“There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.” What elements of the book do you think Kurt Vonnegut had in mind when making this statement? Do you agree or disagree?

By looksbridge

I’m not gonna lie—Vonnegut’s quote was basically what pushed me to finally pick this up. I just finished it last night and I’m still kind of stunned. I don’t think I’ve ever read something that made me question my own existence and what I believe, and also zoomed out to those huge, “big picture” themes the way this one does. It’s the kind of book I can totally see myself coming back to and re-reading. Seeing Vonnegut’s point again made me notice connections too, based on what I’ve read from him so far. The “only rule” thing—babies, “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind”—felt really familiar, like Alyosha’s last words to the school boys. And that whole idea about even when you’re dealing with the most important stuff, or when things go really bad, you still remember how good it was when everyone was together—united by kindness, loving that poor kid better than you usually can—yeah, it all lines up with the empathy thread in this book. From Grushenka’s Onion to Mitya and the Doctor, it keeps coming back to caring about other people, and it feels connected to Father Zosima’s whole “we’re responsible for each other” message, like that’s one way to deal with how awful the world can be. I don’t know if that’s exactly what hit Vonnegut, but it made me wonder.