Character Similarities Between Crime And Punishment

Each character in Crime and Punishment has their own individual characteristics that vastly differ from others. With contrasting mindset among the characters, Dostoevsky did not show his pity for all characters equally. Through his use of language and characterization, we sympathized for Raskolnikov and Sonia greater than characters like Luzhin and Svidrigailov.

With more than two characters in the book, it is difficult to spend the same amount of time developing each character. Not all characters help forward the plot. Therefore, Dostoevsky does not need to spend as much time creating Alyona as a round character, as he did for Raskolnikov. Because he went more in depth with characters like Raskolnikov, we got a better understanding of their personality. Having that perception allows us to sympathize for them at a
greater level. Knowing more of their psychological thinking also helps create a sense of sorrow for their uncontrollable actions. For example, despite Raskolnikov being a murderer, we still pitied him because after the crime, it was shown that he suffered mentally, complicated his relationships with others, and was psychologically challenged. Through his punishment, we grew to believe that Raskolnikov had changed causing us to gain a sense of compassion towards him. However, characters like Alyona, where we know limited about, it was hard to pitied them the same way we pitied Raskolnikov because we did not know their situation. Yet, it was not important, since we already know the most underlying information about her and her connection to the plot, how she felt does not help forward the plot or the understanding of the other main characters like Raskolnikov and Sonia.

As Crime and Punishment was written in a third-person omniscient perspective, we get a rounded look at characters like Raskolnikov, who held a dominant role in the story plot.
It is important to the reader that we understand why Raskolnikov acted a certain way and how he reasoned through his actions. This immersed understanding of a character helps build the distress Dostoevsky wanted us to feel for certain characters. Consequently, he did not need the readers to pity flat and minor characters like Zossimov. Different level of pitiness was also introduced between different characters. For example, we pitied Dounia for being so selfless to want to marry Luzhin for the sake of her brother’s good, even though she has no feelings for him. On the other hand, the constant anguish we felt for Sonia was on another level. Dostoevsky gave us many more reasons to pity Sonia since we were introduced to her character. The level of agony collected as the plot went on and stayed even until the end of the book. Though, he does not develop the same level of pity for each character, however, emphasis was made on the ones that held the greatest significance to the
plot.

Dostoevsky created pitiness at different levels to accommodate to the needs of certain character development. As round characters hold an important role in the story, so does flat and minor characters that adds dynamic into the plot. Although, it is not ideal to pity every character the same way, however, Dostoevsky guided the readers to pity not only the characters that suffer or have it the worse, but also characters that does not always make moral decisions.