A mission
Alyosha can’t understand if the Great Inquisitor “mocks and laughs” or seriously “regards” his work “as a great service done by himself, his brother monks and Jesuits, to humanity.” The Great Inquisitor claims that a man is “born a rebel,” thus we can’t be and never will be happy. He accuses Christ of rejecting “the only meals which could make mankind happy.” The irony of the situation is that the Great Inquisitor is so convinced of people’s sinfulness that he is ready to accuse Christ, claiming that it is all His fault, for He has given people freedom to “bind and unbind,” but has never thought of “depriving us of it.”
Importance
The Great Inquisitor says, “Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help.” He doesn’t believe in mankind, people are more like “a herd of cattle” to him. They don’t know where to go, what to do, what to think, and what to believe in. He is a shepherd whose main task is to protect people from their own sinfulness. The irony is that he has lost his faith a long time ago. He is just afraid of losing his power over people, refusing to accept the fact that people don’t need the Inquisition to be firm in their beliefs.
The most loved
The Great Inquisitor can’t help asking how God is going to spread the promised bread. He wonders, “Can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth?” Even “supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread,” what will become of “the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings to weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?” Is it but those tens of thousands chosen among “the great and the mighty?” The irony is that the Inquisitor forgets that God is not supposed to favor the great and the mighty over the poor and the weak.
