Dmitri Character Analysis

Dmitri is set up throughout the entire novel to take the fall for his father’s death. He does himself no favors in this regard, as he declares his intention to commit parricide multiple times and physically assaults his father. Dmitri is set up throughout the novel to be Cain. The jury decides he is the murderer of a close family member and is marked in the eyes of society much like Cain is cast away from God’s presence. This is not, however, Dmitri’s fate. Dmitri does not finally commit the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich and manages to attain redemption and an elevation from his diminished state through his experience with guilt and the suffering that the experience entails.
After Dmitri has been convicted of murdering his father, a crime for which he is completely innocent, he dreams of a child starving and freezing to death in Siberia. When he awakes, he is convinced that to go to Siberia and willingly suffer punishment for a crime he did not commit will result in good. The suffering of the child in Dmitri’s dream is a symbol of the pointless suffering of the whole world. In Dmitri’s love-fueled transformation the positive power of a seemingly categorically …show more content…
Though Dmitri has the largest open conflict with his father of the brothers, he is the most alike to Fyodor Pavlovich. Both the father and Dmitri are relentless womanizers and sensualists.
The eldest brother Karamazov appears by the end of the novel to have turned towards a more spiritual outlook. By the end of the novel he seems willing, eager even, to suffer banishment to Siberia for a crime he did not commit. Thereby he hopes to attain a state of expiation for the entire world through the selflessness of his action. The selfless, willing sacrifice of innocent blood, in this case Dmitri’s vital essence, is necessary for the absolution of the world’s