Dostoevsky's Use of Dreams in His Novel Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky’s Use of Dreams in His Novel Crime and Punishment It is the winter of 1850 and a harsh wind is blowing outside making the temperature drop by about 10° even as the sun is rising. Even though this weather is not suitable for habitation, outside thousands of men are working. Many of these men are clothed in mere rags, and if one looked closely they would see that quite a few were missing fingers or toes that had been cut off due to frost bite. One of the men chopping lumber collapses on the ground, a supervising soldier grabs the man by his hair and drags him over to a group of men standing off to the side. The other men continue working hard, not wanting to join their comrades, and so by the end of the day there are only fourteen men standing in this group. The bell signaling the end of the day rings and the men carefully put their tools away before heading off to the mess hall to receive their rations, though every one of them knows that they will be going to bed starving, yet again. As soon as the last man leaves the clearing, the soldiers line the fourteen men up along the trees, raise their guns, and fire. Similarly to the men depicted in this narrative, Dostoevsky spent six years of his life in a Siberian gulag before having his sentence pardoned by the new Tsar of Russia. However Dostoevsky had to be extremely careful about what he said/wrote and whom he associated with because the Tsar could quite easily revoke his pardon. Fyodor Dostoevsky placed multiple dreams throughout his book Crime and Punishment, and utilized them in order to attack the basic principles and laws of the Russian government. However, in order to fully be able to understand the symbolism which Dostoevsky incorporates in to these dreams, one must first know some background information on what life was like in 19th century Russia.
Though most people know about the general concepts of life in Soviet Russia, they do not know many specific details about it. Background knowledge on Soviet Russia is what is needed in order to fully comprehend Dostoevsky’s symbolic representation of late 19th, early 20th, century Russia throughout the novel, but most specifically, within the dreams. For instance, in January of 1850 Dostoevsky arrived at a Russian labor camp located in Siberia. These camps, most commonly known as Gulags, were first established as an alternative to prison and for the most part they provided all of the penal labor in the USSR. The prisoners in these labor camps usually for an average of 14 hours a day performing menial, but labor intensive tasks, such as cutting down trees, mining, building railroads, etc. Though we do not know the exact number of people who were killed within these camps, we can approximate a range of anywhere from 1.6 million to 15 million people who were directly murdered by the soldiers. (Of Russian Origin: the GULAG) This background knowledge helps the reader understand why Dostoevsky felt hostile towards the Russian government; however there are still some skeptics whom believe that Dostoevsky had no reason to be discontent with Russian officials.
While it is true that Dostoevsky was condemned to an execution, and that the Tsar pardoned him from the death penalty, it was actually a mock execution which had been set up by the Tsar. This was a common practice at that time period, however what was uncommon was the way that Tsar Nicholas cruelly orchestrated the scenario, giving explicit instructions that the men were to have their lives spared only after the men were standing with the noose around their necks. After being pardoned, Dostoevsky was shipped off to a Siberian gulag where he spent the next six years before having his sentence lifted. Many of the men who were sent to Siberia did not survive the extreme conditions and laborious days, and those who did survive would often experience mental breakdowns or health failures. “Dostoevsky had long suffered from what he referred to as ‘disordered nerves’, now the hardship of his incarceration along with the terrible stress which immediately preceded it, caused his health to break down and he began to have the epileptic seizures which were to torment him for the rest of his life.” (Dost. Background) Regardless of the fact that Dostoevsky managed to survive the gulag, he never fully recovered from trauma that the Tsar of Russia purposefully caused him. If it is accepted that Dostoevsky had reasonable reason to carry resentment against Russia, then the next argument that one might consider is why did Dostoevsky choose not write Crime and Punishment as a very blatant verbal assault against Russia, instead of through parallels and symbolism? The reason for this is quite simply because Dostoevsky’s sentence had been pardoned by the Tsar. If Dostoevsky wanted to remain a free man, he had to be very careful to avoid being seen as a threat to the Tsar, and this meant that he had to watch not only what he said/wrote but also who he associated with. By using the dreams to satirize Russian government, Dostoevsky managed to ensure that people would be able to identify the parallels between the dreams and Russia (since at this time period people still believed in seers, and prophesies, who often used dreams as a way of seeing the future). However by doing this, Dostoevsky also gave himself a safety net of sorts, because if the Russian Tsar were to notice of the parallels Dostoevsky could simply state that the dreams were entirely fictitious and that there was no underlying meaning to the dreams. Most people today view dreams as fantasy, a figment of ones imagination, and so many will disregard anything that occurs within dreams as pure fiction. However in the time period when Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, many people still believed in seers who were able to see into the future through dreams. These dreams were never straight forward, and relied on the seer or the subject of the dream to interpret what it symbolized. For this reason, dreams were the perfect method of choice for conveying the points that Dostoyevsky wanted to convey, it allowed Dostoevsky to be extremely subtle when denouncing Russian government. One case where this is shown is in the iconic mare dream in which Rodia dreams about a particular time in his childhood where he saw a mare being beaten to death by a group of intoxicated men. Though no one can truly know what Dostoevsky was attempting to convey with this dream, one can interpret it as a parallel between the drunken peasant Mikolka and the Russian Government because they were both intoxicated, one by alcohol and one by power. It is important that it is stated that Mikolka was intoxicated because just as alcohol can cloud a persons judgment, so can the possession of ultimate power/authority over other human beings. Though the Russian governments “intoxication” was much less apparent than Mikolka’s, it did have similar effects that caused them to behave rashly when they felt that someone was questioning their authority or self declared power. This was shown in the dream when Mikolka’s sickly mare is unable to do what he insisted she was able to do causing those watching the scene start to laugh. Mikolka sees this as a personal insult to his authority and this cause him to lose touch with reality. Mikolka is insistent that his mare will gallop, “[flogging] the little mare furiously, with quickened blows, exactly as though he really believed she could gallop.” (Dost. 214) He refuses to listen when the onlookers tell him the mare is dying, he simply responds by saying “Mind your own business! I’ll do what I please….I want her to gallop, and she’ll gallop!”(Dost. 215) Just like Mikolka, the Russian governmental officials are extremely proud, yet insecure, people. They take offense to the tiniest things, and quickly become defensive and irrational if they feel that they are having their authority questioned. This particular character trait is what made it necessary for Dostoevsky to disguise his antagonism towards Russia within the dreams.
This character trait was emphasized in the final dream of the book because in this dream the men who are infected by this new parasite begin to see themselves as better than those around them, “never had they considered themselves so clever and so unhesitatingly right” (Dost. 1544). This parasite is the propaganda that was spread throughout Russia at this time, and it is suggesting that the people of Russia are not acting in unison but rather as a sea of individuals and it was the conflicting ideas and Napoleonic complexes which caused them to turn on each other, killing “each other in senseless rage… soldiers flung themselves upon each other, slashed and stabbed… everybody was on edge…everything went to wrack and ruin.” (Dost. 1545-1546) Dostoevsky’s inclusion of this particular dream, as well as his placing it in the epilogue to the book, makes it appear as if this is what Dostoevsky predicts will happen to his country if they continue on the same place. He uses this particular dream in the same way that the seers of his time used theirs: a prediction of what is to come.
Despite the fact that Dostoyevsky managed to survive his time in the Siberian labor camps, many of his contemporaries did not and Dostoyevsky’s health never did improve. What I find most interesting about this man, is his ingenuity when it came to hiding a message between the lines. Upon first glance, no one would suspect that this dream of a mare getting beaten to death was actual a portrayal of his life in Russia. What’s even more interesting is the last dream of the book which ends with the infected society ultimately falling apart and failing. Isn’t this what actually does end up happening? It is almost as if Dostoyevsky was trying to warn those around him that they were on a path leading to failure.

Works Cited
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Sidney Monas. New York: Signet Classics, 2006. Print.
"Of Russian Origin: The GULAG." The GULAG –Russiapedia of Russian Origin. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2012. .
“Biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky” ProQuest Literature: 2006.

Cited: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Sidney Monas. New York: Signet Classics, 2006. Print. "Of Russian Origin: The GULAG." The GULAG –Russiapedia of Russian Origin. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2012. . “Biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky” ProQuest Literature: 2006.