In this post I turn my attention to the character of Rakitin.
Rakitin was a divinity student living at the monastery with Father Zossima and Alyosha. Rakitin is a foil to Alyosha, just as Father Ferapont is a foil to Father Zossima. Alyosha is a gentle and honest spiritual seeker who struggles but comes through his struggles to a stronger faith. Rakitin, on the other hand, is a rank unbeliever and a selfish opportunist. Rakitin even tries to seduce Alyosha to fall into sin at the critical moment when his faith is weakest.
We first meet Rakitin at Father Zossima’s meeting with the Karamazovs early on in the story. Rakitin is present but says nothing during the entire meeting. After the meeting, however, he detains Alyosha as Alyosha is on his way to Father Superior’s, and tells him all about his impressions of the meeting, of the sensual Karamazov nature, and of what he thinks the future holds for the Karamazovs.
A couple of interesting observations here: First, Rakitin detained Alyosha as he was being sent by Father Zossima to Father Superior’s. Father Zossima sensed that some trouble was going to take place at Father Superior’s and that if Alyosha was there it might be stopped. But Rakitin holds Alyosha up, and in the meantime Fyodor Karamazov goes to Father Superior’s and pulls his final piece of buffoonery. Later in the story, Father Zossima instructed Alyosha to leave the monastery upon his death, because he probably sensed that something terrible was going to happen at the Karamazov house that might be averted if Alyosha was there. But Rakitin detained Alyosha and asked him to go to Grushenka’s. And in the state that Alyosha was in after Father Zossima’s death and the events surrounding it, he was in no shape to refuse. And it was during the evening of Alyosha and Rakitin’s visit to Grushenka that the murder of Fyodor Karamazov took place.
Both of these are instances where Rakitin’s influence kept Alyosha from accomplishing some good that he was sent by Father Zossima to do, and something terrible happens because Alyosha is not there to avert it. The first instance points to and foreshadows the second. The first time it is only a piece of buffoonery that is allowed to occur because of Alyosha’s absence; the second it is the murder of Fyodor Karamazov.
Another interesting observation: During Rakitin’s first conversation with Alyosha he mentions Pushkin, a Russian poet who wrote poems about women’s feet. Later on in the story, Rakitin has a crush on Madame Hohlakov and writes a poem about her foot.
Dostoyevsky offers the following comment on Rakitin’s character: “He was well aware of his abilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self-conceit. He felt confident that he would someday play a prominent part of some sort. But Alyosha, who was attached to him, was distressed to see that his friend Rakitin was dishonorable, and quite unconscious of being so. He felt, on the contrary, that because he would not steal money left on a table that he was a man of the highest integrity. Neither Alyosha nor anyone else could have convinced him otherwise.”
The next time we see Rakitin is after the death of Father Zossima. Alyosha is grieving the loss of his elder and the events of that day which have caused his elder’s esteem to fall precipitously in the eyes of the community. Rakitin wants to take Alyosha to Grushenka because he relishes the prospect of witnessing the fall of the righteous, and Alyosha is in no condition to refuse him. But a most unexpected thing happens as a result of this meeting; Alyosha and Grushenka are both in the midst of intense spiritual crises, and in each other they find the way back to faith. Rakitin is supremely disappointed at this. As he and Alyosha are leaving, he cries out, “Damnation take you all and each of you! Why the devil did I take you up to Grushenka? I don’t want to see you any more, ever. Go alone, there’s your road!”
The next we see of Rakitin after this is in Book XI. It is several months after the murder, the day before Dmitri’s trial. In the meantime Rakitin has fallen in love with Madame Hohlakov, with a view to marrying her and living off her fortune. He even wrote a love poem about her injured foot. But Madame Hohlakov did not love him, and eventually she threw him out of her house. So he wrote a scandalous piece about the Karamazov case in which he alleged that Madame Hohlakov offered Dmitri three thousand roubles to elope with her to the gold mines in Siberia, and sold it to a Petersburg tabloid.
After this Alyosha goes to prison to visit Dmitri, and runs into Rakitin on the way out. Dmitri tells Alyosha all about Rakitin, how he wants to write a paper proving that Dmitri’s environment made him kill his father, how science has disproven the existence of God, and how Rakitin wanted to marry Madame Hohlakov for her money and use it to start a paper to promote his socialistic views. Dmitri tells Alyosha about Rakitin’s love poem: “And he had written this doggerel. ‘It’s the first time I’ve soiled my hands with writing poetry,’ he said. ‘It’s to win her heart, so it’s in a good cause. When I get hold of that silly woman’s fortune, I can be of great social help.’ They have this social justification for every shady thing they do!”
Finally, at the trial, Rakitin testifies for the prosecution. His knowledge of the particulars of the case is extremely thorough. But upon cross-examination, the defense attorney Fetyukovitch questions him about his bringing Alyosha to Grushenka for twenty-five roubles. Rakitin does not have a satisfactory answer, and he leaves the witness stand in disgrace. And that is the last we see of him in the story.
