The case file
Who killed Fyodor Pavlovitch — and who is responsible?
The narrator announces the death on the first page. The trial answers the first question with one name and treats it as the answer to the second; the elder answers the second with everyone. Here you keep them apart. Answer now, answer again whenever the book changes your mind, and every answer is kept with the place you gave it — then read the evidence as it accrues, each piece opening onto its passage.
Your arc
Where you stand against the court, and the elder
Each answer you record is placed where you were in the book when you gave it. The upper line is who killed him, the lower who is responsible.
Nothing recorded yet. Answer the two questions above — now, and again whenever the book moves you — and your arc will be drawn here.
28 pieces, in the order the novel gives them
The evidence
Each is quoted from the text and opens onto its paragraph. Whether it is narrated, sworn or confessed is marked, because the novel’s point is that the court believed true evidence and still reached the wrong man. Pieces past your place are folded away.
Why is such a man alive?
Before the whole company at the monastery, Dmitri asks aloud why his father should live.
nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism
Miüsov reports Ivan’s argument: without belief in immortality, everything would be lawful.
That’s what the old man wants, so that Grushenka can come while he’s away
Father and son want the same woman, and Fyodor is waiting for her to come to him.
If I haven’t killed him, I’ll come again and kill him.
After beating his father, Dmitri threatens to come back and finish it, in front of witnesses.
‘everything is lawful’ since the word has been said. I won’t deny it.
Ivan owns the idea himself, to Alyosha.
At the trial: never heard
I let him know the signals as a great secret
Smerdyakov has told Dmitri the knocks that make Fyodor open his door — the knocks Smerdyakov also knows.
I might fall down the cellar steps
The evening before, Smerdyakov tells Ivan he may have a fit tomorrow, and where.
Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell down from the top of the steps
The next day he falls in a fit and is put to bed — an apparent alibi for the night.
At the trial: believed
“I am a scoundrel,” he whispered to himself.
Ivan leaves for Moscow after Smerdyakov’s hints, and knows what he has done.
At the trial: never heard
we are each responsible to all for all
The elder’s answer to the second question, learned from his dying brother: everyone.
a small brass pestle, not much more than six inches long
Running out of Grushenka’s house, Dmitri snatches up a brass pestle.
At the trial: believed
In Mitya’s hands was a brass pestle, and he flung it mechanically in the grass
In the garden that night Dmitri strikes Grigory down with it and throws it away.
At the trial: believed
the fingers holding them were covered with blood
Within the hour he appears with a fistful of hundred-rouble notes and bloody hands.
At the trial: believed
torn open and was empty
Fyodor is found dead, the envelope for Grushenka torn open and empty on the floor.
At the trial: believed
I’m not guilty of my father’s blood
Dmitri denies the killing from the first question, while admitting he meant to kill.
At the trial: heard, not believed
the door was shut the whole time I was in the garden
Dmitri insists the door into the house was shut the whole time he was in the garden.
At the trial: heard, not believed
that fifteen hundred, like a locket round my neck
His money was not his father’s: half of Katerina’s three thousand, kept sewn up for a month.
At the trial: heard, not believed
not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill him
Dmitri accepts punishment for having wanted the death, not for causing it.
It was only with you, with your help, I killed him, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch is quite innocent
Smerdyakov confesses to Ivan alone that he did it, and that Ivan was his accomplice.
At the trial: never heard
A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all.
The fit in the cellar, his alibi, was faked.
At the trial: never heard
That was quite right what you taught me
He acted, he says, on what Ivan taught him: that all things are lawful.
At the trial: never heard
They are all here, all the three thousand roubles
He hands Ivan the three thousand roubles from the envelope.
I destroy my life of my own will and desire, so as to throw no blame on any one.
Smerdyakov hangs himself the night before the trial, leaving a note that names no one.
the most damning piece of evidence about the open door
Grigory swears the garden door was open — the evidence the prosecution leans on most.
At the trial: believed
I shall kill him as soon as Ivan has gone away.
Katerina produces Dmitri’s drunken letter, written weeks before, as proof of a plan.
At the trial: believed
It was he, not my brother, killed our father. He murdered him and I incited him to do it
Ivan, feverish, tells the court Smerdyakov did it and he himself incited it, and shows the money.
At the trial: heard, not believed
if there was no money, there was no theft of it
The defence: no one ever saw the three thousand, so no robbery can be proved.
At the trial: heard, not believed
“Yes, guilty!”
The jury convicts Dmitri on every count, and so answers both questions with one name.