Alfred Romero
4/4/2023
Professor Frank
LIL 420
Journal #8
For this journal entry, I chose a passage from page 16 of “The Grand Inquisitor” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, where the character Ivan claims that he doesn’t “want more suffering…” (Dostoevsky 16).
In this whole passage, or really the whole chapter of the story, it may be that Dostoevsky is speaking as himself through the character Ivan. To summarize, Ivan doesn’t believe in the suffering of the innocent. He thinks that there’s no justification for why children would have to suffer. He mentions the counterargument of having a harmony that becomes the result of the innocent’s suffrage, but he shuts this down with his perception that it’s not worth the suffering in the first place. That’s an unbalanced system Ivan observes, and he also mentions this loop, for lack of a better word, that’s centered around vengeance. Vengeance in retaliation to suffering of the innocent would completely contradict the idea of harmony, but harmony in its peaceful state also cannot be achieved by simply forgiving atrocious acts. Ivan visualizes this concept through the imagery of a mother having her children get murdered by an oppressor figure through the act of feeding them to dogs. Immediately after, he asks a series of rhetorical questions that direct the audience towards his main point. Talking to Alyosha, he provides one last example, asking if he would consent to a utopia that resulted in the torture of a creature. Alyosha didn’t consent, which marks Ivan’s point getting across to Alyosha. Ivan really just needed his reasoning, rhetorical questions, and harsh depictions of complementary scenarios to get his point across Alyosha’s mind.
