Crime and Punishment

There is a thin line between good and evil. “Great men smash laws, smash old ways, in order to create new ones, great men are not afraid to by criminals,”( Raskolnikov). In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s legendary Russian novel Crime and Punishment, Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov (Rodya, Rodenka, or Rodka), commits murder for the idea that great men can break laws and get away with it. Never afraid to tackle the complex topics of humanity, Dostoyevsky plays the role of “Devil’s Advocate” and directs the reader to contemplate their personal perception of what is good and what is evil. I’m going to further dissect and state personal opinions on Raskolnikov’s theory, as well as show the correlation between Pre-20th Century Russian Literary works and what is essentially Russian about Russian Literature. This theory has been called the “extraordinary man” theory by critics of the novel. About half way through the story, Dostoyevsky decides to bless us with an article that Rodya wrote and had published in an accredited news journal. Basically, the article reveals Raskolnikov’s inner workings and the idea that men are separated into “ordinary” and “extraordinary.” The so called ordinary men are expected to follow all laws placed by authority. However; the extraordinary men are able to break the laws placed forth by society. This is how Raskolnikov justifies killing the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta Ivanovna. He believes himself to be “extraordinary.” Raskolnikov even compares himself to Napoleon and the murders that he carried out while in his European military campaign. Raskolnikov believed that Napolean was above society’s laws and “extraordinary” among the world’s elite. Historically, I think that he saw Napoleon’s war machine and all the deaths caused by the little guy, as nothing but a means to an end that would benefit humanity. So does that make Napoleon an evil person because he interfered with the natural allotted time given to other humans? Or

Cited: The Impact of Weather Conditions on Mood Variability in Geographically Relocated Versus Non-Relocated Individuals Jamie M. Scott Minnesota State University, Mankato.