Genre
A parable
Setting and Context
The events of the parable take place in Seville in 16th century.
Narrator and Point of View
The parable is told from the third-person point of view. The narrator is Ivan.
Tone and Mood
The tone is thoughtful whilst the mood is grim.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Christ is the protagonist whilst the Grand Inquisitor is the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The main conflicts are person vs. self, person vs. religion, Orthodoxy vs. Catholicism.
Climax
The moment when the Grand Inquisitor frees Christ is the climax of the story.
Foreshadowing
"Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction," laughed Ivan.
The introductory words of the parable foreshadow that many explanations will follow, and it is so as the author provides many allusions to help the reader to seize what the text is about.
Understatement
“He desired to come unknown, and appear among His children, just when the bones of the heretics, sentenced to be burnt alive, had commenced crackling at the flaming stakes.”
The word “bones” shows how little the Inquisition thinks of people they condemn to death. They are not living people the them, they are just a pile of bones.
Allusions
The parable alludes to the Reformation.
Imagery
The images of hell and many scenes of biblical legends are traced in the text.
Paradox
“I will condemn and burn Thee on the stake.”
This sentence is a great example of paradox. The Grand Inquisitor is going to condemn Christ to death.
Parallelism
“It is He, it is Himself, they say to each other, it must be He, it can be none other but He!”
This is an example of parallel construction, repetition of the combination “it + predicate” creates parallelism.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet.” (Bread is metonymy that means food).
Personification
N/A
