If you find yourself in perplexity, go to the master post for the read-along schedule.

Part 4 is a little longer than the other parts, and there’s also the epilogue to deal with (if we must), so there’s a lot to unpack. But like Parts 1, 2, and 3, there’s really only one thread I enjoyed. The trial was not only the culmination of the story, but a perfect example of Dostoyevsky skewering human foibles in a way that could have been written yesterday.

Actually, the chapters about pre-teen layabout Kolya were very good at conveying the shame of trying to act mature but going a step too far, and making yourself ridiculous in front of the adults. But I could take or leave the other kids’ stuff, with Illyushka and his friends/bullies – I think this was all supposed to connect to the never-written sequel.

So let’s turn instead to Mitya and his trial, which was just as juicy as any sensational true crime documentary. It reminded me of one in particular, “Making a Murderer.”

Much as I obsessed over Making a Murder, I found Mitya’s trial even juicier, and more satisfying, since we do find out who did it and why, two pretty key pieces of info that are obviously not revealed on the Netflix show. It also has a logic and moral centre that reality tends to lacks. The murder at the heart of Making a Murderer is senseless, and the victim is a blank slate, whereas we know the hearts and minds of all the suspects and characters here, and everyone, including the victim, is flawed.

The stories aren’t totally comparable. The whole premise of Making a Murderer is a corrupt justice system coercing false (?) confessions out of a dimwitted young man, whereas in The Brothers K, false confessions are given freely and repeatedly, by men of varying wits! The overwhelming evidence against Mitya, the various, hapless attempts his brothers and lovers make to help him, the celebrated experts and lawyers and overall spectacle of the trial “make” him a murderer, but in the end, the most damning piece of evidence against him is the one he wrote himself. If Making a Murderer is about people getting duped by the system, The Brothers Karamazov is about people duping themselves. 

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Both the book and the show revel in the spectacle a grisly murder creates. I was late to the Making a Murder party, but searching for gifs for this post revealed some of the odd ephemera that’s still out there. Dostoyevsky writes about the spectacle of a murder trial in ways that feel so modern. I’ve said it before, but he shows me time and time again that there’s nothing new in human nature, and while social media might amplify human tendencies, it doesn’t create new ones.

Women be watching true crime:

I even think that all the ladies, every single one of them, a-thirst as they were with such impatience for the acquittal of the ‘interesting’ defendant, were at the same time quite convinced of his complete and utter guilt.

Backseat lawyer-ing:

Lawyers’ dramatic monologues, the prosecution:

“Remember that you are the defenders of our truth, the defenders of our holy Russia…These anxious voices from Europe have already reached our ears. They are already beginning to resound. Then do not tempt them, do not accumulate their ever-growing hatred by a verdict that justified the murder of a father by his own son!…”

Lawyers’ dramatic monologues, the defence:

“In your hands lies my client’s fate, and in your hands, too, the fate of our Russian justice. You shall save it, you shall uphold it, you shall prove that there are those who care for its observance, that it is in good hands!”

Modern true crime creates the same circus of obsessions, hot takes, and easy moralizing. Making a Murderer and shows like it are compelling to watch, but leave me feeling hopeless, and vaguely guilty for having been so compelled. The Brothers K, and Dostoyevsky in general, can also be pretty bleak, but not hopeless. Because he doesn’t suggest easy answers, you don’t feel disappointed when they don’t come.