The Brothers Karamazov: Metaphors 3 key examples

Throughout The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky uses many metaphors related to insects. These insect metaphors serve as a motif throughout the novel, generally signifying behavior or attitudes that are lowly or unworthy of humanity, particularly with regard to Dmitri. When Dmitri confesses to Alexei about his disreputable behavior with women, flirting with them but later refusing to get married, he states that: 

This game only amused my insect sensuality, which I was nurturing in myself. After five months she married an official and left … angry, and maybe still in love with me. Now they’re living happily together. Note that I didn’t tell anyone [...] You’re blushing; your eyes flashed. Enough of this filth for you. And it’s all nothing yet, just Paul de Kock’s little flowers, though the cruel insect was already growing, spreading out in my soul. I have a whole album of memories, brother. God bless the little dears.

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In his description of Smerdyakov, the probable half-brother of the Brothers Karamazov born to their father and “Stinking Lizaveta,” Dostoevsky uses a series of closely related metaphors that imagine Smerdyakov as “storing” his own observations in his memory as if they are physical objects: 

These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it—why and what for, of course, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both. There are plenty of contemplators among the people. Most likely Smerdyakov, too, was such a contemplator, and most likely he, too, was greedily storing up his impressions, almost without knowing why himself.

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Throughout The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky uses many metaphors related to insects. These insect metaphors serve as a motif throughout the novel, generally signifying behavior or attitudes that are lowly or unworthy of humanity, particularly with regard to Dmitri. When Dmitri confesses to Alexei about his disreputable behavior with women, flirting with them but later refusing to get married, he states that: 

This game only amused my insect sensuality, which I was nurturing in myself. After five months she married an official and left … angry, and maybe still in love with me. Now they’re living happily together. Note that I didn’t tell anyone [...] You’re blushing; your eyes flashed. Enough of this filth for you. And it’s all nothing yet, just Paul de Kock’s little flowers, though the cruel insect was already growing, spreading out in my soul. I have a whole album of memories, brother. God bless the little dears.

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In the Epilogue, Dmitri speaks to Katerina, his former fiance, whose testimony helped to secure his conviction in the murder of Fyodor. When Dmitri, nicknamed Mitya, asks Katerina, nicknamed Katya, if she has forgiven him, she responds with a metaphor that imagines them both as having been physically wounded by one another: 

“Have you forgiven or not?” Mitya murmured at last, and at the same moment, turning to Alyosha, his face distorted with joy, he cried to him: “Do you hear what I’m asking, do you hear?” 

“That’s why I loved you, for your magnanimous heart!” escaped suddenly from Katya. “And you do not need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it’s all the same whether you forgive or not, all my life you will remain a wound in my soul, and I in yours—that’s how it should be …,” she stopped to catch her breath.

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