On The Senselessness of Children’s Suffering and Active Love

To the children of Gaza, and every child across the world who suffers in silence, your pain should weigh heavy on the conscience of humanity. Your suffering is not just your burden — it is a burden we all must carry on our shoulders. In your tears, we should see our shared guilt; in your wounds, our collective failure. It is our duty to bear this weight, to feel your pain as our own, and to work tirelessly to create a world where such suffering — and unadulterated evil — are no longer tolerated.

Widely acclaimed for his profound psychological depth and intricate understanding of people’s psyches, Fyodor Dostoevsky was venerated not only as a literary writer but as someone akin to a psychologist, even a prophet to some. Dostoevsky’s keen interest in human psychology is evident, as his writings are replete with the inner wonders of the human psyche. Most visible, and indeed intense, of these emotions portrayed by the author is the dark — yet no doubt realistic — theme of suffering. From Raskolnikov and Golyadkin to Devushkin and the underground man, characters in Dostoevsky’s work have experienced suffering with extreme severity. The Brothers Karamazov served as Dostoevsky’s last potent expression of many themes, including and especially the theme of suffering and love. This novel will be the center around which this stream of consciousness will examine the theme of suffering in Dostoevsky’s works, especially the senseless one, and will also examine what can counteract that: active love.

With the assistance of the script method of analyzing people’s personalities, one would be encouraged to view the works of Dostoevsky through the lens of his own life. Born in 1821, Dostoevsky grew up in the outskirts of Moscow to a somewhat well-off family; however, he was raised in a family home in Marinsky hospital for the poor, which was located in a destitute district. There, young Dostoevsky, even when playing outside as a kid, interacted often with the poor patients, meaning Dostoevsky was directly and deeply exposed to experiences from a very young age, which arguably magnified his perception of suffering. These experiences seemed to have molded Dostoevsky’s perception of suffering from a very young age, which rendered his interest in suffering larger and more intimate.

Later in life, after being accused of reading the works of Belinsky and possibly circulating copies of Letter to Gogol, Dostoevsky was sentenced to death by a firing squad. Moments before the shots were fired, a message of reprieve arrived, and Dostoevsky was sent to Siberia for four years of forced labor in arduous conditions. The arduousness was so palpable that if one were to read House of the Dead, a work in which Dostoevsky detailed the immense hardships prisoners usually go through, one would become more or less cognizant of the suffering Dostoevsky had witnessed and experienced in depth. He recites, with meticulous and even tedious specificity, the sheer senseless futility of prison life. Additionally, in addition to suffering from gambling addiction, Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy, being told, upon his diagnosis, that he could practically die whenever the fit hits him (which it often did)— surely a delicately uncertain existence he was forced into.

Last but not least, Dostoevsky suffered from the premature deaths of both his parents, his first wife, his dear brother, and two of his children. In short, to sum up the aforementioned experiences and misfortunes of Dostoevsky, it is not far-fetched to claim that not only was Dostoevsky sensitive to the sufferings of others, but he also suffered immensely — often in solitude — himself, which bolstered his intricate discernment of the dynamics of suffering. These dynamics, such as the urges to seek and pursue redemption through suffering, as in the case of Dimitri Karamazov, who was longing for atonement (more to come below).

Sigmund Freud probed and was impressed by the psychological depth of suffering in his “Dostoevsky and Parricide.” Reiterating that, Dostoevsky once claimed that “[he is] merely a realist in the higher sense of the world, that is, [he] depicts all the depths of the human soul.” In that capacity, one would not be too far from concluding that Dostoevsky has mastered the understanding of suffering, fathoming its dynamics in unparalleled depth. One of these angles is the senselessness of certain types of suffering, the suffering of children. This is most poignant within what transpires in Gaz*a, whereby children are savagely torn into pieces, leaving nothing for their parents to hold, indeed leaving the world with the utmost heights of terror and confusion — victims of pure unadulterated evil.

First, it is worthwhile attempting to clarify what Dostoevsky seemed to perceive as senseless suffering. This type of suffering is marked by its intensity and helplessness; it is the type of suffering that does not turn into a means of purification or spiritual and emotional growth, especially for those who are sinless. Although other passages will be discussed, a quick, yet no doubt tragic, passage will be briefly mentioned. An example is the peasant woman who was mourning her child’s death, wanting to see him only one more time: “I grieve for my little son, father…My soul is wasted over him. I look at his clothes, at his little shirt or his little boots, and start howling.” Dostoevsky notes that suffering akin to this feeds on itself. “In our anguish we reopen wounds, cling desperately to God, deny Him, experience utter isolation and defiance…”

Before expanding on the suffering of children, it is worth mentioning one of Dostoevsky’s parallel concerns: the suffering of animals. In Chapter 3, Book 6, Father Zosima (a saint-like benevolent priest) touches upon the quality that makes the suffering almost senseless, in animals and humans, and that is their sinlessness. “Do not place yourself higher than the animals. They are without sin whereas you, for all of your greatness, contaminate earth.” What Father Zosima — and possibly Dostoevsky — seemed to allude to is that precisely the passivity, lack of understanding, and vulnerability are what render sufferers’ anguish as senseless.

The novel’s main preoccupation, however, lies predominantly in the suffering of innocent children — for how can a child be anything but innocent? Human beings are sense-seeking beings. Understandably then, Dostoevsky, trying to understand why children suffer, assigned the case of understanding children’s suffering to the quick-witted, atheistic and somewhat pompous Ivan Karamazov. Ivan, in Chapter 4, Book 5, commences his argument by stating that he did not highlight the suffering of adults because of the adults’ sinfulness: “…apart from the fact that they are disgusting and do not deserve love, they also have retribution: they ate the apple, and knew good and evil…” Then Ivan asserts why the suffering of children drastically differs from that of adults: “…the little children haven’t eaten anything and are not yet guilty of anything.”

Dostoevsky powerfully highlighted this one paramount element in children — innocence; their defenselessness makes them “lovable at close range.” Therefore, according to Ivan, the great defender of this innocence, children’s vulnerability, virtues, and defenselessness are precisely what make them innocent. Then, Ivan challenges the proposition that children must suffer in order for God to construct and maintain universal harmony by stating “facts”: “it is quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer, and why they should buy harmony with their suffering.” Ivan projects the argument that there is absolutely no way to reconcile pointless suffering with universal harmony; there can not possibly be any reparations to those who have suffered. In other words, Ivan seemed to categorically reject the idea that the suffering of one should bring happiness to another, even for purposes of universal harmony. The situation of suffering, according to Ivan, seems more “scandalous,” more incomprehensible, especially if the sufferer were defenseless, vulnerable, and innocent. Dostoevsky seems not to have departed far from Ivan’s view of the senselessness of suffering, as can be seen from a letter he sent to Nikolai Liumbimov: “My hero takes up a topic I consider irrefutable — the senselessness of the suffering of children — and deduces from that the absurdness of all historical actuality.”

Ivan proceeds with his argument and tests his devout brother’s faith by then famously recounting the horrifying “anecdotes.” Ivan seems to test whether his brother’s understanding of innocent suffering in theological terms can stand against Ivan’s brutally incontrovertible facts. Ivan commences by enumerating the atrocities committed by the Turks in Bulgaria: “they burn, kill, rape women and children, they nail prisoners by the ears to fences and leave them like that until the morning, and in the morning they hang them — and so on, it is impossible to imagine all that” and “cutting [babies] out of their mother’s wombs…throwing [them] in the air and catching them on bayonets before their mothers’ eyes.” Then Ivan goes on to relate to his brother the story of the parents who beat their daughter with birch until she was incapable of crying anymore, and also others who tortured their child of five, kicking her brutally, locking her in a freezing latrine, and smearing her face all over with and making her eat feces.

As a culmination of the stories, Ivan lastly narrated the tragic story of the general who mercilessly and quite viciously murdered a young boy, simply because the boy had thrown a stone and wounded the general’s hunting dog. After being taken from his mother and locked up all night, the boy didn’t wake up but to a horrendous scene: he was stripped naked and ordered to run. “Sic him” then the general screamed afterwards and loosed all the whole pack of wolfhounds on the boy. The feeble boy was hunted down before his mother’s eyes and torn down to pieces by the dogs.

These narrations with which Ivan buttresses his case are, no doubt, terrifying; it is with these narrations that Ivan advances the idea that there is no way to reconcile senseless suffering with universal harmony. “It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fists and prayed to ‘dear God’ in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears!” Finally, after the emotionally intense speech, Ivan concludes that he rejects the world God created and he “respectfully returns the ticket.”

Ivan’s mentioning of these “anecdotes” is an attempt to prove the senselessness of innocent suffering; however, he does not attempt to explain them — for he reiterated his inability to do so. He presents these anecdotes as proof of the senselessness of innocent suffering. These recounts of Ivan attempt to refute the idea that suffering can be meaningful or necessary; they were so potent that Alyosha, the pious, had his faith tested and temporarily shaken. Ivan further challenges Alyosha, “Imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale…but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture one tiny creature…and can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain happy forever?” Ivan makes it clear that even with the happiness of all humankind realized, suffering will still be senseless, for innocent children suffer, and there is no justification for that. Therefore, as can be detected through the aforementioned argument, Dostoevsky portrays that there are certain types of suffering that are senseless, even though they could bring about happiness or harmony to the world.

Another type of suffering that Dostoyevsky brings to the forefront in his books is the suffering that results from empathy — characters suffering for the sake of other characters’ torture and transgressions. For instance, in Crime and Punishment, we encounter Sonya, who was directly confronted with Raskolnikov’s misanthropic worldview and his savagely violent crime, and despite that, she still harbored the burden of empathy and suffered for Raskolnikov. This suffering often springs up within family members, as one can also see in Crime and Punishment — Raskolnikov’s mother, Pulkeria Aleksandrovna, suffering severely for him.

Not too surprisingly, also, the strength of one’s faith, or lack thereof, is a theme that can be found in Dostoevsky’s works; but most critically, Dostoevsky seems to propose that suffering can sometimes arise and cause anguish to those who lack faith. This anguish can be a direct response to the cognitive awareness of senseless suffering. One can argue, although it is not quite clear, that Ivan’s suffering contains remnants of a shaken faith, which causes him anguish. But what can be seen more clearly is Dimitri’s, the eldest of the three brothers, anguish that stems from the “lack of moral surety he associates with the absence of God.” In fact, Dimitri himself, who lacks the intellectual fortitude of Ivan and the spiritual grounding of his brother Alyosha, still admitted to Alyosha: “For what if [God] does not exist? What if Rakitin is right, and he is an artificial idea dreamed up by mankind? Then, if he does not exist, man is the boss of the earth, of creation, magnificent! Only how will he be virtuous without God? That is the question. I think about it all the time […] for what is virtue? Answer me that, Alexey. To me virtue means one thing, while to a Chinaman it means another — it is, in other words, a thing that is relative[…] please do not laugh when I tell you that it has kept me awake for two nights without sleep. Now the only thing that astonishes me is that people can live and yet never think about that.” This suffering Dimitri goes through when faced with the senselessness of suffering and lack of universal meaning is arguably experienced by multiple of Dostoevsky’s characters. In fact, Dostoevsky himself admitted to experiencing anguish regarding his faith, although his faith eventually survived; in a letter to a friend, he said: “about myself, let me tell you that I am a child of this age, a child of unbelief and doubts to this very day and shall be (I know this) to the day I am laid in my coffin. What terrible torment I have suffered and am suffering now because of this longing to believe…”

The previous sections have examined how Dostoyevsky’s representation of suffering is inextricably linked to the senselessness and pointlessness of it — or as described by some, the suffering that leads to a sense of wretchedness and detachment from God. This section, however, will examine another side of suffering, the one that leads to and incites redemption. In other words, although there sometimes seems that there is no redemption or salvation for certain types of suffering (like poor folk, the underground man, and especially innocent children), there is still salvation for others. Therefore, it would be unfair to claim that Dostoevsky never advocated for suffering (although it appears that Dostoevsky never advocated for it for the innocent, especially children). Now, allow me to take you for a stroll to witness Dostoevsky’s portrayal of a more necessary type of suffering (redemptive one) evident in Dimitri’s case, as well as Father Zosima’s call for active love and its relation with suffering.

As previously discussed, people strive towards finding meaning, especially in their suffering and hardships. Nietzsche claimed that “life in the ancient world was full of suffering, and in order to live with that suffering, the people who inhabited that world had to be convinced to view it as sublime.” Dimitri seems to espouse the belief that suffering can render him empowered and redeemed. This is evident in his response to being falsely accused of murdering his father, for he says: “I accept the torment of the charge and of my disgrace before the nation, I wish to suffer and to purify myself through suffering.”

The catalyst for Dimitri’s powerful urge to seek redemption is the dream of the little child. In the dream, as Dimitri was being driven in a cart through the snow, he passed by a poor village that had been burned to the ground. A feeble woman is standing in the harsh coldness of the snow holding her infant, who is crying. Dimitri, staggered, asked the driver about the child, and then the driver proceeds to explain that they are poor in a burned village, lacking any food or clothes. “What I want you to tell me is: why those homeless mothers standing there, why is everyone poor, why is the brain wretched, why is the steppe barren, why do they not embrace one another, kiss one another, why do they not sing songs of joy, why are they blackened by misfortune, why is the bairn not fed?”

The suffering Dimitri witnessed exemplifies the pointless suffering discussed above. Also, the abject poverty that Dimitri witnessed isn’t the only cause of his anguish, but a larger, more poignant, question must have occurred to his mind: why does innocent, pointless suffering exist. Thus, profoundly affected by the dream and the symbolism of pointless suffering, Dimitri harbors the urge to respond to it. And the way he does is that he himself has to suffer. In other words, “Dimitri comes to realize that suffering need not be caused by sin, but rather is necessary for the forgiveness of sin; only suffering can evoke the humanity in our hearts.”

Suffering from this point of view, therefore, is the only means with which one can cleanse and redeem the suffering of the child. As Pareyson put it, “our solidarity in guilt and suffering is the only road by means of which we can redeem the suffering of others.” It seems that in order for an adult to redeem the pointless suffering of a child, the adult, although innocent, has to suffer himself. This is how suffering, albeit tormenting and dark enough, can produce meaning. However, it is definitely hard to see where Dostoevsky lies in the spectrum of this argument, for as discussed before, Ivan made the formidable case that if innocent suffering is necessary for redemption, then it is not worth it: “It is not worth a single small tear of even one tortured child.” I wholeheartedly agree. It also seems plausible to argue that Dostoevsky’s approach to suffering was heavily influenced by his Christian faith, which was possibly solidified while serving his time exiled in Siberia.

Before expanding on how Father Zosima, who in many ways represents Christian interpretation (and in a larger sense, the religious experience), approaches suffering, mainly through faith, pardon, solidarity in guilt, and expiation through love, it is worth mentioning a grand reason that Zosima (hence maybe Dostoevsky) thinks will lead to suffering: inability to love. Father Zosima preached: “Fathers and teachers, I ask myself: ‘what is hell?’ And I answer thus: ‘The suffering of being no longer able to love.’ Once in infinite existence, measured neither by time nor by space, a certain spiritual being, through his appearance on earth, was granted the ability to say to himself: ‘I am and I love.’ Once, once only he was given a moment of active, living love, and for that, he was given earthly life with its times and seasons.”

How Father Zosima, and possibly Dostoevsky, defines hell is telling, for the bedrock of Father Zosima’s teachings is active love. First, instead of merely preaching about love, Father Zosima powerfully demonstrates gestures of love through his actions. In a conversation with a visitor from afar, a woman who was often abused by her late husband, seeks consolation from Father Zosima. Father Zosima offered words of advice and consolation to the woman, mainly to go without fear and to refrain from becoming upset with people; he incites her to forgive her dead husband and repent. “In loving in this way, Father Zosima says, she will already belong to God; love saves everything. Love is a treasure beyond all others; one can gain the whole world through it.” I for one think this is not only unrealistic, but replete with cowardice, for hate as an emotion is as necessary as love, especially directed towards one’s evil enemies.

In summation, Zosima’s teachings can be distilled as follows: “Active love, as explained by Father Zosima, is a form of humble, patient attention to others. It is non-judgmental; it entails accepting others as we find them and acting with a sense of equanimity and openness in our dealings with them. Active love is not concerned with grand gestures but small moments of giving and receiving.” It is precisely through love, Father Zosima seems to preach, that we can reach universal pardon; through common guilt (which is a pillar of Christian theology, which surely goes over my head)m we will be urged to “accept equal responsibility for our sins and those of others, it will be enough for each of us to ask pardon of all.”

Active love, as depicted by Dostoevsky, sometimes appears rather mundane, scarcely extravagant, unnoticed, and arduous; however, it is beautiful and sublime, and it “gives quietly but cumulatively to both those who exhibit it and those who receive it.” Father Zosima was cautious enough to differentiate between the active, brotherly love from the “fanciful love.” Fanciful love is the type of love that has the capacity to respond only to an “idealized vision of suffering humanity,” yet it frowns upon the “wretched” suffering of humanity. Illustrating his point on fanciful love, Father Zosima refers to the case of the doctor who, despite loving humankind as a whole, he still could not bring himself to be loving towards human beings as individuals. Father Zosima highlighted the fact that that doctor — who resembles many and is totally devoted to humankind — is still repulsed by and has disdain for coming into contact with any sick man “because he has a cold and is perpetually blowing his nose.” Therefore, in illustrating and narrating such a story, Father Zosima draws the dichotomy between two different kinds of love. The first one, “fanciful love,” grants its possessor the ability to love humanity yet from in the abstract, from a distance; nevertheless, it is still inadequate, for it does not allow one to love the “wretched” or the ugly side of suffering, such as the case of the doctor.

The second, active love, is the sublime one, the one that “does not deny the loathsome and unattractive face of suffering, and is capable of loving the sufferer even when he is at his most wretched.” Here, as a keen aspiring psychologist, I harbor deep appreciation for such thought, for we are, after all, suspectible to the aesthics of morality, as illustrated by our selective compassion, often based on superflousness of external qualities. The incident, mentioned in the novel, that best exemplifies the notion of active love is the one recounted by Ivan during his venting about the innocent suffering: “I once read somewhere concerning ‘Ioann the Almsgiver’ (a certain saint) that when a hungry and frozen itinerant came to him and asked him to warm him, he put him to bed in his own bed, got into it together with him, put his arms around him and began to breathe into his mouth, which was festering and foul with some terrible disease.” However, notwithstanding these utterances by Ivan, he still proclaimed that he could not manage to find that the love that Christ showed towards people is humanly possible — in fact, he declared that he never understood how one can love their neighbor.

Zosima possibly had perceived suffering as sometimes the sublime force of suffering, the suffering that transcends and turns into joy and happiness because of its sublimity: “It’s a great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.” The very interconnectedness that Zosima aspires to in society seems to urge people to “not only accept that we are complicit in the suffering that exists in the world but that we are obligated to improve things through active love.” Here, you can sense the the beauty of Zossima’s articulations. His encouragement is built upon love and a prerequisite for that love is responsibility around shared guilt: “for indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all.” Guilt, in turn will metamorphosize into action, and that is something, at least I think so.

Dostoevsky’s accurate and multifaceted theme of suffering; this accuracy, I believe, stemmed from a myriad of painful experiences Dostoevsky himself had to go through. Dostoevsky possesses the exceptional ability to convey rich and no doubt intense human emotions by creating multiple characters with a wide range of personalities and experiences. Dostoevsky grMost common amongst these experiences is the experience of suffering. In the face of such profound suffering, we are all compelled to recognize our shared responsibility. Collectively, we must bear the weight of guilt for every sufferer in this world, whose pain is the result of injustice, cruelty, and the evils that persist. Only through acknowledging this collective burden can we strive toward a world where compassion and justice prevail.