Crime And Punishment Allusions

Crime and Punishment is one of the most famous works by the Russian novelist Fydor Dostoevsky. The novel begins with the double murder of an elderly woman and her sister. They were murdered by Raskolnikoff. While at first it seems like he committed the murder because of his need for money, as the story develops his motive seems to be seeing if he could get away with the crime. Much of the action of the novel revolves around exactly that question: will the murderer get away with the crime. However, the text is not a detective story. Rather, it is a psychological examination of the murderer, and the changes that happen to him as a result of the crime, and being investigated by the police. Over the course of the story, the psychological
For example, there are many allusions in the novel. Allusions are a literary device which an author uses in order to make a reader think about or recall another work of literature. In other words, something in text A, like an image or a character will remind the reader of text B, and the reader will gain insight into the new text from the connection. One Shakespearean allusion, or reference that Dostoevsky makes is with the character Marmeladov, whom Raskolnikov meets in the tavern in “chapter two” of Crime and Punishment. Marmeladov, I believe, is an allusion or reference to Shakespeare’s great character John Falstaff. Falstaff appears in several of Shakespeare’s plays, including Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Winsdor. Falstaff is a fat man, who is supposedly a knight, but spends all his time drinking in The Boar’s Head Inn. Falstaff never has any money of his own, but always gets money to drink by begging for it or borrowing it. He is considered a funny character, and always entertains the other people in the tavern with his tales, boasts, jokes and
These can take the form of allusions to the holy books of one of the world’s religions, or the central figures of the religion, or to the religion’s teachings. In Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky has several of his characters, especially the female characters Dunya and Sonia make allusions to Christianity, and specifically to Christ’s suffering on the cross. In some forms of Christianity, it is taught that the great suffering the Christ endured while on the cross purified him of his sins; in other words, since Christ was part man, he was tainted by the same original sin that all humans are. It was through his suffering on the cross that Christ was purified of the original sin within himself. However, this suffering also redeems all of humanity. Because Christ suffered on the cross, all of humanity has the chance to be forgiven of the original sin, and then let into heaven. This is what Christians mean when they say Christ suffered and died for your sins. Both Sonia and Dunya take Christianity very seriously, and believe in its teachings. This is why they urge Raskolnikov to turn himself in and accept his punishment (the other word in the novel’s title) because only by suffering from his punishment does Raskolnikov have any chance of being saved. At first, Raskolnikov holds out, and says “they say it is necessary for me to suffer! What’s the object of these senseless sufferings”