<論文>『カラマーゾフの兄弟』はなぜ「誤審」で終わっているのか

Abstract

The article focuses on the Book Twelve: A Judicial Error, which describes in detail the trial of Dmitrii Karamazov, who was accused of murdering his father. The most mysterious part of the Judicial Error is why innocent Dmitrii was sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude, while the jury decision made to Raskolnikov, who had murdered the two sisters with the ax in “Crime and Punishment” was just eight years. Dostoevsky was a man of compassion, always ready to take up the pen to assault injustices perpetrated by Russia's new court system, which had undergone a substantial reform in the previous decade. In this paper special attention is paid to the lengthy and impassioned closing remarks from the defense counsel in order to come as close as possible to know what Dostoevsky was trying to say both for the future of Russia's court system and for the best benefit of the next generation. The feature of the defense counsel had been dramatically changed from the one Dostoevsky hated and criticized the most in “Writer's Diary”. The reason why Dostoevsky changed the defense counsel's feature probably has something to do with what the author was trying to say.