Alyosha Karamazov

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov (Russian: Алексе́й Фёдорович Карама́зов) is the protagonist of the 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He is usually referred to simply as Alyosha, though he is also called Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, and Lyoshenka. He is the youngest of the Karamazov brothers, being twenty years old at the start of the novel. The author’s preface and first chapters declare that Alyosha is the novel’s hero. Dostoevsky intended to write a sequel which would detail the rest of Alyosha's life, though he died shortly after the publication of The Brothers Karamazov.

At the outset of the story Alyosha is a novice in the local monastery. He is then sent out into the world by his Elder, Father Zosima, and leaves the monastery. Subsequently, he becomes embroiled in the sordid details of his family's life, and involved with extreme personalities and fraught relations. He also becomes acquainted with, and later engaged to, a 14-year-old girl named Lise Khokhlakov, daughter to a confidante of Katerina Ivanovna, his brother Dmitri’s fiancée. Alyosha is furthermore involved in a side story in which he befriends a group of school boys whose fate adds a hopeful message to the conclusion of an otherwise tragic novel.

Alyosha's place in the novel is usually that of a messenger or witness to the actions of his brothers and others.