Comparing Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment

It is well known that human beings desire a conclusion. Everyone remembers being a child and wanting to reach a satisfying end where everyone lives "happily ever after." However, the audience of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment has grown up. It is time to move on from always being given a satisfying conclusion. Not only does the epilogue cater to a younger audience, but it also adds very little substance to the work as a whole by ways of theme, character, and plot. Whether it's a movie, a novel, or any other representation of a story, it is common for the audience come up with theories and questions. In any work whose audience is primarily experienced readers, it is important to encourage readers to be active. In the four main parts of Crime
and Punishment, the author does an excellent job keeping the reader in suspense and provoking deep or philosophical questions about the work. As an audience rather familiar with literature, an epilogue really shortchanges the reader. It gives the reader a feeling of completion, when, in reality, a work this weighty deserves a long period of reflection. It is better to end the experience of reading a book with theories and questions than with a couple chapters containing the equivalent of “and they all lived happily ever after.” The epilogue does not include sufficient character development to justify its existence, nor is there some kind of important change in the plot. While it may please the reader by bringing the story to a satisfying conclusion, this is entirely unnecessary, and even takes away the opportunity to draw one’s own conclusions. Additionally, the themes presented in this work, such as insanity and illness, or actions and consequences are not further developed. It was clear before the epilogue that Raskolnikov would be given a just punishment and that Sonya would faithfully stay with him. In a way, it is almost condescending to the reader to spell out the clear relationships between the characters and the motifs of the conclusion. If someone were to pick up a copy of Crime and Punishment without the epilogue, it is highly unlikely that they would suspect anything to be missing. While the epilogue might offer a “tidying up of loose ends” it is entirely unnecessary for a mature reader. Much of the excitement in reading a new book is becoming acquainted with the minds of the characters and the intentions of the author and analysing for oneself what the future might bring.