Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment centers on Raskolnikov, a man who chooses to murder a common pawnbroker while he struggles with guilt, alienation, and pride. The choice to commit murder creates a division between Raskolnikov and society because he violates the moral laws governing society. In Crime and Punishment, the rift between Raskolnikov and society is both alienating and enriching for his character and demonstrates Dostoevsky’s opinion of an individual’s place in society.…
Written by the same author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, the two main characters from “Crime and Punishment” and “Notes from Underground” displays similar qualities. Both characters are corrupted in their ways thinking, which indicates their nihilistic behavior. Although these two characters can be considered nihilists, their behaviors can be classified as ethical, or moral, nihilism. These two characters also relates to one another in terms of inconsistency, individualism and self-justification. Despite of the excerpt from “Notes from Underground”, David Denby’s article, “Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?”, provides a more detailed analysis of the book. Raskolnikov, from “Crime and Punishment”, and the underground man, from “Notes from Underground”,…
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, riddles its characters with physical, sexual, and psychological violence. Thomas C. Foster asserts in the chapter “More than it’s Going to Hurt You: Concerning Violence” of How to Read Literature like a Professor that no violence exists for its own sake; Rather, violence is useful in contributing to the novel’s overall message. Crime and Punishment is powerful demonstrating the control of conscience, guilt and otherwise, over the life of man. Quite typically violence erupts due to a sick combination of id and ego. The relationship between Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov, a town drunk of St. Petersburg, and his children and spouse, Katerina Ivanovna, is built upon a myriad of violence catalyzed by guilt. This relationship is the quintessence of lives tyrannized by guilt resulting in a vicious circle of ferocity.…
Take the character of Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov as a lead example. In the famous novel Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s character completely alienates himself from society at points in time, and never shows sentiment to others and objects around him. His character is not one to care for how others feel; he cares for himself and his personal gain in the world. Raskolnikov’s climax in the novel crashes in as he commits the murders of Alyona and Lizaveta Ivanova. However, along with being a nihilist, Raskolnikov practices utilitarianism, so he believes that committing those murders will be justified in the end due to the fact that a thousand good deeds will come from that one tragedy. (Dostoevsky) Nonetheless, nihilism is found in real life as well as novels. Picture a wife, coming home from work early one day to find that her husband is in bed with another woman. The wife is at a point in her life where she will have to reevaluate the things most essential to her everyday life. Most likely, she will make the choice to leave her husband and begin a new life on her own. From her decision, she chose the most basic of needs, what nurtures and drains the springs of hope in her life. She chose to reject the objective truth, one of the basic principles of nihilism. Nihilism happens is found in many events through life, not just in the form of an atheist, but in examples of a wife leaving her husband, a man losing his job, a son leaving his abusive parents, and so on…
The novel, Crime and Punishment, written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky follows an ex-student, Raskolnikov, through his mental struggles in great psychological detail after he commits murder without reason. Raskolnikov’s mental instability is a parallel to Russia’s long history of unstable and poorly designed government systems. To better understand the events that led up to radical and Slavophile movements in Russia, and to better understand how Raskolnikov came to be mentally ill, background knowledge on the history of Russia is needed.…
“Nobody, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in contrary direction at the time.” (Laurence Sterne) In Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, it is this exact miscalculation that leads the protagonist Raskolnikov (Rodya) to his ultimate mental, physical and social demise. Similarly, the theme of the novel directly correlates to Sterne’s quote, as Dostoyevsky delves into the psychology of a criminal, centering the novel on a murder and its after-affects on the transgressor.…
The two sharply contrasted settings in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky are symbolic of how turbulent Raskolinikov’s mind becomes after he murders Alyona Ivanov. In the bustling and disgusting Saint Petersburg, Raskolinikov has to suddenly battle the guilt that comes with Alyona’s demise yet once Raskolinikov confesses to his crime and serves his sentence in the lonely and removed Siberia; his mind relaxes. Similar to The Stranger, most of Crime and Punishment takes place during the summer, when the hot sun muddles Raskolinikov’s mind as it did to Meursaults’s. While Meursault uses the sun as an excuse to why he committed murder, Raskolinikov tried to justify his actions to Sonya; but ultimately Raskolinikov definitely comprehended his own guilt and spent most of the novel attempting to ease his shame.…
Guilt is a force in all that has the ability to bring people to insanity. When guilt becomes great enough, the effects it has on people go much deeper than the surface. People's minds and body's are overpowered by the guilt that consumes them every second they live with their burden. The devastating effects of guilt are portrayed vividly in Dostoevsky's fictional but all to real novel Crime and Punishment. In the story, the main character Raskolnikov commits a murder and suffers with the guilt throughout. Eventually his own guilt destroys himself and he is forced to confess. Through Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky bestows on the reader how guilt destroys Raskolnikov's physical and mental well being, which, in time, leads to complete alienation from society.…
In the Russian novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the main character, Raskalnikov goes through a vast time period of great psychological turmoil. When comparing and contrasting this death and reincarnation of his consciousness and mind to the biblical tale of Lazarus’s resurrection, the author not only highlights the extremeness of the crimes he has committed, but also touches on the importance of recognizing one’s guilt. This theme of reconciliation and religion becomes one of the central themes of the novel.…
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a psychologically charged novel in which the primary element that plagues the protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, is not a person but rather an idea; his own idea. Raskolnikov has an unhealthy obsession with rendering himself into what he perceives as the ideal, supreme human being, an übermensch. Raskolnikov forms for himself a theory in which he will live purely according to his own will and transcend the social norms and moralities that dominate society. Raskolnikov suggests that acts commonly regarded as immoral are to be reserved for a certain rank of “extraordinary” men. Raskolnikov’s faith in his theory is put to the test when he meets a man that is utterly amoral, seemingly unrepentant, and the very epitome of his “extraordinary” man, Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov.…
In the novel Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky creates the character Raskolnikov who experiences apparent madness after he commits a murder. He experiences this apparent madness because of the universally given human quality guilt. Dostoevsky tries to prove his belief that every person has a moral and ethical obligation and people should be punished for their wrongdoings. Raskolnikov murders an old pawn broker and her sister. This murder causes him to go “mad”. He shows symptoms of anxiety, isolation, and is haunted by his dreams.…
In the book “Crime and Punishment”, Dostoevsky explores the path of Raskolnikov who has faced many difficulties and obstacles throughout his life. He commits murder and is faced with the long and extremely painful journey of seeking redemption. Raskolnikov believes that by the law of nature, men have been divided into two groups of “ordinary” and “extraordinary”.…
Humans are intrinsically social creatures. Being surrounded by loved ones for a while is enough to bring almost anyone out of a negative mood. People rely on each other for comfort and nourishment. Because of this, it’s hard to spend a day without interacting with someone. If someone does let a day go by without talking to another human being, it usually means that the person in question is dealing with a serious problem. In many cases, people in emotional distress will avoid being social because they do not want attention or believe no one can help them. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the main character, Raskolnikov, alienates himself after murdering a pawnbroker and her sister. He doesn’t want anyone to find out what he did,…
While in The Black Cat it is a simple desire to learn if evil can be done out of no other reason than committing evil, Raskolnikov is also grappling with an experimentation in order to test the practicality of an idea of committing a crime that could lead to a greater humanitarian good. An analysis of the religious themes written by Wil Van Den Brecken, Christian fiction and religious realism in the novels of Dostoevsky, goes on to detail this combination of contributing factors. While describing the addition of the moral question to commit crime for a societal benefit he says, “It is about the question whether the difference between good and evil can be based on utilitarian ethics” (Van, 2011). This is in contrast to the protagonist of The Black Cat because although a desire to commit a crime simply to do so is present, with Raskolnikov it is also done in conjunction with the question of whether or not he has the high ground to commit a crime for the societal benefit. The implementation of this experiment is encouraged through a conversation of two fellow members of Raskolnikov’s community who go to great lengths to voice their displeasure with the victim of the crime.…
Normally, selflessness leads to being treated respectfully; but for Sonya, an eighteen-year-old prostitute, is treated disrespectfully for her selfless acts. One can show disrespect in many different ways. When someone accomplishes a selfless deed, they are congratulated for accomplishing it, and held in high esteem. But for Sonya, she is not congratulated, she is disgraced. Throughout Fyodor Dostoevsky’s, Crime and Punishment, Sonya is found as a disgrace and worthless.…