Now both Ivan and Smerdyakov are ill and no longer talk in riddles. Smerdyakov openly tells Ivan, "You murdered him; you are the real murderer; I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your words I did it." Smerdyakov also reminds Ivan of the philosophy that "everything is lawful if there is no immortality" and that Ivan consented by going away. "By your consent to leave, you silently sanctioned doing it," he says. Ivan still cannot accept Smerdyakov as the murderer, however; as the facts stand, he is guilty, even if the servant did commit the deed.
Ivan faces his own conscience that night in the form of a tormenting devil. The doppelganger is a witty, urbane, and clever aberration. He affirms nothing for the distraught Ivan, and at Ivan's every question, he merely asks another, often ridiculing Ivan's most private fears.
At the end of Book XI, Alyosha arrives with the news of Smerdyakov's death, but Ivan is little concerned with the cook's fate. The realization of his own guilt has so shamed and confused him that realities have almost wholly dissolved.
