Analysis Of Crime And Punishment By Fyodor Dostoevsky

In Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov finds himself torn between the forces of good and evil and becomes unsure of his footing on such unstable ground. He believes that he can put good into the world by killing his evil pawnbroker, but he ends up having his world go spiralling out of control due to unforeseen circumstances. Raskolnikov believes that extraordinary men should be exempt from commonly perceived “wrongdoing” because they are more intelligent than the common masses. However, extraordinary entails the fulfillment of prerequisites that Raskolnikov has neither the will or the wherewithal to complete. Raskolnikov sees himself as an extraordinary man because he is willing to go to brutal ends to justify virtuous
means. For instance, he kills Alyona because he sees her as “a vile, pernicious louse, a little old money-lending crone who was of no use to anyone, to kill whom is worth forty sins forgiven” (Dostoevsky, 6.7.518). Raskolnikov rationalizes the bad he has done because she is a drain on society. He believes she was “of no use to anyone” because her existence hurt others. The services Alyona provided are typically seen as malicious and deplorable, however she is merely satisfying a demand of the market: lower class individuals finding themselves devoid of money due to their own irresponsible financial decisions. Though Alyona is taking advantage of the weak and needy, she can not be blamed for capitalizing on the situation. Alyona was of use to many people, Raskolnikov included. Though he may dislike her business practices, she is providing a service he clearly finds necessary. He also claims that her murder “is worth forty sins forgiven” because if she was no longer alive she would incapable of harming others. This quip is highly subjective because one could argue that she is actually saving lives in her own practice; albeit she is no humanitarian, but she is keeping many people afloat through her “pernicious” deeds. All actions have consequences, including those of her pawners. He may find her actions deplorable, but the same could be said of his own. Raskolnikov gives little to nothing back to society, whereas Alyona is beneficial due to her stimulation of the Russian economy.
Most of Raskolnikov’s day is spent sleeping or thinking; the former is his indulgence in the deadly sin of sloth, which may be why he is so hell-bent on the aforementioned “forty sins forgiven” he was arguing for.
Furthermore, his thinking is constituted of poor explanations of why he is remorseful of his crimes, for he believes “Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart” (Dostoevsky 3.5.264) because he sees his feelings as pity that his victims were unfortunate enough to need to be killed, despite Alyona and Lizaveta’s perceived innocence. Raskolnikov is incapable of having the “broad consciousness” he so proudly boasted about due to him being an echochamber of his own radical nihilist ideals. If he were as aware as he believes himself to be, he would know that his murders were not justified. Alyona may not be a spotless victim, but her mentally challenged sister Lizaveta is. Lizaveta was caught in the crossfire of Raskolnikov’s dirty deed and thus her death should weigh on his conscious as a severe sin and not the compassion he wishes it represented. The collateral damage that Lizaveta’s death represents is reprehensible and should not be seen as a necessary casualty to protect the masses. If Raskolnikov was truly of high intellect, he would have never allowed such a casualty to happen in the first place. His work was hasty and sloppy, for “He was terribly hurried… It was not so much that his hands were trembling as that he
kept making mistakes” (Dostoevsky, 1.7.78). Raskolnikov was rushing because of obvious time constraints and stress, but his errors were rather made out of incompetence and not pressure. He may be a thinker, but his lack of patience and skill affirms that he is not the extraordinary man he thinks he is. Though the ideal extraordinary man does have to disobey the modern conventions of good and evil to benefit the majority of society, he must do so in a calculated way. Raskolnikov acts under the guise of heroism, but his true nature is comprised of being self centered and selfish, like how he kills Alyona because he is jealous of her wealth and thinks she is undeserving of it. At first, he has lofty desires to take on the form of a “Robin Hood” and disperse wealth to those less fortunate, but he decides that he would rather spend her money on an education for himself. Comparatively, an education may be helpful in crafting him into the extraordinary person he would like to be, but this loosely hatched plan reeks of greed. His intentions may feign goodness, but his true nature is destined to prevail once more. Raskolnikov is now guilty of another deadly sin.
Further, Raskolnikov does not actually feel significant remorse for his actions, for “ if I’d succeeded, I’d been crowned, but now I’m walking into the trap!” (Dostoevsky, 6.7.518).
His sociopathic remark reflects a disconnect from reality in that he finds the only fault in his actions being his failure to send his mission to completion. Raskolnikov’s mind is tied retrospectively to what he wishes would have happened, and he is unable to see reality in an authentic light, for his fixation is that he nearly got away with murder because he is too prideful to admit Lizaveta did not deserve death. This blunder is due to his misappropriation of worth in that the wealth Alyona represents far outweighs the sanctity of Lizaveta’s innocent stature; Raskolnikov’s self interest plays far too large of a role in his decision making because he consistently chooses to passively ignore his self imposed values for cheap gratification of evil. Again, sin gets the best of Raskolnikov seeing that he is unable to overcome his
pride. Throughout Raskolnikov’s processing of his crimes, he regularly contradicts the goal he originally set out to achieve: to be an extraordinary man. Raskolnikov scraps for proof of it inside of him, despite the overwhelming evidence mounted against him. Raskolnikov is a deplorable human edging on megalomaniac who is only out for his own self-interest. His arguments possess fragments of logic, but he fails to connect due to his insufficient standing . If his own narcissistic view of himself was correct, he would feel the “suffering and pain” that he finds “obligatory for a broad consciousness”.