#ilyusha

Also, if Alyosha had been able to help/get through to Smerdyakov, it might've averted the whole tragedy, but do you think he'd be able to? It's hard to dislike Alyosha, but Pavel's a pretty dedicated hater.

Also also, thanks for your analyses, here and in general! I'd been meaning to get into Dostoyevsky for a while, but your posts were the push I needed to start reading!

Ah I'm so happy to hear this! I'm glad you're liking him.

So basically, I think the fact that Alyosha didn't reach out to Pavel is the precise point of the story. It's his flaw that even Alyosha, a compassionate and Christlike figure, is still human and subject to the tendency in human nature to go along with society rather than stand against it. Of course, in many ways Alyosha does stand against it... but not in this, and as a result of him ignoring his blood brother, the children suffer.

None of the brothers treat Pavel as a brother. He is, but their father acknowledges him just enough to give him the patronymic and house him but not enough to give him his name. Instead Pavel got an insult as a surname and serves his father who raped his mother, and the servant who raises him beat him.

Mitya, Ivan, and Alyosha have two different mothers among them too, so Dostoyevsky is emphasizing that this is not a blood thing. The brothers weren't really raised together either, so it's not a shared experience thing. So then, why aren't they accepting of Pavel?

The only real answer is that they adhered to social norms of the day regarding Pavel, and the result is that he treats them like they've treated him.

Mitya doesn’t really acknowledge Pavel at all, treating him exactly like their father treats him. He acts like Pavel doesn't count, so Pavel frames Mitya as if his life doesn't count.

Ivan comes to closet of all the brothers to acknowledging Pavel, but he really just uses Pavel as a receptacle for his ideals without any consideration of Pavel as a person much less a brother—so Pavel uses those ideals to justify his murder. 

But, Ivan does ask the pointed question: what of the children? Of course, the irony is that Ivan can ask about the neglected and abused children in theoretical debates with Alyosha, but he neglects to actually put any theory into action. Like. Ivan. Your brother. He's an abused child. Right there. Listening to you.

Alyosha doesn't interact with Pavel much at all, but neither does he treat him like a brother.

His mentor, Father Zosima, even comments that suicides (how Pavel died) should be the most pitied:

But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. Love can never be an offence to Christ. For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my life, I confess it, fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them every day.

Zosima's lament is not just that people take their own lives--it's specifically that the Church casts them out. It's tragedy creating tragedy. And because Alyosha didn’t reach out to Pavel while he lived, he loses almost his entire family because of it. His father's murdered. Mitya's in prison. Ivan's consumed by guilt and "brain fever."

So is it fair to say that Alyosha created his own tragedy? Well, that seems a bit harsh. Yet at the same time, it is a theme in the novel that we are all responsible for each other. So it's fair to say that the tragedies are a natural consequences, but that's not saying he deserves it. In fact it's tragic because he doesn't.

Yet, there's hope. The tragedy and Alyosha's realization of it is why, thematically, the ending of the entire novel takes place at a child's funeral.

Keep in mind, the child who died, Ilyusha, was not a perfect child--in fact, he was noted to be spiteful and attacked other kids and even Alyosha. He was a victim of bullying and a rough family situation, and had a terminal illness (tuberculosis)--all of which Pavel also endures (except his is epilepsy). So basically, we're supposed to see Ilyusha as an earlier version of Pavel (and again, Pavel actually encourages Ilyusha in the novel to be cruel to animals, which he does).

Yet at the very least? Ilusha was loved by his family. Pavel didn't even have that. Ilyusha is also noted to be capable of intense kindness. Could that have been Pavel, if someone had tried to reach him?

At Ilyusha's funeral, Alyosha says the following:

Let us make a compact here, at Ilyusha’s stone, that we will never forget Ilyusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don’t meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind‐hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father’s honor and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honor or fall into great misfortune—still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. 

So what of Pavel? What of the children? Reach out to them. Even the ones who appear spiteful and cruel. Especially the ones who are unloved, because love is, as Alyosha himself says in the same speech at Ilyusha's funeral, even if it's just a memory:

If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.