The Brothers Karamazov

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1879

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Part 4, Book 12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4, Book 12 Summary: “A Judicial Error”

This section covers the following chapters: “The Fatal Day,” “Dangerous Witnesses,” “Medical Expertise and One Pound of Nuts,” “Fortune Smiles on Mitya,” “A Sudden Catastrophe,” “The Prosecutor’s Speech. Characterizations,” “A Historical Survey,” “A Treatise on Smerdyakov,” “Psychology at Full Steam. The Galloping Troika. The Finale of the Prosecutor’s Speech,” “The Defense Attorney’s Speech. A Stick with Two Ends,” “There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery,” “And There Was No Murder Either,” “An Adulterer of Thought,” and “Our Peasants Stood Up for Themselves.”

The day of the trial arrives. A famous Moscow lawyer, Fetyukovich, is on the defense side. Fetyukovich creates doubt around each of the witnesses’ testimonies by damaging their credibility. Dr. Herzenstube’s testimony helps Dmitri by showing Dmitri’s grateful, thoughtful nature: He says that Dmitri thanked him for a moment of kindness he showed him in childhood when Dr. Herzenstube gave him a pound of nuts.

Alyosha remembers that Dmitri, when angry with himself, beat his own chest and said that he could remove “half the disgrace” from himself (678). Dmitri beat his chest where the amulet was, which supports Dmitri’s claim that he had the money in the amulet and hadn’t stolen the money from Fyodor’s envelope. Katerina shocks everyone when she brings up her past sexual bargain with Dmitri and that Dmitri gave her his last 5,000 roubles and simply bowed to her. These testimonies greatly help Dmitri.

Ivan appears unwell. He babbles incoherently, then confesses to the murder. He says that the only witness, other than the dead Smerdyakov, is the devil. Ivan is removed from the court. Not wanting Ivan to be convicted, a weeping Katerina presents Dmitri’s drunkenly scrawled letter as evidence against Dmitri. She says Dmitri killed his father, and Ivan only wants to save his brother due to his “deep, deep conscience” (690).

Kirillovich gives a rousing statement. He says that Dmitri is fully rational and capable of murder. He describes Dmitri’s paradoxical character as symbolic of all of Russia, containing “an amazing mixture of good and evil” just like “dear mother Russia” (698); he also claims that to maintain Russia’s honor, Dmitri must be convicted and punished. He spends extensive time discrediting the hypothesis that Smerdyakov was the murderer, and ends his speech urging the jurors to be Russia’s “defenders” (722).

Fetyukovich says he took this case because he was certain of Dmitri’s innocence. He says if Dmitri wanted to ensure there were no witnesses, he would have killed Grigory rather than wiping away his blood. In addition, he says no robbery took place because, other than Smerdyakov, no one saw the money in the envelope. He beseeches the jury to treat Dmitri with mercy because Russian courts are “not only for punishment but also for the salvation of the ruined man!” (747-48).

Dmitri is found guilty of everything. As he is taken away, he insists on his innocence, yells to Katerina that he forgives her, and pleads with the court to take pity on “the other woman” (753), meaning Grushenka.

Part 4, Book 12 Analysis

The author presents a satirical view on Dmitri’s trial, with an ironic take on the motifs of the courtroom drama. Kirillovich, the prosecutor, has a long-standing rivalry with Fetyukovich, the defense lawyer. The public’s trivial reasons for feeling sympathy for or suspicion toward Dmitri have little to do with the evidence: The media narrative has shaped the public’s mind. The narrator notes that “almost all the ladies […] favored Mitya and his acquittal […] because an idea had been formed of him as a conqueror of women’s heart” (657). The public’s “morbid curiosity” is clear in their reactions to scandal, such as Katerina’s turn against Dmitri, or Ivan’s confession. This comment echoes Lise’s earlier assertion about the human fascination with crime that even she, a 14-year-old girl, feels. In addition, the ease with which public opinion can be manipulated indicates the arbitrariness of the public’s judgment: Their negative view of Dmitri begins to shift with Dr. Herzenstube’s heartfelt anecdote from his childhood, but when Katerina produces Dmitri’s letter, his innocence is again suspect as if the letter is definitive proof. The trial’s confusion undermines the suggestion in Ivan’s essay that the state could ever function as the Church: The legal proceeding is faulty, not because it does not have a foundation in the Church but because human judgment is limited, weak, and biased; human understanding cannot ever replicate infallible divine judgment.

The narrator pokes fun at Kirillovich’s overblown language and pretension as well, even noting that Kirillovich died nine months after delivering this speech (693). Kirillovich’s speech holds an allusion to Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls through the metaphorical comparison of Russia to a “troika” (695). Gogol was the famed Russian author of stories such as “The Overcoat” and “The Nose,” and he was a defender of the Russian Orthodox Church and traditionalist values. Kirillovich’s references and statements indicating conservative viewpoint toward Russia and a need for justice, rather than mercy, appeals to the jurors. The comment “our peasants stood up for themselves” (753) after Dmitri is found guilty is rooted in Kirillovich’s self-righteous injunction for the jurors to defend Russia. He is stating that harsh judgment of patricide signals that Russia has not fallen into wantonness and is rejecting liberal modernity. Kirillovich also emphasizes “the fatal significance of chance” (705) in the events of the crime.

Kirillovich uses psychological arguments for a traditional sense of justice. In contrast, Fetyukovich argues rationally: There is not enough solid evidence. Fetyukovich says that the “totality” of the facts demonstrates Dmitri’s guilt but that not “one fact will stand up to criticism if it is considered separately” (726). This statement gets closest to the truth of the crime as understood by the narrator, who never indicates the murderer in the literal sense, only pointing somewhat in the direction of Smerdyakov and Ivan. Every detail points to the possibility that Dmitri murdered his father, but not enough to definitively prove his guilt.

Fetyukovich argues stringently against Kirillovich’s approach to crime due to the looseness of psychological interpretations. It seems that the narrator, too, views such psychologism as superficial and ultimately of little use in the real world, where humans are inherently unpredictable and often contradictory. Kirillovich’s caricatures of each of the family members parodies his simplistic understanding of humanity; he describes Smerdyakov as a “sick idiot” (696) who was misled by Ivan’s atheistic views—but Smerdyakov was no “idiot,” as he was cleverly misleading Kirillovich’s investigation. Kirillovich also describes Alyosha as fundamentally good but clinging to old views that might lead to “dark mysticism” or “witless chauvinism” (697); this characterization alludes to literary critics’ critiques of Dostoevsky’s works. With this allusion, the author identifies himself with Alyosha, suggesting that Alyosha presents the author’s ideal response to the corruption, deception, and materialism of the world.