Tag Archives: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Is Freedom More Powerful than Fear?

By Robin Bates | Published: December 13, 2015

Obama in his Oval Office speech on terrorism said that “freedom is more powerful than fear.” Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor would beg to differ.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Barack Obama, Brothers Karamazov, Donald Trump, Fascism, Fear, For the Time Being, Freedom, W. H. Auden | Comments closed

Lit Is Aristotelian Road to Happiness

By Robin Bates | Published: December 8, 2015

Psychologists say that a strong sense of narrative identity can lead to the profound sense of happiness described by Aristotle. Literature helps us make sure we have available to us the best narratives.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aristotle, Brothers Karamazov, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Emma, eudaimonic well-being, Great Expectations, happiness, Jane Austen, King Lear, stories, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

ISIS and the Grand Inquisitor

By Robin Bates | Published: August 17, 2015

Dostoevsky may provide a compelling explanation for the recruiting success of ISIS: young people want to escape from freedom.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Brothers Karamazov, Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, Grand Inquisitor, ISIS, Michel Houellebecq, Submission | Comments closed

Top 10 Hellish Child-Parent Relationships

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2014

Top 10 Literary Parent-Child Relationships from Hell.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "All that Rises Must Converge", "Daddy", "Letter to a Dead Father", Aeschylus, Brothers Karamazov, D. H. Lawrence, Euripides, Flannery O'Connor, Hamlet, King Lear, Medea, Midsummer Night's Dream, Oedipus, Oresteia, parents and children, Phillip K. Roth, Portnoy's Complaint, Richard Shelton, Romeo and Juliet, Sons and Lovers, Sophocles, Sylvia Plath, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Lit’s Ten Most Sensitive Guys

By Robin Bates | Published: September 16, 2013

To match my 10 strongest literary women characters, here are my 10 most sensitive male characters.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Fielding, Herman Melville, James Baldwin, Jane Austen, John Milton, John Steinbeck | Comments closed

Making a Fetish of Suffering

By Robin Bates | Published: May 12, 2013

Ivan Karamazov attacks those Christians who rationalize suffering by finding a higher purpose in it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Brothers Karamazov, crucifixion, Suffering | Comments closed

Great Political Novels Not Agenda Driven

By Robin Bates | Published: September 27, 2012

Great political novels are rich in spiritual attitude. Poor ones are agenda driven.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", American Pastoral, Berger's Daughter, fathers and sons, Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Conrad, Literary Theory, Nadine Gordimer, Natalia Ginzburg, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, political novel, snow, Stendahl, V.S. Naipaul, Vargas Llosa, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

Lit Explains Romney’s Off-Putting Laugh

By Robin Bates | Published: May 24, 2012

Lewis Carroll, Kundera, and Dostoevsky help us understand why Mitt Romney’s laugh makes us nervous.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alice in Wonderland, Encounter, Idiot, Laughter, Lewis Carroll, Milan Kundera, Mitt Romney, politics | Comments closed

“Harry, I Am Your Father” – Voldemort

By Robin Bates | Published: April 16, 2012

Voldemort can be interpreted as the father in Harry Potter’s primal scene.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Brothers Karamazov, Carl Jung, fathers, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Joseph Campbell, Maturation, Oedipus complex, Sigmund Freud | Comments closed