Dostoyevsky’s onion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells a story about a wicked woman and an onion. Grushenka, later a redeemed sinner, begins the tale by saying, “It’s only a story, but it’s a nice story.”
In Dostoyevsky’s tale, a peasant woman known for her wickedness dies without a single good deed to save her. She is sent to a lake of fire as her guardian angel struggles to find one moment of charity in her life.
“She once pulled up an onion in her garden and gave it to a beggar woman,” says the angel and God, in His mercy, tells the angel to find the onion and pull the wicked woman out of the lake of fire with it. If the onion breaks, she’s doomed to stay in the fire.
The angel holds the onion and tells the peasant woman to hold on to it as he pulls her out. The other sinners begin to grab her so that they, too, can be saved, but the woman’s wickedness will not let her help them.
“It’s my onion, not yours,” she snarls as the kicks them on her way out. After she says it, the onion breaks and she falls into the lake of eternal fire while the angel weeps.
It is a parable that speaks to the value of small acts of kindness and God’s mercy. It also points out that charity must be a value we share with other sinners. When we judge as if we were God, our onion breaks.
To Dostoyevsky, an onion can be the key to salvation if it is shared with others. Salvation can come from the smallest acts if they are done with love.
