How Did Dostoevsky Create His Characters? by Orlando Bartro
Dostoevsky claimed in one of his letters that he matched his characters with ideas.
He would take idealistic socialism, or vulgar epicureanism, or Orthodox Christianity, or atheist materialism, or some other idea that was floating about the Russia of his day, and match that idea with a character.
Thus Nabokov complained that Dostoevsky’s characters were mere embodiments of ideas.
But is this complaint accurate?
It seems to me, on the contrary, that Dostoevsky, instead of embodying an idea in a person, is describing the actions and inner life of people who are in the grip of various ideas or ideologies, of people who define themselves according to a perspective or belief, who find in this perspective or believe the reason for their lives.
For example, in The Brothers Karamazov, the father lives to feed his belly, for pleasure. Ivan lives to feed his intellect’s pride; Mitya lives for reckless adventure; Alyosha lives for God. And each of the three brothers is given a characteristic discourse: Ivan’s story of the Grand Inquisitor; Mitya’s testimony during his trial; and Alyosha’s words of hope to the children in the cemetery. All conflicting views are heard, considered, attacked, and the reader is left without an answer.
It is known that Dostoevsky chose to live for God, but his novels hide his view so very well, that many readers have long considered him a secret atheist. No, Dostoevsky never makes his own perspective known in his novels; he shows fairness to all sides and strives to present accurately the way an idea works within a personality to mold that personality into recognizable forms of people that we readers might know or might even be ourselves.
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available at Amazon for $4.91.