I may as well give my full opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love.
I always thought that the father and the three sons were different facets how to Dostoevsky saw himself. Alyosha was, I think, the person Dostoevsky thought he was inside and truly wanted to be, but knew he was not.
