Last quarter I took the best course I have ever taken. Dostoevsky rocked my world.

You really have to go to the books to get the good stuff, but here’s the final paper I wrote for the course, looking into Dostoevsky’s depiction of paradise and sodom:

Dostoevsky deals in extremes. His characters find themselves in the depths of Sodom in one scene and the heights of Paradise in the next. Their coming into these extremes is primarily the result of the state of these characters’ souls and states of mind, according to the thoughts and actions they are engaging in or have previously engaged in. Though this state of mind or soul is an inner reality, it permeates into other parts of themselves and their environment. Dostoevsky’s art exemplifies this dichotomy between the Devil’s Sodom and The Madonna’s Paradise especially through depicting them with opposing spiritual, mental and environmental states. Dostoevsky’s Sodom is full of moral and spiritual disorder, replete with mental confusion brought on by hyper rationalism, and accompanied by a cramped and oppressive aesthetic, whereas his Paradise exhibits an utterly humble and loving spirit, clarity of understanding found without the rational capacity, and the touching of the earthly and the vast and eternal.

Dostoevsky’s Sodom is glutted with disorder, including both moral perversions, and overstepping traditional moral boundaries, as well as a disorder within the souls of the characters themselves, reflected by their complete lack of care for others.

Moral perversion is particularly a temptation to Dimitri and Ivan in moments of weakness between the murder and the day of trial. When Dimitri reaches Mokroye, an “ogry, a feast of feasts” commences. When Mitya brings out the provisions, the girls run to the champagne and hot chocolate and the men seize the rum and cognac. (p433) Immediately “something disorderly and absurd began”. (p432) The roaring music quickly turned “non-lenten and licentious” and provoked irreverent dancing including “two girls dressed themselves up as bears…rolling on the floor somehow quite indecently” and driven by a girl with the stick. (p432, p434) The characters also act licentiously, with Grushenka kissing Kalganov in front of Mitya and Maximov trying to sneak off with one of the dancing peasants, and all this to a “packed audience” of peasants observing amidst the debaucherous songs. (p435, p436) This scene is the climactic peak of Mitya’s attempts to run from his guilt of stealing Katya’s money. In chasing earthly pleasures in an effort to escape his guilt, Mitya concocts indecency and disorder, leading Mokroye into Sodom that infamous night.

In the evening before the trial, Ivan is led back into Sodom due to the Devil’s manipulation of him with another scene of moral disorder. The Devil tells a story of a beautiful young woman who comes in tears to an elderly priest to receive the sacrament of confession. The old priest, however, upon hearing the young woman’s innocent begging, arranges “a rendezvous with her for that evening”. (p646) The Devil’s story, showing the old priest – a sacred and trusted authority – betraying the innocent young woman, conjures such horrific disorder that it tempts Ivan further back into disillusionment and Sodom. 

Spiritual disorder is also seen in the callous indifference of those whose souls are in a state of Sodom. After Svidrigailov checks into his hotel, he suddenly begins to be concerned about Raskolnikov’s situation, but quickly cuts himself off thinking, “devil take him, he can do what he likes, what’s it to me”. (p533) Soon after this episode, when Svidrigailov brings the weeping five-year-old girl back to his room to sleep, he is suddenly hit with a “heavy and spiteful” feeling, and curses her, upset at himself at the thought of “getting involved” with the suffering child. (p537) In both these moments, Svidrigailov exhibits such callous indifference and lack of responsibility for others, exposing a repulsive disorder within his soul, further coupling spiritual sinfulness and guilt akin to Sodom with disorder perversion.

When the devil describes how everything has already happened an infinite number of times, “always in the same way, to the last detail…a most unspeakable bore”, Ivan too is tempted into a state of apathy on the night before the trial. Worn down by this deterministic image, the devil tries to catechize him in moral relativity, that “everything is permitted” and that all can “jump lightheartedly over any former moral obstacle of the former slave-man.” This temptation away from responsibility brings Ivan back into a state of Sodom.

Beyond moral and spiritual disorder, Sodom is also depicted as including a state of mental confusion, a foggy middle-place between two sides of an argument, that has grown especially due to a heavy reliance on the rational.

At the beginning of Crime & Punishment, after Raskolnikov learned about the dishonesty of the old pawnbroker woman, he withdraws from everyone, “like a turtle into his shell” and spends a month in his room alone, “immersed in himself”, “thinking” about whether he should kill the old woman. (p3, p10, p30) This month of thinking develops a sort of “doubling” in his mind, with two poles representing each side battling the other and bringing him to a confused numbness. In this confusion and numbness, he is tempted to explore the possibility more closely, first visiting the old woman, then getting the ax, then knocking on her door. At the moment when he stands before the old woman, he is so overwhelmed by the doubled voices arguing inside his mind that he experiences “a failure of will” and brings the ax down on the woman as if a “piece of his clothing had been caught in the cogs of the machine and he was being dragged in”. (p74) While Raskolnikov was lying in his room for a month debating whether he should commit the murder or not, he was building up this metaphorical machine in his mind, a mess of clamoring mechanical components gridlocked against itself. In the moment of murder, Raskolnikov is so overwhelmed and confused at the noise and distortion in his head that it is as if he brings the ax down on the head of the woman simply because gravity brought it down in the moment of “failure of will” rather than any sort of victory of one rational thought over another. This confusion due to hyper rationalist activity is characteristic of Dostoevsky’s Sodom.

In the evening before the trial, Ivan returns from his visit to Smerdyakov with the confident resolution to condemn Smerdyakov instead of Dimitri the following day, but the devil pays him a visit and brings him back into a place of confusion by toying with his beliefs. The devil begins by tempting Ivan between faith and doubt about whether he, the devil, exists or not. The Devil even admits to Ivan that his purpose is to lead him “alternatively between belief and disbelief” so that he will never be sure of either and be left in lukewarm confusion. (p645) The Devil also appeals to logic puzzles by painting a picture of eternity where a non-believer reluctantly waited for a thousand years, got up and then walked his penance of a quadrillion miles, and then exclaims that even two seconds of heaven were worth “a quadrillion quadrillion, even raised to the quadrillionth power” of penitential miles. (p643) By turning the eternal into mind-boggling logic puzzles, the devil sabotages Ivan’s mind as if overloading a computer until it crashes, leaving him in puzzled confusion. He numbs him with a decidedly western formulation of eternity, brought to him in the form of “kilometers”, making an all-loving God seem nonsensical. By dragging him between doubt and faith, and into reductionist and rationalist depictions of eternity that overwhelm Ivan’s mind, he brings Ivan away from his firm decision and into Sodom, again being tormented by confusion in the in-between.

Mental confusion also penetrates Mitya’s mind amidst the Sodom of Mokroye. When he sits down to talk with Grushenka, his words come out “incoherently, discontentedly, feverishly” and “strangely”. (p433) Toward the end of the night also, Mitya’s mind is still full of these “scattered thoughts”. (p436) Having engaged in disordered activity fleeing from his guilt at his sin against Katya, Mitya’s mind is also overcome by confusion and Sodom.

Beyond the disordered souls and mental confusion, Dostoevsky’s characters also experience Sodom as darkness, crampedness and oppressive environmental conditions.

After Svidrigailov threatens to rape Dunya and just before he is driven to suicide, he checks into a hotel amidst a weather environment that rivals the horrid condition of his soul. Leaving his room, “terrible clouds…approached him from all sides; thunder rolled, and rain poured down like a waterfall…lash[ing] the ground”. (p526) In the dark, he makes his way to a “long, blackened” hotel. (p530) He is then led to a “remote” room “at the very end of the corridor, in a corner, under the stairs” that is small as a cupboard. (p531) The room is “stuffy” and has only a “very dirty bed” and wallpaper so dirty and tattered that he could barely make out its color. (p531) Raskolnikov notices the wind howling outside his window, and stares outside “into the gloom”, seeing only a “dense fog”, where “nothing could be distinguished. (p530, 534, 538) He is engulfed by Sodom due to his horrific actions and reluctance to repent. The adverse weather conditions and cramped room reflect the terrible and cramped condition of his spirit. His soul is so turned in on itself in pride that he is unable to make anything out through his guilt and sin.

The visual appearance of Raskolnikov’s room is reflective of the state of mind he developed while lying there for a month before murdering the old woman. His room is as small as a “cupboard”, “six paces long”, and had “yellow, dusty wallpaper, coming off the walls everywhere”. (p3, p29) Raskolnikov later further describes how he hid in his room, his “corner”, “like a spider”, and how the “low ceilings and cramped rooms cramp[ed] [his] soul and mind”. (p439) Raskolnikov’s room is described with identical descriptors to Svidrigailov’s hotel room, with its yellow wallpaper and the cupboard-sized crampedness. The conditions of the room reflect his mental state, but he confesses also that his choice to remain in this environment alone for such a long time brings him deeper into Sodom, actively cramping his soul and mind, encouraging him to further turn in on himself with more thinking.

These scenes' common characteristics – their spiritual disorder, mental confusion, and cramped and grim environments – represent Dostoevsky’s depiction of Sodom.

In contrast to this picture of Sodom, one particularly prominent aspect of Dostoevsky’s Madonna – his paradise – is that the characters who experience this paradise have an utterly humble spirit and desire to take responsibility for the sins of the world and to seek forgiveness from all.

When the Elder Zossima recalls his older brother Markel’s conversion to faith, he highlights his brother's sudden deep contrition. He recollects how his brother went from forbidding the maid from lighting the lamp to graciously accepting the favor and bidding her to pray to God as she does so. Markel would plead with them, “my dear ones, how have I deserved your love?” and to the servants, “why do you serve me, am I worthy of being served?” (p289) He would even plead with the birds, “Birds of God, joyful birds, you, too, must forgive men, because I have also sinned before you”. (p289) Markel went on, “let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?” (p290) Markel’s sudden transformation from being “hot-tempered and irritable” to “atremble with love” and his repeated emphasis on humility and forgiveness suggests this paradise is inseparable from his contrite spirit.

Raskolnikov and Alyosha are also thrust into great contrition before entering into a state of resurrection and paradise on earth. For Raskolnikov, while he is sitting on the Siberian river bank with Sonja, he suddenly finds himself flung down at her feet, embracing Sonja’s knees and weeping in contrition. (p578) Similarly, when Alyosha is gazing into the heavens in deep contemplative prayer, he “threw himself to the earth” “as if he had been cut down” and “water[ed] the earth with his tears, embracing and kissing it”, and weeping “even for the stars that shone on him from the abyss.” (p373) Embracing the earth, Alyosha desires “to forgive everyone and for everything, and to ask forgiveness, oh not for himself! but for all and for everything, ‘as others are asking for me’”. Alyosha is renewed through this spirit of reconciliation, and rises “a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life”. (p363) In falling to the earth in reconciliation in contrition, the two are resurrected into a paradise. 

Along with this quality of spirit, those characters who experience paradise also enjoy a radical degree of clarity of mind and understanding, but one that is not found through calculated reasoning. After Raskolnikov falls at Sonja’s feet and rises in new life, he “could not think long or continuously of anything….he could only feel. Instead of dialectics, there was life, and something completely different had to work itself out in his consciousness.” (p579) Similarly, when Markel’s mother doesn’t understand why he seeks forgiveness for all, he tells her, “I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it pains me.” (p289) Both these characters are living in a state of resurrection and are filled with understanding and conviction that this humility is the greatest form of life on earth. While they are not able to explain it rationally, they both see clearly the goodness of this state of life.

Alyosha feels a similar clarity during his moment of paradise during his meditation on Cana of Galilee. As he kneels to pray, he noticed how “fragments of thoughts flashed in his soul, catching fire like little stars and dying out at once to give way to others”, yet he noticed also that “there reigned in his soul something whole, firm, assuaging”. (p359) After going outside, while Alyosha himself did not know why he was embracing the earth or why he “longed so irresistibly to kiss it”, he felt “clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as this heavenly vault descends into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind – now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages.“ (p363) This guiding light, reigning upon his mind, gives Alyosha a deep sense of understanding even if he can’t explain the particulars rationally. This again suggests that, though not explainable through rationality, this experience of paradise involves a clear understanding.

The characters who experience understanding and clarity in this paradise also tend to understand their situations in light of the reality of eternity. When Raskolnikov experiences resurrection on the riverbank in Siberia, “all his torments of the past….even his crime, even his sentence and exile, seemed to him now, in the first impulse, to be some strange, external fact, as if it had not happened to him”. (p579) Sonja, also experiencing paradise, exclaims in triumph at how little time he had left in his sentence in Siberia, “only seven years!” as if it were trivial. (p579) Zossima’s brother Markel also experiences a relativzsing of time in light of eternity, exclaiming with joy “what are years, what are months!” and “why count the days when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness.” (p289) All three of these characters, having encountered the light of eternity, see the rest of their lives through this lens, as a great joy and blessing given to them by God, a burden easily carried because of God’s gift of life.

Dostoevsky’s paradise also brings about the connection of the earthly and eternal worlds, both in bringing the eternal scripture scenes and the eternal vastness of nature into one with Alyosha’s world, producing fruit of abounding life and beauty. When Alyosha begins to doze off in prayer before the elder’s coffin, the words of the Gospel “swept like a whirlwind through [his] mind”, and carries him away in the passage. (p360) Moments later, Alyosha’s stream of consciousness asks, “What’s this? Why are the walls of the room opening out? Ah, yes . . . this is the marriage, the wedding feast . . . yes, of course. Here are the guests, here the newlyweds…” (p361) The walls of Alyosha’s mind open outward, bringing him into the scene of the Wedding at Cana. The Elder is there at the feast, and he gets up and bids Alyosha not to hide out of sight but to join them. (p361) In this moment, Alyosha experiences a joining of worlds, the world of scripture including the eternal wedding feast with the celebrants and Christ all present and in celebration, and also the Elder in his clothes from the day before and Alyosha himself, his heart burning, “tears of rapture nearly burst[ing] from his soul”. (p362) Alyosha’s experience of paradise is one where there is a merging of his earthly reality with the reality of the eternal scripture, and it fills him with great joy and life.

After this first experience of merging, Alyosha steps down from the Elder’s porch and looks up. His rapture left his soul yearning for “freedom, space and vastness”, and he peers up at the “heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly.” (p362) “The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flowerbeds near the house and fallen asleep until morning.” (p362) Then the silence of the earth “seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars.” (p362) “It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, ‘touching other worlds’.” (p362) Again, Alyosha experiences paradise as a merging of worlds, this time his earthly desires for infinite “freedom, space and vastness” is met with the beauty of the natural world and the infinitude of its creator. (p362) This experience brings Alyosha to the earth in tears, but he is risen up, concretely and metaphorically, in newness of life. These three characteristics – a spirit of contrition and responsibility, a non-rational clarity of understanding, and a scene of great life in the touching of worlds – together constitute the defining features of the Madonna’s Paradise. 

Dostoevsky’s depiction of the Madonna’s Paradise and the Devil’s Sodom turn out to be fairly extreme opposites of one another in their most prominent qualities. The spiritual disorder of Dimitri’s spree, the Devil’s story of the priest and Svidrigailov’s indifference is the inverse of Markel’s embrace of his unworthiness and Alyosha’s taking responsibility for all before all. Raskolnikov’s rationalizing into a mental numbness and the Devil’s toying with Ivan’s mind into utter confusion is the inverse of Raskolnikov’s mind full of clarity and life in Siberia and the vault reigning in Alyosha’s soul. And Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov’s rooms cramped like cupboards with old dusty yellow wallpaper, and bad weather and fog outside is the inverse of Alyosha’s yearnings for mercy and vastness met with the eternal worlds of Christ in the wedding feast and the infinitude of God in the stars in the clear sky. 

Dostoevsky’s novels depict what it would be like to live life according to the beliefs and actions of each character. His characters experience moments of Paradise and Sodom based on their actions and the states of their souls. While Dostoevsky never breaks the fourth wall and states openly his take on how humans can live life to the full, we can come to know his vision of life – and its opposite – by noticing his characters' beliefs and ways of life and their coming to experience these extremes of Paradise and Sodom. Because of this, we the readers are able to understand these ideals in the beauty of some of these characters. He gives us Markel, Alyosha and others as friends who accompany us as we continue in life, seeking our way toward paradise.

Last quarter I took the best course I have ever taken. Dostoevsky rocked my world.

You really have to go to the books to get the good stuff, but here’s the final paper I wrote for the course, looking into Dostoevsky’s depiction of paradise and sodom:

Dostoevsky deals in extremes. His characters find themselves in the depths of Sodom in one scene and the heights of Paradise in the next. Their coming into these extremes is primarily the result of the state of these characters’ souls and states of mind, according to the thoughts and actions they are engaging in or have previously engaged in. Though this state of mind or soul is an inner reality, it permeates into other parts of themselves and their environment. Dostoevsky’s art exemplifies this dichotomy between the Devil’s Sodom and The Madonna’s Paradise especially through depicting them with opposing spiritual, mental and environmental states. Dostoevsky’s Sodom is full of moral and spiritual disorder, replete with mental confusion brought on by hyper rationalism, and accompanied by a cramped and oppressive aesthetic, whereas his Paradise exhibits an utterly humble and loving spirit, clarity of understanding found without the rational capacity, and the touching of the earthly and the vast and eternal.

Dostoevsky’s Sodom is glutted with disorder, including both moral perversions, and overstepping traditional moral boundaries, as well as a disorder within the souls of the characters themselves, reflected by their complete lack of care for others.

Moral perversion is particularly a temptation to Dimitri and Ivan in moments of weakness between the murder and the day of trial. When Dimitri reaches Mokroye, an “ogry, a feast of feasts” commences. When Mitya brings out the provisions, the girls run to the champagne and hot chocolate and the men seize the rum and cognac. (p433) Immediately “something disorderly and absurd began”. (p432) The roaring music quickly turned “non-lenten and licentious” and provoked irreverent dancing including “two girls dressed themselves up as bears…rolling on the floor somehow quite indecently” and driven by a girl with the stick. (p432, p434) The characters also act licentiously, with Grushenka kissing Kalganov in front of Mitya and Maximov trying to sneak off with one of the dancing peasants, and all this to a “packed audience” of peasants observing amidst the debaucherous songs. (p435, p436) This scene is the climactic peak of Mitya’s attempts to run from his guilt of stealing Katya’s money. In chasing earthly pleasures in an effort to escape his guilt, Mitya concocts indecency and disorder, leading Mokroye into Sodom that infamous night.

In the evening before the trial, Ivan is led back into Sodom due to the Devil’s manipulation of him with another scene of moral disorder. The Devil tells a story of a beautiful young woman who comes in tears to an elderly priest to receive the sacrament of confession. The old priest, however, upon hearing the young woman’s innocent begging, arranges “a rendezvous with her for that evening”. (p646) The Devil’s story, showing the old priest – a sacred and trusted authority – betraying the innocent young woman, conjures such horrific disorder that it tempts Ivan further back into disillusionment and Sodom. 

Spiritual disorder is also seen in the callous indifference of those whose souls are in a state of Sodom. After Svidrigailov checks into his hotel, he suddenly begins to be concerned about Raskolnikov’s situation, but quickly cuts himself off thinking, “devil take him, he can do what he likes, what’s it to me”. (p533) Soon after this episode, when Svidrigailov brings the weeping five-year-old girl back to his room to sleep, he is suddenly hit with a “heavy and spiteful” feeling, and curses her, upset at himself at the thought of “getting involved” with the suffering child. (p537) In both these moments, Svidrigailov exhibits such callous indifference and lack of responsibility for others, exposing a repulsive disorder within his soul, further coupling spiritual sinfulness and guilt akin to Sodom with disorder perversion.

When the devil describes how everything has already happened an infinite number of times, “always in the same way, to the last detail…a most unspeakable bore”, Ivan too is tempted into a state of apathy on the night before the trial. Worn down by this deterministic image, the devil tries to catechize him in moral relativity, that “everything is permitted” and that all can “jump lightheartedly over any former moral obstacle of the former slave-man.” This temptation away from responsibility brings Ivan back into a state of Sodom.

Beyond moral and spiritual disorder, Sodom is also depicted as including a state of mental confusion, a foggy middle-place between two sides of an argument, that has grown especially due to a heavy reliance on the rational.

At the beginning of Crime & Punishment, after Raskolnikov learned about the dishonesty of the old pawnbroker woman, he withdraws from everyone, “like a turtle into his shell” and spends a month in his room alone, “immersed in himself”, “thinking” about whether he should kill the old woman. (p3, p10, p30) This month of thinking develops a sort of “doubling” in his mind, with two poles representing each side battling the other and bringing him to a confused numbness. In this confusion and numbness, he is tempted to explore the possibility more closely, first visiting the old woman, then getting the ax, then knocking on her door. At the moment when he stands before the old woman, he is so overwhelmed by the doubled voices arguing inside his mind that he experiences “a failure of will” and brings the ax down on the woman as if a “piece of his clothing had been caught in the cogs of the machine and he was being dragged in”. (p74) While Raskolnikov was lying in his room for a month debating whether he should commit the murder or not, he was building up this metaphorical machine in his mind, a mess of clamoring mechanical components gridlocked against itself. In the moment of murder, Raskolnikov is so overwhelmed and confused at the noise and distortion in his head that it is as if he brings the ax down on the head of the woman simply because gravity brought it down in the moment of “failure of will” rather than any sort of victory of one rational thought over another. This confusion due to hyper rationalist activity is characteristic of Dostoevsky’s Sodom.

In the evening before the trial, Ivan returns from his visit to Smerdyakov with the confident resolution to condemn Smerdyakov instead of Dimitri the following day, but the devil pays him a visit and brings him back into a place of confusion by toying with his beliefs. The devil begins by tempting Ivan between faith and doubt about whether he, the devil, exists or not. The Devil even admits to Ivan that his purpose is to lead him “alternatively between belief and disbelief” so that he will never be sure of either and be left in lukewarm confusion. (p645) The Devil also appeals to logic puzzles by painting a picture of eternity where a non-believer reluctantly waited for a thousand years, got up and then walked his penance of a quadrillion miles, and then exclaims that even two seconds of heaven were worth “a quadrillion quadrillion, even raised to the quadrillionth power” of penitential miles. (p643) By turning the eternal into mind-boggling logic puzzles, the devil sabotages Ivan’s mind as if overloading a computer until it crashes, leaving him in puzzled confusion. He numbs him with a decidedly western formulation of eternity, brought to him in the form of “kilometers”, making an all-loving God seem nonsensical. By dragging him between doubt and faith, and into reductionist and rationalist depictions of eternity that overwhelm Ivan’s mind, he brings Ivan away from his firm decision and into Sodom, again being tormented by confusion in the in-between.

Mental confusion also penetrates Mitya’s mind amidst the Sodom of Mokroye. When he sits down to talk with Grushenka, his words come out “incoherently, discontentedly, feverishly” and “strangely”. (p433) Toward the end of the night also, Mitya’s mind is still full of these “scattered thoughts”. (p436) Having engaged in disordered activity fleeing from his guilt at his sin against Katya, Mitya’s mind is also overcome by confusion and Sodom.

Beyond the disordered souls and mental confusion, Dostoevsky’s characters also experience Sodom as darkness, crampedness and oppressive environmental conditions.

After Svidrigailov threatens to rape Dunya and just before he is driven to suicide, he checks into a hotel amidst a weather environment that rivals the horrid condition of his soul. Leaving his room, “terrible clouds…approached him from all sides; thunder rolled, and rain poured down like a waterfall…lash[ing] the ground”. (p526) In the dark, he makes his way to a “long, blackened” hotel. (p530) He is then led to a “remote” room “at the very end of the corridor, in a corner, under the stairs” that is small as a cupboard. (p531) The room is “stuffy” and has only a “very dirty bed” and wallpaper so dirty and tattered that he could barely make out its color. (p531) Raskolnikov notices the wind howling outside his window, and stares outside “into the gloom”, seeing only a “dense fog”, where “nothing could be distinguished. (p530, 534, 538) He is engulfed by Sodom due to his horrific actions and reluctance to repent. The adverse weather conditions and cramped room reflect the terrible and cramped condition of his spirit. His soul is so turned in on itself in pride that he is unable to make anything out through his guilt and sin.

The visual appearance of Raskolnikov’s room is reflective of the state of mind he developed while lying there for a month before murdering the old woman. His room is as small as a “cupboard”, “six paces long”, and had “yellow, dusty wallpaper, coming off the walls everywhere”. (p3, p29) Raskolnikov later further describes how he hid in his room, his “corner”, “like a spider”, and how the “low ceilings and cramped rooms cramp[ed] [his] soul and mind”. (p439) Raskolnikov’s room is described with identical descriptors to Svidrigailov’s hotel room, with its yellow wallpaper and the cupboard-sized crampedness. The conditions of the room reflect his mental state, but he confesses also that his choice to remain in this environment alone for such a long time brings him deeper into Sodom, actively cramping his soul and mind, encouraging him to further turn in on himself with more thinking.

These scenes' common characteristics – their spiritual disorder, mental confusion, and cramped and grim environments – represent Dostoevsky’s depiction of Sodom.

In contrast to this picture of Sodom, one particularly prominent aspect of Dostoevsky’s Madonna – his paradise – is that the characters who experience this paradise have an utterly humble spirit and desire to take responsibility for the sins of the world and to seek forgiveness from all.

When the Elder Zossima recalls his older brother Markel’s conversion to faith, he highlights his brother's sudden deep contrition. He recollects how his brother went from forbidding the maid from lighting the lamp to graciously accepting the favor and bidding her to pray to God as she does so. Markel would plead with them, “my dear ones, how have I deserved your love?” and to the servants, “why do you serve me, am I worthy of being served?” (p289) He would even plead with the birds, “Birds of God, joyful birds, you, too, must forgive men, because I have also sinned before you”. (p289) Markel went on, “let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?” (p290) Markel’s sudden transformation from being “hot-tempered and irritable” to “atremble with love” and his repeated emphasis on humility and forgiveness suggests this paradise is inseparable from his contrite spirit.

Raskolnikov and Alyosha are also thrust into great contrition before entering into a state of resurrection and paradise on earth. For Raskolnikov, while he is sitting on the Siberian river bank with Sonja, he suddenly finds himself flung down at her feet, embracing Sonja’s knees and weeping in contrition. (p578) Similarly, when Alyosha is gazing into the heavens in deep contemplative prayer, he “threw himself to the earth” “as if he had been cut down” and “water[ed] the earth with his tears, embracing and kissing it”, and weeping “even for the stars that shone on him from the abyss.” (p373) Embracing the earth, Alyosha desires “to forgive everyone and for everything, and to ask forgiveness, oh not for himself! but for all and for everything, ‘as others are asking for me’”. Alyosha is renewed through this spirit of reconciliation, and rises “a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life”. (p363) In falling to the earth in reconciliation in contrition, the two are resurrected into a paradise. 

Along with this quality of spirit, those characters who experience paradise also enjoy a radical degree of clarity of mind and understanding, but one that is not found through calculated reasoning. After Raskolnikov falls at Sonja’s feet and rises in new life, he “could not think long or continuously of anything….he could only feel. Instead of dialectics, there was life, and something completely different had to work itself out in his consciousness.” (p579) Similarly, when Markel’s mother doesn’t understand why he seeks forgiveness for all, he tells her, “I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it pains me.” (p289) Both these characters are living in a state of resurrection and are filled with understanding and conviction that this humility is the greatest form of life on earth. While they are not able to explain it rationally, they both see clearly the goodness of this state of life.

Alyosha feels a similar clarity during his moment of paradise during his meditation on Cana of Galilee. As he kneels to pray, he noticed how “fragments of thoughts flashed in his soul, catching fire like little stars and dying out at once to give way to others”, yet he noticed also that “there reigned in his soul something whole, firm, assuaging”. (p359) After going outside, while Alyosha himself did not know why he was embracing the earth or why he “longed so irresistibly to kiss it”, he felt “clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as this heavenly vault descends into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind – now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages.“ (p363) This guiding light, reigning upon his mind, gives Alyosha a deep sense of understanding even if he can’t explain the particulars rationally. This again suggests that, though not explainable through rationality, this experience of paradise involves a clear understanding.

The characters who experience understanding and clarity in this paradise also tend to understand their situations in light of the reality of eternity. When Raskolnikov experiences resurrection on the riverbank in Siberia, “all his torments of the past….even his crime, even his sentence and exile, seemed to him now, in the first impulse, to be some strange, external fact, as if it had not happened to him”. (p579) Sonja, also experiencing paradise, exclaims in triumph at how little time he had left in his sentence in Siberia, “only seven years!” as if it were trivial. (p579) Zossima’s brother Markel also experiences a relativzsing of time in light of eternity, exclaiming with joy “what are years, what are months!” and “why count the days when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness.” (p289) All three of these characters, having encountered the light of eternity, see the rest of their lives through this lens, as a great joy and blessing given to them by God, a burden easily carried because of God’s gift of life.

Dostoevsky’s paradise also brings about the connection of the earthly and eternal worlds, both in bringing the eternal scripture scenes and the eternal vastness of nature into one with Alyosha’s world, producing fruit of abounding life and beauty. When Alyosha begins to doze off in prayer before the elder’s coffin, the words of the Gospel “swept like a whirlwind through [his] mind”, and carries him away in the passage. (p360) Moments later, Alyosha’s stream of consciousness asks, “What’s this? Why are the walls of the room opening out? Ah, yes . . . this is the marriage, the wedding feast . . . yes, of course. Here are the guests, here the newlyweds…” (p361) The walls of Alyosha’s mind open outward, bringing him into the scene of the Wedding at Cana. The Elder is there at the feast, and he gets up and bids Alyosha not to hide out of sight but to join them. (p361) In this moment, Alyosha experiences a joining of worlds, the world of scripture including the eternal wedding feast with the celebrants and Christ all present and in celebration, and also the Elder in his clothes from the day before and Alyosha himself, his heart burning, “tears of rapture nearly burst[ing] from his soul”. (p362) Alyosha’s experience of paradise is one where there is a merging of his earthly reality with the reality of the eternal scripture, and it fills him with great joy and life.

After this first experience of merging, Alyosha steps down from the Elder’s porch and looks up. His rapture left his soul yearning for “freedom, space and vastness”, and he peers up at the “heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly.” (p362) “The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flowerbeds near the house and fallen asleep until morning.” (p362) Then the silence of the earth “seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars.” (p362) “It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, ‘touching other worlds’.” (p362) Again, Alyosha experiences paradise as a merging of worlds, this time his earthly desires for infinite “freedom, space and vastness” is met with the beauty of the natural world and the infinitude of its creator. (p362) This experience brings Alyosha to the earth in tears, but he is risen up, concretely and metaphorically, in newness of life. These three characteristics – a spirit of contrition and responsibility, a non-rational clarity of understanding, and a scene of great life in the touching of worlds – together constitute the defining features of the Madonna’s Paradise. 

Dostoevsky’s depiction of the Madonna’s Paradise and the Devil’s Sodom turn out to be fairly extreme opposites of one another in their most prominent qualities. The spiritual disorder of Dimitri’s spree, the Devil’s story of the priest and Svidrigailov’s indifference is the inverse of Markel’s embrace of his unworthiness and Alyosha’s taking responsibility for all before all. Raskolnikov’s rationalizing into a mental numbness and the Devil’s toying with Ivan’s mind into utter confusion is the inverse of Raskolnikov’s mind full of clarity and life in Siberia and the vault reigning in Alyosha’s soul. And Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov’s rooms cramped like cupboards with old dusty yellow wallpaper, and bad weather and fog outside is the inverse of Alyosha’s yearnings for mercy and vastness met with the eternal worlds of Christ in the wedding feast and the infinitude of God in the stars in the clear sky. 

Dostoevsky’s novels depict what it would be like to live life according to the beliefs and actions of each character. His characters experience moments of Paradise and Sodom based on their actions and the states of their souls. While Dostoevsky never breaks the fourth wall and states openly his take on how humans can live life to the full, we can come to know his vision of life – and its opposite – by noticing his characters' beliefs and ways of life and their coming to experience these extremes of Paradise and Sodom. Because of this, we the readers are able to understand these ideals in the beauty of some of these characters. He gives us Markel, Alyosha and others as friends who accompany us as we continue in life, seeking our way toward paradise.