More Surprises in The Brothers Karamazov

I was talking with one of the students a few days before we were going to meet and asked her which of the endless possibilities she thought would be an interesting discussion. Her reply, to put it mildly, surprised me.

She really wanted to talk about Perezvon.

If you haven’t read the book, the name means nothing to you. If you have read the book, the name also means nothing to you. You are wondering “One of the monks? People in town? Lawyers? Kids?”

Don’t feel bad that you do not remember Perezvon.

Perezvon is the dog. And, you may not even remember there was a dog in the novel. In a 750 page novel, he gets a couple dozen pages of screen time.

I expressed my skepticism that the dog could merit much discussion. To which I got this reply:

It can’t be hard to talk about Perezvon. You get this book full of insane rants about everything from free will to murder to loyalty to moral guilt, and yet the thing that makes the saddest character happy is finding his dog. I mean, Ilyusha is this insanely troubled and problematic kid, he’s literally dying, but he’s thrilled when he sees Perezvon again. It sort of makes me want to give up school and reading and history and just live on a ranch. Plus, then you have the whole thing where Kolya keeps his dog from him, prolonging the suffering in an attempt to make the dog even better and whatnot. It’s tragically beautiful.
(Izzy Baird, e-mail to author, February 1, 2020)

As I thought about her comment, I realized that the episode with Perezvon is even more interesting than I thought when I first read Izzy’s comments.

We need to revisit the story. Perezvon was not Ilyusha’s dog. He was a stray dog. Ilyusha, a young kid was induced to throw a piece of meat to the stray dog which contained a pin inside it. The idea was to enjoy the amusement after the dog gobbles up the meat and is tortured by having a pin in its stomach. (People can be cruel.) Ilyusha tosses the meat, the dog gobbles it up, and runs off in great pain presumably to die of internal bleeding. Ilyusha is devastated at what he has done.

Shortly thereafter, Ilyusha is on his own deathbed when one of the other kids, Kolya, shows up with Perezvon. Kolya found the dog shortly after Ilyusha’s act; the dog had not actually swallowed the pin. Then in order to surprise Ilyusha, Kolya spent weeks training the dog to do all sorts of fun tricks. One day, Kolya brings Perezvon to Ilyusha’s bedside. Ilyusha is incredibly happy.

It is, indeed, tragically beautiful.

Here is what is particularly fascinating. The story of Perezvon is a retelling of a rather more famous story. The stray mangy dog is wounded and presumed dead. Then one day the dog comes back transformed into a newer, more vibrant and whole self. It is a story of the death of the old dog and the rebirth as a new dog and the new dog is so much more glorious than the old dog. Ilyusha goes from the grief of knowing he killed to the old dog to the joy of realizing that the dog has been reborn in a new glorious state.

Sin and cruelty lead to death. But death is not the end. The end is glory.

Oh, Dostoevsky is a clever writer. The Perezvon story is a microcosm of the entire Brothers Karamazov. The themes of death and rebirth are everywhere in the novel, including in what seems like an interesting little aside to the larger tale. Noticing that, you suddenly realize that the story of Perezvon is embedded in a longer story of Ilyusha’s death, which is part of a larger story of Alexei bringing redemption and life to the Ilyusha, Kolya, and their friends. That story is thrust right in between the arrest and the trial of Dmitri, who will have his own experience of dying to his old self and being reborn after his vision of the Wee One.

Stories within stories within stories all pointing the same direction. Yeah, this really is the greatest novel of all time.

Bibliography
Baird, Izzy. E-mail to author. February 1, 2020.

[Izzy told me I had to provide a proper citation and a bibliography when I told her I was going to quote her. She also insisted that I use Chicago-style citation methods. Izzy is a historian and thus does not know that APA is the vastly superior citation method. APA does not include personal communications in the bibliography; Chicago does. So, yes this bibliographic entry is completely redundant and useless, but I know I would be roundly chastised by Izzy if I did not include it, and truth be told, I already get chastised by Izzy for enough things.]