Character guide

Alyosha Karamazov

major

Also known as Alyosha, Alexey Fyodorovitch, Alexey, little Alexey

Alyosha moves between the monastery, his father's house, and the drawing rooms of women half in love with him, carrying messages and absorbing other people's feverish secrets. His gift is a soft answer that disarms — he tells Katerina Ivanovna she will testify honorably and means it — yet that same openness leaves him trailing after Ivan through the streets, unsure whether he is following a brother or an illness. He matters because the novel's quarrels keep funneling through him: whoever wants to be understood comes to Alyosha first.

Dmitri Karamazov

major

Also known as Mitya, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov, the younger Karamazov

Dmitri grew up believing he had property and came of age to discover he had nothing but his father's IOUs and evasions. He is reckless with money, quick to a duel or a debt, and helplessly split between the proud Katerina Ivanovna he once humiliated and the fierce Grushenka his own father is pursuing. His rage at Fyodor Pavlovitch is the engine of the book's central catastrophe, and the prosecutor's portrait of the family — 'the sun in a drop of water' — is written around him.

Ivan Karamazov

major

Also known as Ivan Fyodorovitch, Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov, brother Ivan

Ivan is the educated Karamazov, welcome in local society, who has 'denied and rejected much already' and never bothered to hide it. He is entangled with Katerina Ivanovna in a familiarity Alyosha didn't suspect, and he treats Lise's adolescent letter with a contempt that reads as self-disgust. His cold intelligence makes him the person others quote and lean on, which is precisely why his unraveling — the fever Katerina warns Alyosha about — carries so much weight in the middle of the story.

Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

major

Also known as Fyodor Pavlovitch, old Karamazov, old Fyodor Pavlovitch

Fyodor Pavlovitch began as a poor dependent, married into money, and grew bolder with prosperity until only his malicious cynicism remained. He swindled Dmitri of his maternal inheritance and is now spending it on the same woman his son wants, cheerfully treating fatherhood as a joke he was never required to take seriously. The prosecutor calls him typical of a whole class of modern fathers, and the novel's first murderous quarrel is built directly on his refusal to be one.

Grushenka

major

Also known as Agrafena Alexandrovna, Agrafena, rogue Grushenka

Grushenka holds court in a private room with a Pole and a pipe-smoking companion when Dmitri bursts in with a bundle of notes and a vow to make it his last night. She watches him with 'intense curiosity and still some uneasiness,' laughing off his dramatics while clearly measuring what he is capable of. Her refusal to be simply adored or simply bought is what makes her dangerous to both Karamazovs, and her choices drive the middle of the book.

Smerdyakov

major

Also known as VI Smerdyakov, the deceased Smerdyakov

Smerdyakov lies in bed after a fit, speaking to Ivan with a patronizing calm that is more unsettling than any outburst. He insists he cannot foretell a seizure and yet had described the day, the hour, and the cellar stairs in advance, and he has already told the doctors and the investigating lawyer the same story. His claim to trust Ivan 'as in God Almighty' is the kind of flattery that implicates the flattered, and his presence turns the household's contempt for him into the novel's coldest thread.

Katerina Ivanovna

supporting

Also known as Katya, Fatal Katya, Katerina Ivanovna's

Katerina Ivanovna is the aristocratic beauty engaged to Dmitri, a match tangled in debt, gratitude, and humiliation. She lent him three thousand roubles and cannot forgive the hold it gives him over her, nor her own need to appear noble in Ivan's eyes. Her fierce pride and self-punishing loyalty make her a quiet engine of the novel's central conflicts, driving Dmitri toward desperation and Ivan toward his own moral crisis.

Father Zossima

supporting

Also known as Zossima, The elder Zossima, blessed Father, Father

Father Zossima is the revered monk to whom Alyosha binds himself, a man whose reputation for healing and insight draws pilgrims to the monastery. His long deathbed narrative—recounting his arrogant youth, his brother's conversion, and a mysterious visitor—offers the novel's most direct argument that active love, not ecstasy, redeems. His looming absence shapes everything: the scandal of his corpse, the doubts it provokes, and the faith Alyosha must carry forward without him.

Kolya Krassotkin

supporting

Also known as Kolya, Krassotkin, little Kolya

Kolya Krassotkin is the self-appointed intellectual of the local schoolboys, a boy who quotes Rakitin, declares himself a Socialist, and keeps a dignified silence when impressed. He worships Alyosha but would never admit it, and his pride has kept him from joining the other boys in visiting the dying Ilusha. His eventual surrender to that visit—and the tenderness beneath his swagger—makes him a small but luminous portrait of adolescence straining toward goodness.

Ilusha

supporting

Also known as VII Ilusha, III Ilusha

Ilusha is the son of the poor, half-mad Captain Snegiryov, and he has been tormented by the schoolboys since Dmitri dragged his father through the street by his beard. His illness draws the boys back to him in a reversal of cruelty into tenderness, and his father's frantic love and grief become a mirror of the novel's larger questions about suffering and dignity. His story, told largely through Alyosha's eyes, gives the book its most intimate and devastating portrait of childhood wounded by adult violence.

Rakitin

supporting

Also known as Mr. Rakitin, Even Rakitin

Rakitin is Alyosha's sometime friend and the town's most fluent gossip, a man who moves between the monastery and the drawing rooms with equal ease. He feeds Kolya ideas about socialism and habit, and he carries messages—and motives—between Katerina Ivanovna, Dmitri, and Madame Hohlakov. His cleverness is real but hollow, and his willingness to use Alyosha's trust for his own advancement makes him a quiet study in the corruption of intelligence without love.

Lise Hohlakov

supporting

Also known as Lise, Alexey Fyodorovitch, Lise

Lise Hohlakov is the young invalid daughter of the wealthy, meddlesome Madame Hohlakov, and she has fixed her affections on Alyosha with an intensity that is both childlike and unsettling. She writes him a letter, laughs at her own cruelty, and swings between adoration and a strange desire to torment. Her engagement to Alyosha is proposed and then complicated by her own volatility, and her fate becomes one of the novel's sharpest illustrations of how love can curdle when it is not grounded in humility.

Madame Hohlakov

supporting

Also known as Hohlakov

Madame Hohlakov moves through the town's drawing rooms as a woman of rank, estate business, and restless nerves, devoted to her fourteen-year-old daughter Lise, who cannot walk. She craves the elder's blessing, society's notice, and some answer to her own half-confessed fears, yet her vivacity keeps sliding into gossip and self-dramatization. Her visits and letters pull the Karamazov circle into the monastery's orbit and make her household a stage for the novel's arguments about faith, hysteria, and love.

Grigory

supporting

Also known as old Grigory, Grigory Vassilyevitch, the same Grigory

Grigory Vassilyevitch has served the Karamazov house for decades, a stern, honest man whose loyalty to Fyodor Pavlovitch survives every humiliation the old buffoon inflicts on him. He and his wife brought up Dmitri and the other boys after their mother's death, so his blunt judgments carry the weight of a witness who saw the family's cruelty from the kitchen. His stubborn, unglamorous decency becomes one of the moral measuring sticks against which the sons' chaos is read.

Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin

supporting

Also known as Pyotr Ilyitch, Perhotin, Dear Pyotr Ilyitch

Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin is a minor provincial official who moves easily between the tavern, the police station, and the Karamazovs' tangled affairs, partly out of friendship and partly out of curiosity. He lends Dmitri small sums and observes his wild swings between bravado and desperation, which makes him an uncomfortable witness once the investigation begins. His ordinary, slightly vain respectability throws Dmitri's extravagance into relief and gives the reader a ground-level view of how the scandal spreads through the town.

Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov

supporting

Also known as Nikolay Parfenovitch, young Nikolay Parfenovitch, Nikolay

Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov arrives at the Karamazov house with notebooks, procedure, and a young official's appetite for a case that will make his name. He questions servants, tracks money, and tries to pin Dmitri's contradictory story into a clean legal shape, but the family's emotional weather keeps breaking through his formulas. His interrogation scenes turn the novel's philosophical quarrels into concrete evidence, showing how a town's gossip and a man's soul get translated into charges.

Ippolit Kirillovitch

supporting

Also known as Ippolit, poor Ippolit Kirillovitch

Ippolit Kirillovitch has spent his career unable to command a room, and the Karamazov case hands him the ear of all Russia. Nervous, consumptive, and hungry for vindication, he builds his speech around Fyodor Pavlovitch as a type of cynical modern father and Dmitri as the son shaped by that cynicism. His rhetoric is both genuinely insightful and dangerously self-serving, making the trial a contest not just over guilt but over whose story of the family will be believed.

Fetyukovitch

supporting

Also known as The counsel Fetyukovitch, the celebrated Fetyukovitch

Fetyukovitch is the famous advocate whose name alone changes the atmosphere of the courtroom, a man who has made a career of defending the seemingly indefensible. He listens to Dmitri's chaotic account with professional calm, then builds a defense that turns the prosecution's moral certainties back on themselves. His presence raises the stakes of the trial and forces the reader to weigh legal cleverness against the deeper question of what Dmitri actually is.

Captain Snegiryov

supporting

Also known as Snegiryov, the captain

Snegiryov scrapes by in poverty, mocked by neighbors and ground down by debts he cannot pay, yet he clings fiercely to a dignity no one else grants him. When Dmitri Karamazov drags him from a tavern by his beard, the humiliation lands hardest not on the captain but on Ilusha, who watches and burns. That boy's agony pulls the Karamazov brothers into a world of suffering far from their own, and turns a minor town figure into the moral hinge of the novel's middle stretch.

Fenya

minor

Also known as the terror-stricken Fenya, Poor Fenya

Grushenka's young maid and confidante.

Maximov

minor

Also known as old Maximov

A garrulous old landowner and hanger-on at Mokroe.

Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov

minor

Also known as Miüsov, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, Pyotr

Fyodor's cousin and a liberal intellectual.

Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov

minor

Also known as Kalganov, young Kalganov, Panie Kalganov

A young, wealthy relative of Miüsov, present at key scenes.

Kuzma Samsonov

minor

Also known as Samsonov, old Samsonov, the old widower Samsonov

A wealthy merchant and Grushenka's former protector.

Trifon Borissovitch

minor

The innkeeper at Mokroe.

Marfa Ignatyevna

minor

Also known as Marfa

Grigory's wife and a servant in the Karamazov household.

Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya

minor

Also known as Lizaveta, Stinking Lizaveta, stinking Lizaveta

A mute holy fool and mother of Smerdyakov.

Father Païssy

minor

Also known as Father Païssy, reverend Father

A stern and learned monk at the monastery.

Smurov

minor

Also known as Clever little Smurov, little Smurov

A schoolboy and friend of Kolya Krassotkin.

Pan Vrublevsky

minor

Also known as Vrublevsky, panie Vrublevsky, the huge Vrublevsky

A Polish companion of the Pole at Mokroe.

Pan Mussyalovitch

minor

Also known as Mussyalovitch

A Polish officer and card player at Mokroe.

Doctor Herzenstube

minor

Also known as Herzenstube

A kind-hearted German doctor in the town.

Kartashov

minor

A schoolboy friend of Kolya.

Nina

minor

Ilusha's sickly younger sister.

Perezvon

minor

Kolya's dog, who plays a role in the schoolboys' story.

Yefim Petrovitch Polenov

minor

Also known as Yefim Petrovitch

A landowner who was a guardian of the Karamazov boys.

Adelaïda Ivanovna Miüsov

minor

Also known as Adelaïda Ivanovna

Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife and mother of Dmitri.

Markel

minor

Father Zossima's elder brother who died young.

Father Iosif

minor

Also known as the gentle Father Iosif, Gentle Father Iosif

A gentle monk at the monastery.

Lyagavy

minor

Also known as II Lyagavy, this Lyagavy

A peasant timber merchant with whom Dmitri negotiates.

Father Ferapont

minor

Also known as Father Ferapont, holy Father

An ascetic and fanatical monk opposed to Father Zossima.

Mihail Makarovitch

minor

Also known as Makarovitch, Mihail Makarovitch Makarov

The police captain in the town.

Andrey

minor

A coachman who drives Dmitri to Mokroe.

Doctor Varvinsky

minor

Also known as Varvinsky

A young doctor who testifies at the trial.

Madame Krassotkin

minor

Also known as Krassotkin

Kolya's widowed mother.

Varvara Alexyevna

minor

Also known as Varvara

Ilusha's older sister who cares for him.

Marya Kondratyevna

minor

Also known as Marya

A neighbor of the Karamazovs, fond of Smerdyakov.

Agafya Ivanovna

minor

Also known as Agafya

A servant in the Karamazov household.

Afanasy Pavlovitch

minor

Also known as Afanasy

A servant of Fyodor Pavlovitch.

Mamsel Fenardi

minor

Also known as Fenardi

A performer at the fair mentioned in passing.

Zhutchka

minor

Ilusha's lost dog, later replaced by Perezvon.

Mavriky Mavrikyevitch

minor

Also known as Mavriky Mavrikyevitch Schmertsov

A retired military officer and friend of the family.

Misha

minor

A schoolboy friend of Kolya.

Kostya

minor

A schoolboy friend of Kolya.

Nastya

minor

A servant girl in the Hohlakov household.

Yulia

minor

A servant girl in the Hohlakov household.

Matvey

minor

A coachman or servant mentioned in the narrative.

Timofey

minor

A servant in the Karamazov household.

Gorstkin

minor

Also known as This Gorstkin

A peasant who negotiates with Fyodor Pavlovitch.

Nazar Ivanovitch

minor

An inn servant at Mokroe.

Plotnikov

minor

The shopkeeper from whom Dmitri buys provisions.

Kolbasnikov

minor

A merchant mentioned in the narrative.

Tuzikov

minor

A merchant mentioned in the narrative.

Gridyenko

minor

A merchant mentioned in the narrative.

Belyavsky

minor

Also known as Belyavsky—he

A young man mentioned as a suitor of Katerina Ivanovna.

Von Sohn

minor

A wealthy man mentioned in a scandalous anecdote.

Sabaneyev

minor

A landowner mentioned in passing.

Nazaryev

minor

A merchant mentioned in the narrative.

Sofya Ivanovna

minor

Also known as Sofya

Fyodor Pavlovitch's second wife and mother of Ivan and Alyosha.

Father Anfim

minor

An old monk who traveled with Father Zossima.

Father Varsonofy

minor

Also known as Varsonofy, The elder Varsonofy

An elder at the monastery mentioned in passing.

The Father Superior

minor

Also known as Father Superior

The head of the monastery.

Dardanelov

minor

A teacher at the school attended by Kolya and Ilusha.

Alexey Ivanitch Tchizhov

minor

Also known as Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch

A merchant mentioned in the narrative.

Anna Fyodorovna

minor

A woman mentioned in the narrative.

Arina Petrovna

minor

Also known as Arina

A woman mentioned in the narrative.

Pavel Pavlovitch Korneplodov

minor

Also known as This Korneplodov

A landowner mentioned in the narrative.

Madame Svyetlov

minor

Also known as Svyetlov

A woman mentioned as Grushenka's possible alias.

The widow Morozov

minor

Also known as Morozov

A wealthy widow who owns a house in the town.

Tatyana

minor

A servant in the Hohlakov household.

Vassya

minor

A schoolboy friend of Kolya.