Dostoevsky's intention with "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" was to unmask the fundamental idea that lay behind the entire movement in Russia toward atheism, nihilism, rationalism and materialism, and away from the true Christian faith that was the spiritual heart of the nation.[7] Within the novel as a whole, this idea is expressed most rigorously and eloquently through the character of Ivan Fyodorovich: the 'poem' is Ivan's composition, and the ideas, dogmas, assertions, suggestions and equivocations expressed in the Inquisitor's monologue are the same ones at work within Ivan's tormented intellect and personal struggle for faith and identity. Though the poem's outward form is that of a monologue, a close analysis reveals its essentially dialogic nature, as an artistic representation of Ivan's idea in its encounters with other voices, both in the world and within himself. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, detailed analysis of the Legend reveals
a profound participation of all elements of Ivan's worldview in his internal dialogue with himself and in his internally polemical interrelations with others. For all its external proportionality, the "Legend" is nevertheless full of interruptions; both the very form of its construction as The Grand Inquisitor's dialogue with Christ and at the same time with himself, and, finally, the very unexpectedness and duality of its finale, indicate an internally dialogic disintegration at its very ideological core.[8]
