SLAVIC 210 Midterm: Motifs
16 Mar 2018
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Motif - recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text"s major themes. Crimes in the novel are also sins, or crimes against god. Human beings are not capable of passing judgement on one another. Debate between ivan and the monks about the ecclesiastical courts, Self-knowledge is necessary for a person to be redeemed. Only when a man knows himself and faces himself honestly can he come to love others and love god. The principal way to arrive at self-knowledge is through suffering. Suffering occurs through grief and guilt of sin, or agony of illnesses that are metaphors for spiritual conditions (ivan) Dmitri suffers through the misery of realizing his own evil before he can embrace his goodness. Wants to punish herself for being wicked, but her idea of suffering is so shallow, vain, and ridiculous that it is not really a serious attempt at redemption. Christ kisses the grand inquisitor in book v.
