The Brothers Karamazov characters

Appears from the start

The father of the Karamazov brothers, a coarse, buffoonish, and dissolute landowner. Sensual, greedy, and shameless, he has squandered attention on his own pleasures while neglecting his sons, and he delights in provoking and humiliating those around him. His appetites and his quarrels over money and women, especially his rivalry with his eldest son over Grushenka, set much of the story's conflict in motion.

Also known as Mitya

Appears from the start

The eldest brother, a passionate, impulsive former army officer given to extremes of feeling. Generous and reckless, honorable in his ideals yet undisciplined in his conduct, he is entangled in bitter disputes with his father over an inheritance and over the beautiful Grushenka, while also bound by an engagement to the proud Katerina Ivanovna. His stormy nature keeps him on the edge of scandal.

Appears from the start

The middle brother, cold, brilliant, and intellectual. A skeptic and a rationalist, he wrestles openly with questions of God, morality, and human suffering, and cannot reconcile faith with the cruelty he sees in the world. Reserved and proud, he keeps his deepest torments to himself, and his ideas exert a powerful influence on those around him.

Also known as Alyosha

Appears from the start

The youngest brother and the novel's gentle moral center. A kind, guileless young man who has entered the local monastery as a novice under the elder Zosima, he is loved and trusted by nearly everyone. Compassionate and clear-eyed, he moves between his warring family members and the wider community, trying to bring understanding and peace.

Appears from the start

A sullen, secretive servant in Fyodor Pavlovich's household, employed as a cook, and widely rumored to be Fyodor's illegitimate son by a local woman. Epileptic, resentful, and cunning, he affects servility while nursing private contempt, and he listens closely to the ideas of the educated men around him.

Also known as Grushenka

Appears from the start

A proud, alluring young woman with a troubled past and a sharp will. Both Fyodor Pavlovich and his son Dmitri pursue her, and their rivalry over her fuels the family's crisis. Capricious and self-protective, she guards herself against being used, and her feelings and loyalties are not easily read.

Appears from the start

Dmitri's proud, strong-willed fiancee, a woman of high social standing bound to him by a debt of gratitude and a sense of duty. Intense and self-dramatizing, she is torn between her attachment to Dmitri and other feelings she struggles to admit, and her pride shapes her every decision.

Appears from the start

A revered elder at the local monastery and Alyosha's spiritual mentor. Wise, humble, and deeply loving, he preaches active love, forgiveness, and responsibility for all, and is sought out by pilgrims and troubled souls alike. His teaching and example form the moral counterweight to the Karamazov family's chaos.

Appears from the start

A proud, sensitive schoolboy from a poor and humiliated family, fiercely devoted to his disgraced father. Bullied and defensive, he becomes the focus of a group of local boys whom Alyosha befriends and guides.

Appears from the start

A cynical, ambitious young seminarian who moves in the same circles as the Karamazovs. Clever and self-interested, he cloaks his careerism in progressive talk, and observes the family's troubles with a calculating eye.