s manners are also rooted in kindness, while Miusov’s arrogance and intolerance keep popping through his social veneer. As Kalganov’s character develops, we learn that he is highly observant (he catches Grushenka’s “true love” cheating at cards and alerts Dmitry), genuinely compassionate, and possessed of a deep sense of right. When Dmitry is finally arrested and the whole world seems joined against him, young Kalganov has the courage to rush over to Dmitry’s departing prisoner’s cart to wish him well, after which he finds a private corner to mourn the unfairness and cruelty of the world.

Yefim Petrovich Polyonov was the person who ultimately raised Ivan and Alyosha from the time they were little boys. This included sending Ivan to school in Moscow because of the boy’s brilliance, while Alyosha remained with Yefim Petrovich and his family until his death a few years before both boys—now young men—returned to their hometown (Alyosha went to live with some female relatives during the interim). Prior to their stay with Yefim Petrovich, the two boys had briefly been under the care of the wealthy general’s widow who had been their mother’s guardian, but she died shortly after wresting them from Fyodor Pavlovich’s negligence. Yefim Petrovich, who inherited most of her estate, treated the two boys like his own family, investing in their education and welfare. Unlike their father and Miusov, he did not have designs on their inheritance; instead, he was able to double the 1000 rubles left to each of them by the general’s widow.

A petty landowner, Maksimov is one of the more clownish characters, acting as comic relief to all the passion and confusion that pervade the novel—although he adds his own brand of confusion in the process. We meet him four times: at the monastery, where he welcomes the Karamazov family; at the party in Mokroye, having arrived with Kalganov; at Grushenka’s, where he has taken up residence after becoming helpless due to health and money problems; and briefly at the trial, where his testimony is so exaggerated that it’s all but useless. An innocuous character, Maksimov likes to live it up and entertain people.

We only meet the abbot of the local monastery once, at the special luncheon he prepares for the Karamazov family on the day of their visit to the starets. Like Miusov, he acts as a foil to Fyodor Pavlovich’s rudeness and idiocy. Unlike Miusov, the abbot is genuinely gracious, and his manner illustrates Christianity in action.

Fathers Yosif and Païsy are the two hieromonks (monks who are also priests) who accompany the starets in his cell much of the time. Both are learned men, and when the starets dies, he commits Father Païsy to be a friend and possibly also mentor to Alyosha. Alyosha leaves the monastery before the relationship develops, but there is already a subtle bond between them.

Father Therapon is the eccentric but impressive and vital elderly ascetic who lives apart from the other monks and has his own strict routine and strange views. He and many others are the enemies of the startsy cult and the starets, and when the starets dies and his corpse smells, Father Therapon comes to “cast out the demons” in the starets’s cell until he’s reprimanded and cast out himself by Father Païsy. The whole scene has a disconcerting effect on Alyosha, and on learning Therapon’s real motives, we find ourselves once again confronted with jealousy, ambition, and pride clothed in devout form. However, as scary as Father Therapon seems at first, much of the action surrounding him also has a strongly comic element.

The little monk from Obdorsk is one of the characters who functions mainly as a plot and idea facilitator. He is a little busybody who has come from many miles away to check out both the starets and Father Therapon, who is of more interest to him. In general, Father Therapon sticks to his vow of silence, but he does receive and talk to visitors from afar. In many ways, the little monk, who believes in fasting and other ascetic practices, agrees more with Father Therapon’s ideas. But between the latter’s blunt talk, strange manner, unusual dress, and demonic visions, the little monk leaves the meeting frightened and not sure what to make of the renowned ascetic. On the other hand, earlier in the novel, the little monk felt confident challenging the starets’s “right” to heal, although the starets himself wasn’t convinced that he had effected a full cure and said so. Moreover, the starets received the monk as warmly and graciously as most of his other visitors, the point being that true, essential Christianity comes in many forms, while the trappings of devotion (monk’s garb, fasting, etc.) may cover a multitude of sins.

Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya (or “smelly”) was the village idiot who, at twenty years old, gave birth to a baby boy in the bathhouse in Fyodor Pavlovich’s garden and then died, having injured herself after jumping over the fence. She had specifically made her way there in spite of the fact that one of the town’s ladies had provided her with a place. This generosity and kindness of the townsfolk was standard: they always did their best to take care of her. Their efforts were futile, though: Lizaveta had a good and honest heart, but she also had her own ideas about what she wanted and needed. She typically ran around barefoot, dressed in nothing but a coarse shirt, which was how a group of drunken young men found her one night asleep in a kitchen garden. The only one among them who didn’t make fun of her womanhood (or in their eyes, lack of womanhood) was Fyodor Pavlovich, even if he did leer at her. The young men went their way, but some months later Lizaveta was found pregnant, and no one ever knew for sure who the father was. However, between that story and the fact that she went out of her way to get to Fyodor Pavlovich’s bathhouse, the conjecture was that it was Fyodor Pavlovich. Fyodor Pavlovich took the boy, named Pavel Fyodorovich, into his household and would later nickname him Smerdyakov.

Lizaveta was considered a “holy fool” by the townspeople, which may explain some of Smerdyakov’s more “mystical” tendencies, when he would blank out for minutes at a time. The narrator notes that this tendency was unpredictable and could go either way—for better or worse. With Smerdyakov being the product of a “holy fool” and a relentlessly amoral man, the unpredictability of those moments may have been intensified. This may explain why, having initially only planned to steal from Fyodor Pavlovich, Smerdyakov was suddenly seized by a desire to kill.

Marya Kondratyevna and her invalid mother live near Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, and the dilapidated summerhouse where Dmitry watches for Grushenka is in the large garden next to their small home. Although poor because she had to give up her work to care for her mother, Marya Kondratyevna, who is friends with Smerdyakov, likes to walk around in her fancy dresses from her time as a lady’s attendant. On the other hand, she is not above regularly begging for food from Marfa Ignatyevna, who luckily doesn’t mind. Marya Kondratyevna is a great admirer of Smerdyakov, which suits him fine, and eventually he moves into the best room of their poor, small house. Marya Kondratyevna is also the one who discovers Smerdyakov after he has hanged himself.

Kuzma Samsonov is Grushenka’s patron. Wealthy, elderly, mean, and miserly, he is also extremely savvy and doesn’t think too highly of Dmitry. Between father and son, Samsonov believes Fyodor Pavlovich to be the better business choice (he advises Grushenka to get a pre-nuptial agreement). So when Dmitry shows up with a “business” idea, Samsonov listens with cold calculation and then sends Dmitry on a fool’s errand. Samsonov, who is literally on his last legs (he has trouble standing and walking at this point), dies before the trial begins.

Lurcher, or Gorstkin, which is his real name (“Lurcher” being an insulting nickname that Samsonov deliberately fed Dmitry), is the timber merchant to whom Samsonov sent Dmitry to foil the latter’s plans. To find him, Dmitry had to go out of town and then, when he finally tracked him down, he had to wait until Gorstkin slept off his drunken stupor, after which Gorstkin just started drinking again—to Dmitry’s dismay. Like Samsonov, Gorstkin had no interest in Dmitry’s “business” idea. On top of that, Dmitry had become so tired himself that he fell asleep twice, which wasted even more time. He finally gave up on his idea and went home.

Fenya and her grandmother are Grushenka’s trusted servants. In his furious quest to find Grushenka, Dmitry visits them both before and after the mishap in his father’s garden that knocked out Grigory around the time of Fyodor Pavlovich’s murder. Because of Dmitry’s two visits, they witnessed him grabbing the pestle beforehand and also saw the blood on his hands and face when he returned. Fenya later goes out of her way to find Dmitry, who is with Perkhotin at the grocer’s, and she pleads with him to not hurt Grushenka.

Andrei is the driver who takes Dmitry to Mokroye for his big final fling before committing suicide—or so the plan goes for the moment. Dmitry also doesn’t mind spilling all that to Andrei, who listens sympathetically but later has to tell the truth as a witness. On the way to Mokroye, the two of them have a conversation about heaven and hell, and like so many minor characters, Andrei is a mouthpiece for some of the novel’s larger ideas.

Mikhail Makarov, the police chief, is a basically friendly, generous man who, like the officers of the team investigating Dmitry’s case, is part of the social fabric of the town. Consequently, he knows Dmitry personally, which makes being objective more difficult, especially since Dmitry has a talent for offending people sooner or later. The police chief arrives at the scene of Dmitry’s arrest in a judgmental state of mind and prefers to keep his distance from the investigative proceedings. He is also in charge of watching Grushenka during Dmitry’s interrogation, and while his initial reaction to her is not good, he soon changes his mind because of her honesty and obvious love of Dmitry, expressed in self-blame and emotional outbursts of caring. Later in the story, he turns a blind eye to the prison rules by letting Dmitry have visitors.

Mussjalowicz and Wrublewski are the two Poles who meet Grushenka at the inn in Mokroye and are among the card-playing party when Dmitry arrives. The short one, Mussjalowicz, is the former “officer” (actually a petty government official) and Grushenka’s “true” love, who has meanwhile turned into a plump, self-satisfied gold digger. The other, Wrublewski, is his extremely tall bodyguard. Both are a couple of pompous connivers, who are caught cheating at cards, among other things. Things come to a head when Dmitry meets the two men in a side room during the party and offers them a bribe—which they almost take—in exchange for clearing out. But they wanted more, and the scene leads to an unmasking of their real motives for being there, all to Grushenka’s disgust and the realization that she’s wasted five years of her life agonizing over her “officer.”

Trifon Borisych is the innkeeper in Mokroye, where Dmitry holds his two extravagant parties. Trifon Borisych’s great love in life is money, and as long as Dmitry is willing to throw it his way, he’s happy to see him. But when things go sour for Dmitry, it becomes clear that Trifon Borisych is mainly out for his own interests. A peasant himself, he nevertheless looks down on gypsies and other peasants, whom he views as lower life forms, and he does his best to keep them as far away from himself as possible.

Dr. Herzenstube is the local town doctor, who has been serving the townspeople for years. He is kind, compassionate, and dedicated, although there are complaints about his competency, and he also tends to ramble and lose his train of thought. This latter trait becomes evident at the trial, but its beneficial result is that he spontaneously recounts a touching story of the time he visited Dmitry when he was still a young child. Herzenstube felt sorry for the neglected boy, so he bought him a pound of nuts as a special treat and taught him to say “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” When Dmitry saw the doctor years later, he still remembered both the saying and the pound of nuts, and he thanked the doctor heartily, proof to Herzenstube of Dmitry’s own goodness and capacity for gratitude.

Dr. Varvinsky and the famous doctor from Moscow are the two other doctors who feature as witnesses at Dmitry’s trial. The doctor from Moscow, who also pronounces Ilyusha’s fatal prognosis, has been brought in by Katerina Ivanovna to support the “diminished capacity” plea, with which Herzenstube agrees. However, Dr. Varvinsky, the youngest of the three, does not agree: in his view, Dmitry’s actions make perfect sense given his drunkenness and inflamed passions. For better or worse, the spectators and judge agree with Dr. Varvinsky, as does Dmitry himself.

The mysterious visitor is a character who appears earlier in the starets’s life story, back when the starets went by the name of Zinovy and had just experienced a personal transformation that marked him as a “holy fool.” Intrigued, this man, who was an honored and charitable member of society, began visiting Zinovy privately to discover his motivations and simply to talk. In so doing, he revealed a deep understanding of spiritual concepts as well as considerable commitment to practicing them. But he also harbored a dark secret, which he now admitted to another person for the first time: that long ago he had murdered the woman he loved, all because of jealousy. She had even been engaged to someone else, but that made no difference. Worse, he felt no immediate remorse for his act, but over time it ate away at his soul, and no amount of good deeds could make up for it.

The man’s talks with Zinovy were a form of wrestling with his own soul, a battle he finally won when he made up his mind to confess his deed before his family and the whole town at his formal birthday celebration. Ironically, no one believed him, and they blamed Zinovy for his recent agitation and what they perceived as mental illness. Shortly after his confession, the man, whose name was Mikhail, fell ill and died. But for the first time, he felt free of his great burden, and he died in a spirit of peace and joy.

Unlike most of the other characters, Zhuchka/Perezvon is not a human being but a dog. As the story goes, little Ilyusha had a dog named Zhuchka, who disappeared after Ilyusha stupidly put a pin in a chunk of bread and threw it to him on Smerdyakov’s suggestion. Thinking he had killed the dog, Ilyusha felt terrible remorse and could not forgive himself. However, the dog was not dead. Kolya Krasotkin had found him in the meantime and brought him home, renamed him Perezvon, and taught him a number of tricks. Kolya was aware that Perezvon was Zhuchka, but he kept the whole thing secret for two months until finally bringing him to Ilyusha, whom he had not seen in a while, to Ilyusha’s dismay. Sadly, Ilyusha’s reunion with both Kolya and Zhuchka came too late: by the time Kolya brought the dog over, Ilyusha was dying, but seeing Zhuchka (or Perezvon) again was still a great comfort and relief.

Although not strictly a character in the human sense, the Devil plays an important role in relation to the story and its themes. To Ivan, he is a projection of his own mind in the form of a 3D hallucination with a life of its own, at least as long as the experience lasts.

The Devil visits Ivan several times, but we first meet him shortly before Dmitry’s trial. He appears as one of the impoverished gentry, mild-mannered, entertaining, and philosophical in a rambling, trivial way that in theory makes him amusing to have as a guest (except that he infuriates Ivan). On the one hand, he wants to convince Ivan of his existence; on the other, he’s not too concerned about it since he views it as inevitable. He seems to know everything Ivan is thinking, which to Ivan is proof that this Devil is nothing more than a projection—until he comes up with something Ivan could not have thought of on his own. But when Alyosha knocks on the window, the scene reverts to normal reality, as though none of it ever happened. The exception is the hint the Devil left of Smerdyakov’s death, which Alyosha has come to report.

The Devil’s genteel and lighthearted personality is in stark contrast to the cruel and godless Grand Inquisitor, the star character of a story Ivan made up in his younger years and told to Alyosha earlier in the novel.

The peasants of Russia have a special place in Dostoevsky’s heart. This attitude is represented above all by the starets, who sees their humble honesty, faith, and simplicity as the salvation of Russia. His view of them is not, however, a sugarcoated one. Rather, he understands their pain and suffering, and he both embraces them wholeheartedly and reprimands them as necessary when they come to visit him, which they do often.

Not everyone has such a benign view of the peasants. Kolya Krasotkin, Trifon Borisych, and Ivan all have their moments of treating their lower-class fellow countrymen (although they’re the same class as Trifon Borisych) with disdain or mockery. But the peasants also function as an impetus for awakening. The most notable instances of this are Dmitry’s dream and Ivan’s active compassion for the freezing peasant, who earlier in the same chapter had been singing a prophetic song that had irritated Ivan and inspired feelings of contempt and lack of caring. The fact that Ivan later bothered to pick him up out of the snow, care for him, and carry him to the police station indicated that something within him had opened up. And indeed it had: he had resolved to help his brother Dmitry by telling the truth at the trial, even if it cost him; and the decision made him feel good.