Ivan’s nightmare
(illustration by Fritz Eichenberg)
DEVIL
You reproach me with unbelief; yet you don’t believe… But I’m going to reveal one of our secrets, a legend about Paradise. There was once, they say, a thinker and philosopher who rejected everything, conscience, faith, the future life. He died; and he expected to go straight to darkness and death; but he found a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant. ‘This is against my principles!’ he said. And he was punished for that, sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometers in the dark… and when he’d finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be opened to him and he’d be forgiven.
IVAN
And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion kilometers?
DEVIL
In old days we had all sorts of tortures, but now they’ve taken chiefly to moral punishments–‘the stings of conscience.’ And who’s the better for it? Only those who’ve got no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have none? But decent people who have a conscience and a sense of honor suffer for it. The fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned to quadrillion kilometers, stood still, looked round and lay down across the road. ‘I won’t go, I refuse on principle!'”
IVAN
What did he lie on there? And is he lying there now?
DEVIL
Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. But the point is that he’s no longer lying there. He lay there almost a thousand years and then he got up and went on.
IVAN
What an ass! Does it make any difference whether he lies there forever or walks the quadrillion kilometers? It would take a billion years to walk it.
DEVIL
Much more than that! I haven’t got a pencil and paper or I could work it out. But he got there long ago, and that’s where the story begins.
IVAN
He got there? But how did he get the billion years to do it?
DEVIL
You keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times.
IVAN
Well, what happened when he arrived?
DEVIL
The moment the gates of Paradise opened and he walked in, before he’d been there two seconds, he cried out that those two seconds were worth walking not a quadrillion kilometers but a quadrillion of quadrillions, raised to the quadrillionth power! In fact, he sang ‘hosannah’ and so overdid it, that some wouldn’t shake hands with him at first… I repeat, it’s a legend. I give it for what it’s worth.
IVAN
Hah! I’ve caught you! I made up that anecdote about the quadrillion years myself! I was seventeen, in high school… The anecdote is so characteristic that I couldn’t have taken it from anywhere. I thought I’d forgotten it…but I’ve unconsciously recalled it–it wasn’t you telling it! Thousands of things are unconsciously remembered like that even when people are being taken to execution…it’s come back to me in a dream. You are that dream! You are a dream, not a living creature!
DEVIL
From the vehemence with which you deny my existence, I’m convinced that you believe in me.
IVAN
Not in the slightest! I haven’t a hundredth part of a grain of faith in you!
DEVIL
But you have the thousandth of a grain… Confess to even the ten-thousandth of a grain.
IVAN
Not for one minute! But, I’d like to believe in you.
DEVIL
Aha! There’s an admission! But, listen, it was I who caught you, not you me. I told you the anecdote you’d forgotten, on purpose, so as to destroy your faith in me completely.
IVAN
You are lying. The object of your visit is to convince me of your existence!
DEVIL
Just so. But hesitation – conflict between belief and disbelief – is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man that it’s better to hang oneself Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you that anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns. It’s the new method. As soon as you disbelieve in me completely, you’ll begin assuring me that I am not a dream but a reality. I know you. Then I’ll have attained my object, I’ll sow in you only a tiny grain of faith and it will grow into an oak-tree–and you’ll wander into the wilderness to save your soul!
IVAN
Then it’s for the salvation of my soul you are working, is it, you scoundrel?
DEVIL
One must do a good work sometimes. How ill-humored you are!
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What is the meaning and significance of Ivan’s nightmare?
Considering Karamazov 
To me this shows that Ivan is having a mental breakdown, because he is beginning to question whether he believes in heaven and hell or not. The devil even says, “But hesitation – conflict between belief and disbelief – is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man that it’s better to hang oneself.” This quote shows me that Ivan may be starting to believe in religion because it is his dream, and don’t dreams sometimes reflect what is on a person’s mind?
I believe that this is like Alexy’s wake up call. While Alexy needed the Wedding and Canna to realize that he was on the right path, Ivan needed to speak with the devil to start to believe in religion. Dreams open the window to a person’s subconscious. Perhaps toward the end of the novel, all three brothers will come to find religion.
And, for Ivan, the dream could have also served as a “good night” message to his capacity to rationally balance conflicting desires and thoughts.
This dream is a preface of Ivan’s loss of sanity. This is right after he speaks with Smerdyakov who tells him that he is responsible for killing Fyodor. Smerdyakov admits his guilt but says that ultimately it was Ivan’s strong influence over him that led him to do it. As discussed in class, dreams are a reflection of an aspect of character in which the character is unaware. Before he has this dream I think Ivan is taking all of the things Smerdyakov has told him into account. all this news was shocking to him and thrown at him all at once and was unexpected. I think that Ivan in reality had no idea to handle the situation. He dream was a way of working out things, or rather sorting out things, they he could not sort out in a conscious state.
This goes back to the theme of the novel, whether or not to belive in God. Ivan, relying on logic, doubts the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. He thinks that the only reason why people are good is fear of the consequences of doing wrong in the afterlife. He thinks that people are not morally responsible for anything because there is no heaven or hell. However, Ivan does not really believe what he preaches: he is a deeply moral person and is disgusted by those people who live out the doctrine that “everything is permitted,” notably Fyodor Pavlovich and Smerdyakov. Thus there is division in Ivan’s soul. His lack of faith in God spills over into a lack of faith in himself and his fellow human beings. We also see this division in the nightmare. He thinks he does not believe in the devil but he is dreaming of him. The devil says that once Ivan convinces himself that he does not belieive in him that he will start to believe in him. Ivan’s doubt in God is tested when he admits that he is partly to blaim for Fyodor’s death. He realizes that Zosima holds some truth when he said that everyone is responsible for everyone’s actions. Ivan did not kill Fyodor himself but he influenced Smerdyakov, and Ivan is taking the blame and goes into a mental breakdown.
Nicely observed. Dostoevsky seems to be suggesting that a “division in the soul” of Ivan’s kind is not resolvable simply by the use of reason. It might be interesting to consider how Ivan’s hallucination would be different if it took the form of an angel, rather than a devil.
Well I think that he maybe hallucinated a devil because of his realization that he is partly to blame for Fyodor’s death and therefore knows he is on his way to hell. Angels are usually seen as guardians and protectors but in this hallucination we see Ivan mentally collapsing. He does not awaken, like Alyosha, with a new resolve for love and forgiveness.
I think that this dream shows Ivan’s identity and everything he stands for falling apart. This is more of a hallucination than a dream and Ivan is losing his sanity. The devil is more or less another part of Ivan’s personality that happens to be battling with him. The devil represents every doubt Ivan may have had, and all those doubts are now eating him alive.
I think there is a very interesting connection between the dream Ivan has and the conversation he and Smerdyakov have earlier in the book. In the conversation, Ivan and Smerdyakov go back and forth over who is responsible for the murder of Fyodor and Ivan becomes more and more hysterical. It is almost as Smerdyakov is toying with Ivan in saying he killed Fyodor and then telling Ivan he is the murderer. It is after this conversation that leaves Ivan in an extremely distraught state that he has his nightmare. Just as Ivan couldn’t decide who was responsible for the murder and was becoming psychotic thinking about it, in his dream he can’t decide if the devil is real or fake. This outlines his own confusion and guilt over the situation in reality. Just as in Aloysha’s dream, Ivan’s mind is working through the reality while he sleeps. His indecision over the actuality of the devil is parallel to his confusion over the death of his father and who is responsible.
I think that Ivan’s dream is a reflection of his beliefs and, as it has been stated above, of the internal conflict he has with his belief in God. He is divided between who he appears to be and who he actually is. He appears to be a cold, logical atheist who is actually a caring, rational, believer. But society, as well as himself don’t let him become or change into who he has the potential to be. I think that in presenting heaven as something worth walking a “quadrillion kilometers” for, he shows that he does believe a. in God and b. in goodness or that goodness exists. Even if he believes that he is not worthy of getting into heaven, he believes that it exists.