Aloysha as Dostoyevskys Future Hero - Essay Example

Hero Religion and philosophy greatly influenced Dostoyevsky in his life. The personal tragedy that interrupted the of his work was the sudden demise of his three year old son Aloysha, caused by epilepsy, a condition that was inherited from his father. The novelist’s grief for his son readily transformed into making Aloysha the hero of the novel and also imbuing him with all the qualities that he himself most admired. Aloysha is at most Dostoyevsky’s “future hero”. The definition of “hero” in Dostoevky’s work raises a number of critical questions. These intriguing questions are the matter of discussion in the paper. Although the author particularly refers to Aloysha as “the young hero I love so much”, (Dostoevsky 679), he cannot be the heroic character in the plot, because, he cannot be the guide they all look to, apart from accepting everything. Dostoyevsky says in the novel that Aloysha had to be a bit more active in love. But Aloysha’s love could not decide through a particular way from all the distractions. Therefore, Aloysha’s acceptance meets the absolute skepticism of Ivan. Dostoyevsky admits that he did not succeed to mould Aloysha to the shoes of a heroic character, when he says that “although I call Aloysha my hero, I myself know that he is by no means a great man”, the author himself raises a question to himself in order to find the reason for stating Aloysha’s character in terms of real hero. The questions that came to his mind that would cause a matter of analysis could be that, “What is so remarkable about your Aloysha Fyodorovitch that you have chosen him as your hero?” and secondly, in order to be called as a hero, “What has he accomplished?” In defense of the following disparities he tries to make a connection by stating that, “for me he is remarkable, but I doubt strongly whether I shall succeed in proving this to the reader. The fact is, if you please, then he is the protagonist, but a protagonist vague and undefined.” (Slochower 263). Such a context of analyzing the role of Aloysha to be regarded as the hero in Vostoevky’s work comes up when reference is made to the instance in which Aloysha does not lend his active support to Mitya. At the end of the novel, when Mitya needed his consent to agree with Ivan’s plan for escape, Aloysha devotes himself to the boys and Ilusha’s funeral, while the others contribute largely for Mitya’s rescue (Slochower 263). An acquaintance with the voluminous literature of Dostoevsky leaves an impression as like the one not dealing in the realm of a single author-artist who wrote novels and stories but with a number of philosophical statements by several author-thinkers. Dostoevsky’s works can be broken down into a number of discreet philosophical stances, each defended by one or more characters. For some scholars Dostoevsky’s voice merges with one-another of the characters involved, while for others Dostoevsky leaves a peculiar synthesis of ideological voices. Dostoevsky’s voice therefore remains drowned out by all those others voices. The character is therefore treated as ideologically reliable and self-governing. In the context of critics, the fully weighted significant power of the character’s words evolve from the objective sense of authorial discourse to a valid and autonomous independent carrier of his own individual word. The peculiar feature of the critical literature on Dostoevsky cannot be explained by the methodological helplessness of critical thinking. Dostoevsky created the polyphonic forms of novel which came to be regarded as a fundamentally new genre of novelists. Therefore, all elements of novelist structure in literary creations of Dostoevsky corroborates to profound originality (Bakhtin and Emerson 5-8). Dostoevsky gives lesser literary power and artistic vibes to Aloysha than he does in case of his criminal brothers. This has an esthetic sense to do “justice” in one form. Aloysha is the hero although he does very little to address the central problem. He is the hero in only being non-heroic. It can be said that Aloysha happens to be one of the “elements” and also one of the causes in the Karamazov murder. Though Aloysha is not shown to have sinned, he invites punishment and begs for forgiveness. He is guilty because of his incompetence to resolve the problem of the Karamazov’s. Aloysha’s guilt-feeling actions come across the reader more vividly at the death of Father Zossima. With the death of the father figure, Aloysha’s repressed erotical drives cause to bring him to Grushenka, who is he mother-sister figure to him. At this critical juncture, Aloysha’s life is followed by a dream-like sequence in which Aloysha beholds Christ enacting the first of his miracles, the conversion of water to wine. Aloysha’s personality has emerged as a production function. In the work he is depicted as an ever-present listener and as a catalyst, not only for the rage, but also for the latent love imbibed in others (Slochower 262-264) Apart from the shared communal value of imagery used, which would make readers clear, it is highly significant in terms of the protagonist’s view of individual history, because the cross imagery may have embedded in the text as a symbolic configuration of Raskolnikov’s return to faith of his childhood. Instances can be cited here, as to how a cross as a symbol works both at a public and a personal level. The cross as a symbol is worn as a personal token of mutual trust on a relation (Lizaveta and Sonya support each other in their sufferings). Another cited instance can be referred to sacrifice (where Sonya devotes her life to Raskolnikov). The crucifix, usually worn hanging from the neck is recognized as an iconographic mode of representation coming from the nineteenth century Orthodox Church. This doctrine was still endemic to the nineteenth century Russian Culture. Thus by implanting discreet metaphysical symbols into the literal form of expression, the author has effectively managed to transcend the limitation of the nineteenth century secular realism. Bakhtin has shown Dostoevsky to have overcome the limitations of the nineteenth century monologic derivative in the creation of his polyphonic discourse (Pattison and Thompson 177). Dostoevsky’s works have a profound sense of objectivity, because the of the hero’s self-consciousness, once the matter becomes dominant, it again breaks down into a mono-logic unity of artistic domain of work. For instance, in the Book Volume VII, chapter III on Aloysha‘s ‘Critical Moment’, an expression that beholds the characteristic feature as is represented by “Could all his grief and disturbance have been only due to the fact that his elder’s body had shown signs of premature decomposition instead of at once performing miracles? (Dostoevsky, 697). Later all his young strength and energy could not but turn towards that ideal, even to the forgetting at the moment of ‘everything or everyone’ (Dostoevsky 699). Self-consciousness is an artistic domain in the construction of the Hero’s image, also that, it is in itself sufficient to break away from the mono logic unity of the artistic world. It is only represented and not merely expressed. The accents of the hero’s self-consciousness are largely objectified and therefore the work connotes to a distinct distance between the hero and the author. The distinct forms or characteristics associated with Dostoevsky’s hero precisely can be said to be self-conscious, so is he an infinite function and therefore never coincides with him. The hero becomes relatively independent, because everything that qualified the hero to be in the author’s design, no longer functions as a form for finalizing the materials of his self-consciousness. In the mono logic design the hero is defined by the acts and experiences of the reality; such that he is unable to creep out beyond the image of his own character, typically or temperamental without violating the image of the objective authorial world. Because of the dominant representation of the literary works coincide maximally with what is represented; the formal task of the author can be very well expressed in the content. At the critical moments of his confession, the author tries to make all critical considerations and evaluate what others might think of him, to guess the sense of speech used. The hero from the underground looks at himself from the eyes of all others. He perhaps, also knows the objectivity of his definition, neutral both to the other’s consciousness and also own self consciousness also not forgetting to take others point of view into consideration. But he also knows that all these biased interventions to a great extent lie in his hands although he finds difficulty in finalizing them as he perceives his own self. This characteristic feature portrayed here is just not the character trait of the Underground man’s self- consciousness but also a depiction of the author’s expression. The author does leave the final word to his hero (Bakhtin and Emerson 49-53). Therefore, in conclusion, it can be said that, the author constructs the image of hero not out of the words foreign to the hero, also not by the neutral definitions, or neither for creating an objective image, rather he constructs the hero’s discourse about himself and his world. Therefore, Dostoevsky’s hero is not an objectified image as he is intangible. We do not see him or hear him; everything apart from his discourse to the context remains non-essential, and is swallowed up by discourse as its raw material. To convince ourselves of the provocative and subtlety chosen artistic devices used by Dostoevsky, comparison with some of the other German Expressionists like Kornfeld and Werfel among others can be cited as examples. The clarification of expressions and self-revelation of the hero, and his discourse about himself is not pre-determined (as the ultimate goal of construction) by some form of neutral image of him, does sometimes make the author’s setting “fantastic”. Some fantastic viewpoints have been sought for the author outside the ordinary fields of vision (Bakhtin and Emerson 53-54). Works cited: Bakhtin, Mikhail M. and Caryl Emerson. Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics. USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Print Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamakov. 1972. Web http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/The_Brothers_Karamazov_NT.pdf Pattison, George and Thompson, Dianne Oenning. Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print Slochower, Harry. Mythopoesis: Mythic Patterns in the Literary Classics. Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1970. Print Read More