or in our sympathy for Ivan. We see his internal torments, which manifest themselves externally in his writings, ironic smile and tilted walk, as self-inflicted punishment for his sin of non-belief. Furthermore, we see that he will probably never come to accept God because of his intellectual pride and thus he becomes something of a tragic hero: doomed because of his own resolute actions and ideas. One scene that leads us most definitely to this conclusion is his confrontation with the devil and the tale the devil relates of the atheist who, dying, finds himself in the afterlife:"[...] He was amazed and indignant: 'This runs counter to my convictions,' he said. Well, for that he received a sentence [...] to walk a quadrillion kilometres [...] in darkness, and when he had finished that quadrillion the gates of heaven would be opened to him and all would be pardoned him [...] Well, so this fellow who had been sentenced to a quadrillion stood still, had a look round, and then lay down across the road: 'I shall not go, out of principle I shall not go!'" [...]"The staunch fellow!" Ivan exclaimed, still with the same strange animation. Now he was listening with a kind of unexpected interest. "Well, and is he still lying there?""There's the rub-no he isn't. He lay there for almost a thousand years, but then he got up and went.""The ass!" exclaimed Ivan with a loud, nervous laugh, still apparently trying to figure something out with intense effort [...] (742-743)One could easily see Ivan, like the atheist in the devil's tale, refusing to accept the afterlife even once he'd reached it and perhaps even refusing to walk the quadrillion kilometres throughout all time, not just the thousand years of the man in the tale, and yet we still feel that he would like to accept God and be done with it for even as he proclaims the man an 'ass' for getting up and walking the quadrillion kilometres Ivan is still 'trying to figure something out with intense ef...
