Comparing Crime And Punishment And The Brothers Karamazov

The Way of a Man
It is a commonly known fact that humans naturally change over time. Whether it is through environmental circumstances or pure biological change, it occurs in everyone. For the author Fyodor Dostoevsky, change came through traumatic events. Being sent away to isolation in Siberia caused him to shift his previous radical outlook to one of modesty and faith. The visibility of his change is seen through his work as he wrote many novels after his release that displays the shift in his beliefs in human nature. The importance of faith and religion (the religion of these books being Christianity) in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels changes from one novel to another. Both of Dostoevsky’s novels use murder as a way of bringing religion into
The growing theme within the two novels that Dostoevsky explores is that religion can serve as a gateway to a new perception of the world because it opens people up to the idea of redemption and humanity as a solution to their problems.
The role of murder in Dostoevsky’s novels is a way for the characters that have done so to find religion. Both novels come across a scene where a character commits murder. In Crime and Punishment, it is done by the protagonist while in The Brothers Karamazov it is done physically by a secondary character but the guilt is felt by one of the protagonists. Both novels have characters who have murdered not because they are cold blooded killers but because they have something to prove; whether it is to themselves or to others. Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment, is brought to religion after the murders the pawnbroker in his town along with her sister. Raskolnikov thought to himself that, “he personally would not be subject to any such morbid subversion… for the simple reason that what he
Knowing that Dostoevsky had endured traumatic events shifting his way of looking at religion and faith, it would be probable that Crime and Punishment, written much earlier than The Brothers Karamazov (and closer to the release from Siberia), would be less in tune with the religious views he holds at his deathbed. The importance of religion in his novels growing as he aged stems from his shift from a once liberal and outspoken adolescent to a conservative and concerned adult. Giving the characters the option of religion in Crime and Punishment showcases that he was beginning to believe that religion may be the answer to the troubles he has faced in his own life. After living through the trials and tribulations he has endured, from years of isolation to the near death experience, this belief grows into much more than a belief but a mantra that is visible in his last novel The Brothers Karamazov. Having known this information, the reader can deduce that Dostoevsky may have not left room for an atheist to relate to his novel but yet have shown them that they can find salvation (something he explores with the character Ivan) if they give religion a