finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_93_part_0.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.epilogue.chapter 1
epilogue, chapter 1
{"name": "Epilogue, Book 12, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/epilogue-book-12-chapter-1", "summary": "But wait, the novel isn't over yet! It's now five days after Dmitri's trial. Alyosha arrives at the home of Katerina Ivanovna, who is caring for Ivan as he recuperates from his illness. Katerina can't help confessing her deepest feelings to Alyosha. She reveals that she and Ivan had argued for three days straight before the trial about Ivan's plans to help his brother to escape. Ivan had left her with an envelope with the escape plans just in case something happened to him. She also talks about her feelings of intense guilt over her vengeful outburst at Dmitri's trial. Alyosha then tells Katerina that he has a special request from Dmitri: he would like to see her before he goes off to serve his sentence in Siberia. Katerina is undecided and Alyosha leaves her.", "analysis": ""}
EPILOGUE Chapter I. Plans For Mitya's Escape


Very early, at nine o'clock in the morning, five days after the trial,
Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna's to talk over a matter of great
importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and talked
to him in the very room in which she had once received Grushenka. In the
next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high fever. Katerina
Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial ordered the sick and
unconscious man to be carried to her house, disregarding the inevitable
gossip and general disapproval of the public. One of the two relations who
lived with her had departed to Moscow immediately after the scene in
court, the other remained. But if both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna
would have adhered to her resolution, and would have gone on nursing the
sick man and sitting by him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were
attending him. The famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give
an opinion as to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors
encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could
not yet give them positive hopes of recovery.

Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had
specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to
approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another engagement
that could not be put off for that same morning, and there was need of
haste.

They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale
and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of hysterical
excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha had come to
her.

"Don't worry about his decision," she said, with confident emphasis to
Alyosha. "One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape.
That unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle--not he, not Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has
sacrificed himself for his brother," Katya added, with flashing eyes--"told
me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has already entered into
negotiations.... I've told you something already.... You see, it will
probably come off at the third _etape_ from here, when the party of
prisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh, it's a long way off yet. Ivan
Fyodorovitch has already visited the superintendent of the third _etape_.
But we don't know yet who will be in charge of the party, and it's
impossible to find that out so long beforehand. To-morrow perhaps I will
show you in detail the whole plan which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the
eve of the trial in case of need.... That was when--do you remember?--you
found us quarreling. He had just gone down-stairs, but seeing you I made
him come back; do you remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about
then?"

"No, I don't," said Alyosha.

"Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He had
told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling about it
at once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because, when he told
me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would escape abroad with
that creature, I felt furious at once--I can't tell you why, I don't know
myself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then about that creature, and
that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed
suddenly, her lips quivering with anger. "As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw
that I was furious about that woman, he instantly imagined I was jealous
of Dmitri and that I still loved Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel
began. I would not give an explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I
could not bear to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving
that ... and when I myself had told him long before that I did not love
Dmitri, that I loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that
creature that made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you
came, he brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if
anything happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the
envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or was
taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me money,
nearly ten thousand--those notes to which the prosecutor referred in his
speech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be changed. I
was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch had not given up
his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this plan of escape to
me, though he was still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved
Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot understand the greatness
of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I wanted to fall at his feet
in reverence, but I thought at once that he would take it only for my joy
at the thought of Mitya's being saved (and he certainly would have
imagined that!), and I was so exasperated at the mere possibility of such
an unjust thought on his part that I lost my temper again, and instead of
kissing his feet, flew into a fury again! Oh, I am unhappy! It's my
character, my awful, unhappy character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by
driving him, too, to abandon me for another with whom he can get on
better, like Dmitri. But ... no, I could not bear it, I should kill
myself. And when you came in then, and when I called to you and told him
to come back, I was so enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he
turned on me that--do you remember?--I cried out to you that it was he, he
alone who had persuaded me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said
that malicious thing on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never
persuaded me that his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I
who persuaded him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved
the way to that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he
was an honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not
ruin him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the
cause of it all, I alone am to blame!"

Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt that
she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the proudest
heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by grief. Oh,
Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery, though she had
carefully concealed it from him during those days since the trial; but it
would have been for some reason too painful to him if she had been brought
so low as to speak to him now about that. She was suffering for her
"treachery" at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her conscience was
impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha, with tears and cries
and hysterical writhings on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and
longed to spare her. It made the commission on which he had come even more
difficult. He spoke of Mitya again.

"It's all right, it's all right, don't be anxious about him!" she began
again, sharply and stubbornly. "All that is only momentary, I know him, I
know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to escape.
It's not as though it would be immediately; he will have time to make up
his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time and will
manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with it. Don't
be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed already: do you
suppose he would give up that creature? And they won't let her go to him,
so he is bound to escape. It's you he's most afraid of, he is afraid you
won't approve of his escape on moral grounds. But you must generously
_allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary," Katya added viciously. She
paused and smiled.

"He talks about some hymn," she went on again, "some cross he has to bear,
some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal about it, and
if you knew how he talked!" Katya cried suddenly, with feeling she could
not repress, "if you knew how he loved that wretched man at the moment he
told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment. And I heard
his story and his tears with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I
am responsible for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable of
suffering," Katya concluded irritably. "Can such a man suffer? Men like
him never suffer!"

There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And
yet it was she who had betrayed him. "Perhaps because she feels how she's
wronged him she hates him at moments," Alyosha thought to himself. He
hoped that it was only "at moments." In Katya's last words he detected a
challenging note, but he did not take it up.

"I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him yourself.
Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be dishonorable, cowardly,
or something ... unchristian, perhaps?" Katya added, even more defiantly.

"Oh, no. I'll tell him everything," muttered Alyosha. "He asks you to come
and see him to-day," he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily in the
face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa.

"Me? Can that be?" she faltered, turning pale.

"It can and ought to be!" Alyosha began emphatically, growing more
animated. "He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened the
subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is beside
himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled with you that
he wants you, but only that you would go and show yourself at his door. So
much has happened to him since that day. He realizes that he has injured
you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask your forgiveness--'It's
impossible to forgive me,' he says himself--but only that you would show
yourself in his doorway."

"It's so sudden...." faltered Katya. "I've had a presentiment all these
days that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to
come. It's impossible!"

"Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first
time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never
grasped it before so fully. He said, 'If she refuses to come I shall be
unhappy all my life.' Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal
servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy--is not that
piteous? Think--you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is innocent,"
broke like a challenge from Alyosha. "His hands are clean, there is no
blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in the future visit
him now. Go, greet him on his way into the darkness--stand at his door,
that is all.... You ought to do it, you ought to!" Alyosha concluded,
laying immense stress on the word "ought."

"I ought to ... but I cannot...." Katya moaned. "He will look at me.... I
can't."

"Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don't
make up your mind to do it now?"

"Better suffer all my life."

"You ought to go, you ought to go," Alyosha repeated with merciless
emphasis.

"But why to-day, why at once?... I can't leave our patient--"

"You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don't come, he
will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity on
him!"

"Have pity on _me!_" Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst into
tears.

"Then you will come," said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. "I'll go and
tell him you will come directly."

"No, don't tell him so on any account," cried Katya in alarm. "I will
come, but don't tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go
in.... I don't know yet--"

Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.

"And what if I meet any one?" she said suddenly, in a low voice, turning
white again.

"That's just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will be
no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you," he
concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.






Epilogue, Book 12, Chapter 1
But wait, the novel isn't over yet! It's now five days after Dmitri's trial. Alyosha arrives at the home of Katerina Ivanovna, who is caring for Ivan as he recuperates from his illness. Katerina can't help confessing her deepest feelings to Alyosha. She reveals that she and Ivan had argued for three days straight before the trial about Ivan's plans to help his brother to escape. Ivan had left her with an envelope with the escape plans just in case something happened to him. She also talks about her feelings of intense guilt over her vengeful outburst at Dmitri's trial. Alyosha then tells Katerina that he has a special request from Dmitri: he would like to see her before he goes off to serve his sentence in Siberia. Katerina is undecided and Alyosha leaves her.