An object to worship (motif)
“Whom or what shall we worship?” is one of the main motifs of the parable. According to the Great Inquisitor, the world is full of “temptation,” and people are too weak and unwise to choose a right path. “A ceaseless longing alive in the heart of every individual human being, lurking in the breast of collective mankind” makes people hesitate and wonder “whom or what” they shall “worship.” “There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias.” People have “to find a new object or idea to worship” otherwise they get lost.
Bread (allegory)
Bread is allegory of an idea or a belief that is essential to people. The Inquisitor says, “Show a man “bread” and he and he will follow Thee, for what can he resist less than the attraction of bread?” These words mean that people need a certain idea to believe in. If they don’t find needed answers in this or that idea, they will look for a new one. “Thy bread will be forgotten,” warns the Inquisitor. Later on, he condemns people for choosing “earthly bread” instead of “Heavenly bread.”
Tower of Babel (symbol)
Tower of Babel is a symbol of rebellious ideas. The Inquisitor knows or merely suspects that times change. He asks Christ, “Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people?” People are not satisfied with the state they live in anymore, they need changes. “Feed us and then command us to be virtuous!” The Inquisitor fears that people destroy Thy Church to its very foundations and “raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel.”
