Dmitri is prone to exasperationate and angry outbursts, save, unlike his forefather who has the same proclivity, Dmitri is able and willing to take right, at least to himself, for the consequences of his love life: "Dmitri . . . secretly blamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several recent occasions" (25). Dmitri shows this willingness to take responsibility for his passion--if too late--again and again, as in the case of his beating of a captain: "Yes, I confess it publicly, I behaved like a brute to that captain, and I regret it now, and I'm disgusted with myself for my brutal anger" (63).
Dmitri certainly has his virtues--generosity, sincerity, the ability to live and feel deeply--but because he is driven by passions which by their nature can never be anything but temporarily satisfied, he is and will never be a happy man. This unhappiness shows in his countenance: "thither was something not healthy in his face" (58). The man of passion is full of stormy moods, contradictions, forces pulling several ways at once within him, and, because he is unwilling or unequal to(p) of controlling or tempering those moods and forces within, he is inevitably the dupe of them, present
are fierce, unruly, and uncontrolled on the surface, [but] are . . . exceedingly tender-hearted, only they don't express it. . . . These natures often passion for tenderness, goodness, and justice, as it were, in contrast to themselves, their unruliness, their ferocity. . . . They are painfully qualified of loving woman . . . with a spiritual and elevated savour (706).
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Norton, 1976.
In other words, Dmitri with his passionate nature seeks immortal in woman, just as Alyosha seeks God in religion, and just as Ivan, ironically, also seeks God but in his vindication of God.
Dmitri's nature stands in stark contrast to the cold-hearted nature of his atheistic brother Ivan.
Unlike Dmitri, Ivan is able to control himself and whatever passion he might have under the surface, but Ivan is in no way the sympathetic fount which Dmitri is.
The character and nature of Dmitri, then, represent the principles of human feeling, romanticism and eros, while the personality and character of Ivan represent the principles of logic, reason, and skepticism. Dmitri's passion is embodied intimately in his zest for Grushenka, as well as in his romance with Katerina. Ivan's most committed kin is with himself and his atheism. Just as importantly, however, is the brothers' relationship with their father. The bust against Dmitri that he murdered his father flows out of his rivalry with the Fyodor, but also out of Ivan's affect on Dmitri, resulting from Ivan's atheistic philosophy that all is permitted in the world. Both brothers, one might somewhat argue, are urged on in their thoughts and actions by their unhealthy relationship with their father. Dmitri and Fyodor are rivals in love, and both have passionate characters, although Dmitri's is pronounced by a sincerity almost wholly lacking(p) in Fyodor, who is manipulative and cunning. Ivan, like all the brothers, suffers from fatherly neglect, but he takes his hatred of his father out on th
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