Of these, the first is the son of Prince Volkovsky, Alyosha. "The sweetest boy, handsome, weak and nervous like a woman, but at the same time cheerful and simple-minded, with an open soul and capable of the noblest sensations, with a loving, truthful and grateful heart." But "he has no character" and "a complete absence of will." He will probably do a bad deed, but it will probably be impossible to blame him for this bad deed, but only to feel sorry for it." He was naïve beyond his years and understood almost nothing about real life. However, even at the age of forty, it seems that I would not have recognized anything in her. Such people are, as it were, condemned to eternal minority." Alyosha takes Natasha away from her relatives, wants to get married, but does not imagine how and on what he will live with her. He is going to write a novel, a novel based on the plot of Scribe's comedy, and immediately laughs: "What a writer I will be! " Then he promises to give music lessons, sell his trinkets... He rents an elegant apartment for Natasha, but soon his money comes to an end. Natasha moves into a worse apartment and starts working. Alyosha shouts, 4to despises himself, but continues to do nothing; he cheats on his fiancée with Josephine and Minna, returns to her with a guilty look, and, having calmed down, tells her all the details of his adventures. He falls in love with Katya, but also loves Natasha. "We will all three love each other," he dreams. Breaking Natasha's heart, the "sweetest boy" remains innocent. And when, the narrator remarks, how could this innocent man become guilty? ". Alyosha is Rousseau's homme de la nature, innocent before the Fall, a naturally kind heart, outside of moral will and moral law.

"The author concretizes the idea of Alyosha by introducing his simple-minded hero into the circle of idealists, utopians, reminiscent of Petrashevsky's circle. In Alyosha naïve chatter there is an evil parody of people of the magpie years. He meets two relatives of the "enthusiastic girl" Katya, Levinka and Borenka. One is a student, the other is just a young man. They have a circle: students, officers, artists, one writer; meet on Wednesdays. "These are all fresh young people," says Alyosha. All of them with ardent love for all mankind. We all talk about our present, about our future, about the sciences, about literature, and we talk so well, so directly and simply... And they also call us utopians... In general, we talk about everything that leads to progress, to humanity, to love, all this is said about modern issues. We are talking about glasnost, about the beginning of reforms, about love for humanity, about modern figures... And so all of us, under the leadership of Bezmygin, promised ourselves to act honestly and directly all our lives. I admire high ideas. They may be erroneous, but their foundation is holy."

A. Bem pointed out that Levinka and Borenka got into Dostoevsky's novel from "Woe from Wit" (Levon and Borenka). They were transferred from the English club to Petrashevsky's circle. Alyosha plays the role of Repetilov.

The "kind" boy is helplessly torn between two lovers. He ends up leaving with Katya for the village, assuring Natasha that he will die without her. He torments and suffers, sins and repents, weeps and begins again.

The image of Alyosha is complex. Socially, he is a groundless aristocrat, a victim of bad heredity and a depraved environment. Hence his eternal minority, childishness, detachment from reality. Psychologically, he is an idealist-utopian in the spirit of Petrashevsky, an admirer of everything "high and beautiful". In the moral sense, it is the embodiment of the impotence of natural good, a man without character, without will, and without personality. "A kind heart" does not keep Alyosha from embezzlement, betrayal, deception, even betrayal; For all his sensitiveness, he is the most violent egoist.

In the person of Alyosha, Dostoevsky executes his "innocent" beauty of the forties. After the experience of penal servitude, it appears to him to be sheer frivolity, Khlestakovism and repetilovism.

Even more parodic is the portrayal of the romantic heroine, Nelly's mother. The story of the misfortunes of the girl insulted and abandoned by the prince is put into the mouth of the volunteer detective Masloboev. The prince took Smith's daughter to Paris, robbed her and abandoned her. She had a German fiancé who remained faithful to her in misfortune. Masloboev says of him: "This beauty had an ideal man in love with her, Schiller's brother, a poet, at the same time a merchant, a young dreamer, in a word, quite a German, some kind of Feferkuchen." For the idealist German, the most comical names are chosen: from Feferkuchen he turns into Frauenmilch, then into Feuerbach, and finally into Brudershaft. "Frauenmilch also dragged herself to Paris ... She kept crying, and Feferkuchen whimpered, and many years passed in this way... She had in her hands a written undertaking from the prince, but she was such a "lofty" creature that instead of "the practical application of the law" she confined herself to "lofty and noble contempt" for the seducer. Brudershaft also encouraged her and did not reason: Schiller had been read. Finally, Brudershaft turned sour for some reason and died." Masloboev mockingly characterizes the romantic heroine: "Smithikha was in herself the craziest and craziest woman in the world... After all, this is romanticism, all this is superstellar nonsense on the wildest and craziest scale. Take one thing: from the very beginning she dreamed only of something like heaven on earth and of anguedas, she fell in love wholeheartedly, she believed infinitely, and I am sure that she went mad afterwards, not because she was deceived in him, that he was capable of deceiving her and abandoning her; but because her angel turned into dirt, spat on and humiliated her. Her romantic and crazy soul could not bear such a transformation."

With what delight of destruction the author mocks the former shrine! With what malicious despair he speaks of his cherished dream – to bring heaven to earth, to build an earthly paradise!

"The sublime" feelings of "Smitikha" led to the fact that she not only died herself, but also killed her daughter Nelly.

The "naïve romanticism" of the "kindest" Nikolai Sergeevich Ikhmenev is the reason for his ruin and disgrace. He belongs to those people who, "if they love someone (sometimes God knows why), they give themselves to him with all their souls, sometimes extending their affection to the comic." He fell in love with the prince and could not forgive him for his offense; he started a lawsuit and lost it, cursed Natasha and forgave her. He does not understand anything in reality, "passes from doubt to full enthusiastic faith", he is an adult child, helpless and weak-willed. Instead of a courageous action, there is only a funny fantasy.

"Sensitive heroines", Natasha and Katya are no less powerless. They are puppets in the hands of the prince; they do not know how to fight, but only know how to sacrifice themselves fruitlessly. Natasha suffers, recites poems, walks around the room with her arms crossed, and passively watches how Alyosha gradually cools off towards her. But there is nothing she can do to keep him, to defend her love. "Enthusiastic" Katya talks about high ideas, is going to donate a million for the public good, sobs on Natasha's chest, but calmly beats off her fiancé. And with her, like Alyosha, "good" covers up the most unsightly egoism.

There remains the writer Ivan Petrovich, the author of a philanthropic story, a representative of conscious good. Alyosha has not yet grown up to the moral law; Ivan Petrovich is a convinced bearer of it. He is a humanist and moralist. The Kantian imperative lives in him, he does good for the sake of good, sacrificing his own interests, giving himself to the service of people. Ivan Petrovich saves and takes care of the orphan Nelly, admonishes and directs Alyosha to the true path, fights the villainous prince, strives to arrange Natasha's happiness. But what pathetic results! Humanistic moralism is as powerless as natural good. For a few minutes, Natasha begins to hate her selfless friend. "My consolations," remarks Ivan Petrovich, "only tormented her; my questions annoyed her more and more, even made her angry." After saying goodbye to Alyosha Natasha turns to the "comforter": "Ah, it's you! she shouts. "Now you're with me again!" Well? Again he came to console me... Go away, I can't see you! Away! Away! ". Nelly sometimes reacts in the same way to his unselfish solicitude: "she looks at him with hatred, as if he is guilty of something before her."

The tragic spectacle of the powerlessness of the "natural good": love, compassion, selflessness cannot help one's neighbor. Evil is not defeated by good. By the end of the novel, the Ikhmenevs have a broken life, Natasha has an incurable wound in her heart; Ivan Petrovich is living out his last days in the hospital, Nelly is lying in a coffin. And the traitor Alyosha is blissful with Katya, the villainous prince is prospering and is going to get married. The complete triumph of evil. Why is that? Perhaps9 the humanistic good is imaginary? This is how Dostoevsky poses his basic ethical problem. Its solution;, — in the novels-tragedies.

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