It is recited by Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, during a conversation with his brother Alexei, a novice monk, about the possibility of a personal and benevolent God.

"The Grand Inquisitor" is an important part of the novel and one of the best-known passages in modern literature because of its ideas about human nature and freedom.

In a long diatribe directed at Jesus Himself, who has returned to Earth in Seville at the height of the Inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor defends the following ideas: only the principles of the devil can lead to mankind's unification; give man bread, control his conscience, and rule the world; Jesus limited himself to a small group of chosen ones, while the Catholic Church improved on his work and addresses all people; the church rules the world in the name of God, but with the devil's principles; Jesus was mistaken in holding man in high esteem.

Scholars cite Friedrich Schiller's play Don Carlos (1787) as a major inspiration for Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, while also noting that "The sources of the legend are extraordinarily varied and complex.

For Dostoevsky, the character of the Grand Inquisitor represents a prototypical expression of an ideology that denies Christ's true spiritual and historical significance and affirms its opposite.

The Grand Inquisitor's anti-Christian philosophy is ironically accentuated by its appearance within an institutionally Christian context, but Dostoevsky identifies this same negation at the root of the socialist, nihilist and materialist doctrines of his contemporaries.

Ivan, however, is "a sincere person who comes right out and admits that he agrees with the Inquisitor's view of humanity and that Christ's faith elevated man to a much higher level than where he actually stands."

According to Edward Wasiolek, it is emphatically asserted in these notes that "it is Christ who is guilty and cruel, and it is the Grand Inquisitor who is kind and innocent.

"[5] According to Joseph Frank, the prototype for the character of the Inquisitor can be found in Schiller's Don Carlos: "The play shares the same justification for the existence of evil in the world, the same answer to the problem of theodicy, that is at the heart of Dostoevsky's legend.

Dostoevsky's intention with "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" was to unmask the fundamental idea that lay behind the entire movement in Russia toward atheism, nihilism, rationalism and materialism, and away from the true Christian faith that was the spiritual heart of the nation.

Though the poem's outward form is that of a monologue, a close analysis reveals its essentially dialogic nature, as an artistic representation of Ivan's idea in its encounters with other voices, both in the world and within himself.