Still Life: Ride the Samovar and Drink from the Troika

This one is pretty self-explanatory. My terrific chummie was reading The Brothers Karamazov [nods head in approval], and got the Russian words Samovar (teapot) and Troika (carriage) mixed up. Hilarity ensued!

Still Life: Count Your Lucky Stars

So, you know, I was just skimming through The Brothers Karamazov (as I am wont to do), and decided that this would be fun to draw. Keep in mind, I've been sick and hopped up on medicine, so this might not be that funny, I dunno. XD

Katerina Ivanova's Taste in Men

Hee hee, I'm proud of my little added character, Darya. Mostly because I like her color scheme, it's quite summer-y if I dare say so myself! :)

I might replace the picture, because it's... really blurry!

The Grand Inquisi-bore

95% of The Brothers Karamazov is near-flawless, brilliantly nightmarish reading. The 5% that isn't is the chapter The Grand Inquisitor. I get some parts of it, but when I first read it I didn't understand at all. I plan on reading it again, maybe I'll appreciate it then, but until now, have the product of my frustration!
I think that I just didn't like it because Ivan said it was a Poem, and that chapter was... not a poem.

Chibi Illustrations: Broskis Karamazov Edition

I couldn't help myself, so I drew more Brothers Karamazov chibis. :D
Because if there's a better way to show that I really liked a book, I'd like to hear it!
And by the by, SPOILERS!

 

So there's this bit in the book where Alyosha is at Katerina's house and her romantic rival, Grushenka is there! The two ladies get along well at first, but they eventually start to argue. I know the illustration makes it look like they're fighting over Alyosha, but he's supposed to look like he's caught in the middle of their crazy argument.

 

 

I'm uh, proud of this one. It's hard for me to draw chibis in more complicated poses because their heads are so big, you have to maneuver them right so their heads aren't in the way! But I pulled it off in a way I consider satisfactory, so yay! Ahem, this is an illustration of the scene in the book where Alyosha tries to help out a little boy who was being bullied, but the little boy seems to have some kind of grudge against poor, well-meaning Alyosha. So he bites him. On the finger. Kind of weird, but not the strangest thing to happen in the book. Not by a long shot! XD

 

This one is pretty nondescript. I just wanted to draw Dmitri. :P

 

Remember what I said earlier about really weird stuff? Yeah, Ivan's Satan hallucinations were a little odd. But dang, it was a good chapter. A... good, long chapter. Kind of creepy though, I remember sitting in the garage just glued to the recliner and soaking in every word.

 

 

 Scenery is not my forte. It's all brown! But the faces, I feel vaguely proud of. :D Especially Ivan, just lookit that mouth! He looks like he's singing the title song from the musical Oklahoma!.

 

Ah, the ending. I like how at the end of the book, things aren't all resolved, and you don't really know if most of the characters are going to be okay, and yet it still manages to be satisfying in some way!

 

Okay, so the next drawing (kind of a bonus) is pretty weird, but I couldn't help myself. So there's this Russo-Finnish fairy tale movie called Jack Frost, and in it there's a guy called Ivan, who is proud and boastful. While wandering around in the forest, he gets accosted by a little mushroom man (the aptly named Father Mushroom), who challenges him to sort of a game of hide and seek. Ivan wins, and Father Mushroom gives him a magic bow that will never miss it's mark. However. Ivan doesn't say 'Thank you' to him, so Father Mushroom curses him to have a bear's head until he does one genuinely good deed. As Bear-Ivan wanders the countryside, he gets haunted by Father Mushroom who constantly taunts him by yelling "Ivanushka!". It's a pretty goofy movie, but I like it despite it's silliness because it's just so charming in it's stupidity.

So while reading The Brothers Karamazov I immediately thought of Ivan and Father Mushroom. Especially at the part where Ivan is losing his mind and hallucinates that there's a petty devil harassing him. So I drew this. :)

 

 

Thanks for taking a look at my drawings! And if you read that entire description of Jack Frost, then kudos to you for your high weirdness-tolerance! Posts might get sparse from here until say, May 3rd, because stuff just got real at orchestra. I know you're all probably a little tired of hearing me go on and on about orchestra, but it's a big part of my life and I can't help ranting about it at every opportunity. :D

I also got a solo. Which is big news. [SQUEE!!!]

I WON'T LET YOU DOWN, SIR!!!



 





The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky [1880]

"You know boys," Alyosha said, "You needn't be afraid of life! Life is so good when you do something that is good and just."

Whew! What a crazy book! And I mean that in the best possible way, because I really enjoyed it. While not fast paced, The Brothers Karamazov is hardly ever boring, and there's kind of a subtle tension carried throughout the book. The characters are also very interesting and complicated.
That having been said, I wouldn't say that this book is perfect.
My first and foremost problem with the book isn't really the author's fault. I found the ending, while satisfying and very moving, a little open-ended. Fyodor Dostoevsky was planning on this book being the first in a trilogy about the youngest Karamazov brother, Alyosha (poor Alyosha). Unfortunately, he died before he could even start the second one. So it's not really his fault that some aspects of the book are left open ended.

Also, this book is full of rambling. The characters in this book love to talk. This is mostly fine because most of the time it's very interesting. But there are a few instances where it just got plain redundant. Like the chapter The Grand Inquisitor. That's the most famous chapter of the novel, but I found it turgid and rather [dare I tick off the literature professors?] a hinder to the flow of the story.. Ivan (poor Ivan) is not much of a poet, that's for sure. And there's the Prosecutor's speech in the courtroom. My main issues with the courtroom sequence was that most of the stuff being discussed was stuff we had already heard being discussed before.

Aside from all that, I really liked it! It's not really a fun book though. I mean, even Les Miserables had plenty of moments of brevity and light heartedness. This book is pretty much doom and gloom except for a few scenes with Elder Zosima (Think Russian Bishop Myriel) and the very end. It kind of got to be too much at times. I would recommend having something easy and lighthearted handy if you want to read this.

I was a little surprised by some of the characters, and by that I mean I was surprised by Alyosha. Alyosha (that's short for Alexei) is the youngest Karamazov brother and is a novice at the local Monastery. In the little chapter about little kid Alyosha, I kind of pegged him for being one of those bland, pure hearted heroes who never does anything wrong or has moments of doubt (Think Despereaux from the atrocious Tale of Despereaux movie adaptation). But he surprised me by being an interesting character with a good story arc. He's very saintly and kind, but it's pulled off in a good way. The other brothers are also very interesting and their story arcs don't go where you expect them to from the beginning. Except Smerdyakov, he's kind of exactly who he looks like. I liked Dmitry (or 'Mitya'), he was quite complicated and, despite his many faults, was a likeable character. Ivan was probably the most complicated character, and even though he wasn't a terribly likeable person I still felt a little bad for him in the end. I haven't even started to cover all the other characters in the book, but they were pretty cool. I liked Gregory, the Karamazov's housekeeper.

The Verdict: A
It took me a super long time to get this review off the ground! I guess I could blame that on my French homework (Oui! Je suis une etudiante a l'universite! Ma prof est tres sympa. :). The thing is, I don't really know why I like this book so much, but it clicked with me for whatever reason. And the reasons why a book clicks with you aren't always easy to explain. I really enjoyed seeing the various character's story arcs unfolding, and even being totally surprised by a few of them (Alyosha, Ivan, and Grushenka really surprised me with how they developed). This book made me think, and I love reading books that I sometimes have to put down and think about for a while. And the ending was very hopeful and optimistic. I may not be an optimistic person myself, but I appreciate true optimism (as opposed to just being fluffy and blind to evil) in stories.

Age Appropriateness: There is some language in this book. None of it is seriously bad (though there is one instance of something really nasty being implied but not actually spoken), but it might bug some people. There are also some rather disturbing scenes and subject matter, just a heads up.

The Brothers Karamazov Chibis

Enjoy this little cast sheet for everyone's favorite 900+ page existential* Russian novel, The Brothers Karamazov!
I'm only 342 pages into the book (if I had stuck to my schedule, I'd be 500 pages in, but I got lazy.), but I'm enjoying it a lot (except for that one chapter...) and when I really like a book or movie, I want to draw chibis of the characters. :)

Alexei 'Alyosha' Karamazov: The pure-hearted, 20 year old novice at the local monastery. Alyosha is a sweet character, even if he is a little too perfect maybe (I'm less than halfway through though, and he seems to be developing at bit). I drew him in his cassock, but I don't know if he's going to go through with the holy orders. Elder Zosima told him that maybe he was called to live outside the monastery, so I don't know where that plot thread is going...
Fyodor Karamazov: The drunken, deadbeat father. I guess I kind of exaggerated the whole ugly thing, but in all fairness, his description in the book isn't much better.
Ivan Karamazov: Whew. Enjolras, hand over your medal for Nuttiest Fictional Character and clear the way for Ivan Karamazov! Ahem, spoilers. Ivan is a rather interesting character. He's the second-oldest son, and an atheist intellectual. However, his philosophy is a little (okay, a lot) more complicated than that. I really wonder where his characters is going to go from here!
Dmitry Karamazov: The eldest Karamazov brother. I guess Dmitry takes after his dad a bit in the ways of drinking and being kind of a loser. Dmitry is relatively sympathetic, but I have to confess that I have a tendency to forget things that happened 100 pages ago, so I can't quite remember if I like Dmitry or not. :P
Lise: Let me just pause a sec to make a public apology for that poorly drawn wheel-chair. [shudders] Anyhoo, Lise is a teenage girl who likes to tease Alyosha. She actually wrote a dopey love letter to him just to play a silly prank and see what would happen. Except that Alyosha actually said that if he doesn't join the monastery he'd be happy to marry her. Because Lise is just that kind of girl, she takes it in stride and doesn't seem to care that her practical joke is now near reality.
Katerina: Dmitry's fiancée. But Ivan may or may not also be in love with her. Curse you bad memory! I drew her with kind of a mean face, but Katerina's not actually that bad. She's hot headed and likes to be a control freak, but she's pretty decent. And I like how her little babushka came out. :D
Elder Zosima: Elder Zosima is kind of like Bishop Myriel from Les Miserables, in that he's the saintly Religious man who's probably going to die. Poor guy, I like him!
Smerdyakov [Is he a Karamazov?] : If your name is Smerdyakov, aren't you legally obliged to be a sinister illegitimate child?
Grushenka: Ah yes, the beautiful and seductive temptress... Grushenka. Maybe it's just me, but that name more screams out 'old lady at your average Byzantine Catholic parish'. Anyway, I don't know where Grushenka's character is going (in fact, I probably should have waited to post these until after I finish the book!), but I put her down here all alone so that she doesn't tempt anyone away from their fiancées. Hear that, Dmitri?!