Of Dreams In Crime And Punishment, By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Raskolnikov goes psychotic. Svidrigailov commits suicide. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, these two principle male characters experience dreams that are a result of their extreme guilt. The dreams portrayed in the novel reveal aspects of their subconscious selves. Nightmares are dreams that connect to the unconscious soul that cause a dreamer to wake with the profound feeling of loss of life or dismemberment with a sense of threat to his or her self-esteem and interpersonal security (Van de Castle 351). The significance of the central characters’, Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, literal, waking, or sleeping dreams can be explored by examining their pasts and personalities that transformed them into the men they have become. In the novel, both waking and sleeping dreams have a
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psychological consequence, because dreams reveal the subconscious emotions of the characters leaving their souls stripped for the reader to examine. The psychological value of the dream is a central theme throughout Crime and Punishment. The extreme guilt caused vivid dreams, allows the portrayal of the subconscious thoughts of the character to come to the forefront which Dostoevsky portrayed as the flesh and blood of the novel (Layman 1).
Fyodor Dostoevsky believed that “Dreams, occur with horrifying clarity, with a jeweler’s meticulous mastery of detail”. His mode of expression was the imaginative juxtaposition of reality and dream; therefore, dreams became the flesh and blood of his novel Crime and Punishment (Rowe 95). Both Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov have major dream sequences by the end of the novel. These dreams are the result of the agonizing psychological torment over the crimes they have committed. The men realize the guilt that haunts them is a direct result of their actions, leading them to make critical decisions and desire for self-punishment (Bloom 153). Dostoyevsky demonstrates a profound insight into the mechanism and the deep-seated motivation for crime (Abrahamsen 155).
To better understand the actions and subsequently the guilt that haunts both characters, Dostoevsky reveals their personalities and pasts with utmost clarity. An examination of Raskolnikov’s dream about the horse reveals his subconscious fears and reinforces his conscious feelings of helplessness. Raskolnikov, a poverty stricken student, creates an interior conflict with himself by conceiving a theory in order to rationalize murder (Layman 2). He struggles with his overwhelming feelings of alienation and self-loathing guilt after committing murder early on in the novel. He is emotionally unstable and imagines he is a superman with the right to kill a pawnbroker and her daughter. In his eyes, they were worthless women and he could take their money (Abrahamsen 155). An examination of Raskolnikov’s dream about the horse reveals his subconscious fears, reinforcing his conscious feelings of helplessness he felt in his youth, quite the opposite of the man he has become. Raskolnikov unconsciously dreams in order to return back to a time of innocence to comfort himself. He realizes that the comatose state of dreaming of serenity fails him and ultimately creates additional anxiety.
This sense of disquietude is transposed through Raskolnikov’s dream where juvenile Raskolnikov and his father encounter Mikolka, a poor laborer, brutally beating an old horse to death to the delight of a crowd of peasants. The vision is set in the lucid country side where he was brought up. Here, Dostoevsky achieves a rate emotional intensification. Through Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky shows his ideas of his own childhood and how they can be reflected into a dream. It is a nightmare about cruelty, about the World’s evil. Cruelty in the dream seems inherent in the entire world. Raskolnikov’s first dream, a sojourn into memory, examines the coexisting relationships of these juxtaposed forces (Morris 153). Thus, the preface to his dream states, “Such dreams, pathological dreams, make a powerful impression on a man’s disordered, already aroused organism, and are always remembered for a long time” (Dostoevsky nb 54). In his first dream, Raskolnikov sees a huge cart, drawn by a small, emaciated mare. “…peasants always whip them so painfully, so painfully (Dostoevsky 67).” A vivid dream is comprised of memories that can haunt, such as the crowd that laughed at Marmeladov. The unfeeling peasants beating the mare represents Raskolnikov’s feeling of isolation. The child’s emotions are torn between pity and a furious need to avenge the mare’s murder (Layman 2), causing Raskolnikov’s anxiety before he commits the murders.
Therefore, the first dream has a double projection into his present. Dostoevsky makes it clear that the dream’s mood and atmosphere cast shadows across Raskolnikov’s subconscious (Rowe 109). “Thank God, it was only a dream!” he gasps sitting up in horror. “But what is this? I must be getting feverish: what a revolting dream!” Second, he himself projects the dream upon his present in sharp symbolic focus. “God! He exclaimed. “Will I really, will I really rake an axe and start to beat her head, crush her skull…” (Dostoevsky 73). This illustrates how Raskolnikov dreams of the time when he was still innocent and yet already guilty from committing the murders. The crying and the horse present to him the drama of his loss of innocence. This overriding theme of the dream, in which the mare is beaten with a crowbar, undoubtedly foreshadows Raskolnikov’s killings (Rowe 108). Killings which haunt his character long after the crime is committed.
The other central character in Crime and Punishment, Svidrigailov, is a shadowy, highly ambiguous character. He and his wife employed Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya. Svidrigailov becomes obsessed with Dunya in a disconcerting way. Svidrigailov confesses to Raskolnikov that his marriage is one of suitability. With Svidrigailov’s marriage a farce, he continues to reveal that he is a shameless “sexualist” whose favorite activity is to seduce adolescent girls. As he has a failed attempt at seducing Dunya, he spends the night in a motel troubled by dreams about his former victims.
Svidrigailov’s past indiscretions and crimes continue to painfully haunt him in his dreams. In Russian literature, historically, they feel a spontaneous and intimate satisfaction from inflicting pain in literature. (Rowe 107). This influence is demonstrated throughout the dreams in Crime and Punishment. Svidrigailov’s dream comes in three sequences showing the significance of agony and suffering. First he discovers a mouse, second he sees a coffin with flowers and a 14 year old girl victim, and third he attempts to help a lost 5 year old girl. This sequence “reveals the loathsome depths of Svidrigailov’s being, as well as a powerful degree of repressed self-revulsion” (Layman 4). The slithering mouse, in the first part, could be a foreshadowing tool showing the confrontation between Svidrigailov and his inner self. Svidrigailov is the rodent, thus his ironic disgust is indicative of his self-hatred. The second part proves that a girl did indeed drown herself after having been brutally raped by Svidrigailov. Water holds the terror of death for the corrupt Svidrigailov as it rises, symbolizing that he must share the suicidal fate. Lastly, the five year old girl dream reveals his dual character. His initial reaction was to help her, but his constitutional evil, pedophilia, showed in the young girl’s expressions (Layman 5).
Furthermore, Svidrigailov’s character develops into the epitome of a pedophile desiring young innocence and laughing about it repulsively (Rowe 111). “Stronger than the feverish flush of a normal child’s face” thought Svidrigailov. “…her crimson lips are burning, flaming” (Dostoevsky 101). These manifestations portray the depth of his feelings and how drawn he was to the young girl knowing that it was altogether wrong to have such strong emotions toward an innocent child. Because he feels so spiritually dead, he considers the only atonement suitable is to commit suicide. Svidrigailov partially acknowledges his guilt but evades the consequences of his actions by committing the suicide. His crimes result from his complete surrender to his evil nature (Telgen 75-76). Svidrigailov’s hallucinations, dreams, and suicide compromise one of Crime and Punishment’s most powerful sequences (Rowe 113). Not only imagination, but real thought occurs in dreams, and the fact is often denied (Van de Castle 292).
When confronted by such situations, such as Svidrigailov was, the individual may become “thin-skinned” for a time and experience a troubling nightmare. To dream that rape has been committed among your acquaintances denotes that you will be shocked at the distress of some of your friends (Miller 357). Dream work, a nineteenth century term, was regarded as effecting some change upon the latent thoughts, while a symbol existed more or less as a fixed object. Sexual dreams represent the most primitive ideas imaginable (Van de Castle 122). Svidrigailov was perused by his former crimes against children in the media of hallucinations and dreams (Rowe 113).
Consequently, as established throughout Crime and Punishment, guilt is an emotion where one feels over falling short of a standard of worth or excellence with which one identifies themselves (Deigh 426).
A guilty conscience contributes to the emotional and cognitive state one experiences when they have done something culpable or immoral. Commonly referred to as a ‘bothered conscience’, guilt sinks deep into our subconscious and manifests as anxious thoughts (Edward 3). Throughout the novel both characters portray their dreams as distressed emotions. Raskolnikov created the ‘Extraordinary Man’ in order to justify his killings, and Svidrigailov killed himself over his anxiety of his dreams. A person’s action and circumstances mediate between them and the emotion which locates differently between emotion and the major concepts that constitute these beliefs. As revealed by Sigmund Freud, guilt can be a powerful explanatory concept, to the idea of pairing guilt and shame (Deigh 427). If one has staked their identity on being a member of society and attributed their worth to the membership, the shortcoming they experience comes as a serious blow to their pride and
self-respect.
Therefore, dreams caused by guilt are often marked by an extraordinary vividness (Rowe 113). Both men exhibit culpability in their twisted dreams. Through the use of vivid dreams, or nightmares, as a literary technique, Dostoevsky is able to convey both characters’ true nature. An analysis of dreams aids the reader to better understand the impetus for a character’s actions. The artistic details are emphasized, as in their influence on the dreamer, after the dream. As Svidrigailov states, “And when I dream I think” (Rowe 109). Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov both “lose consciousness” (Morris 153). Both men dream freely in the unconscious and share their inner reflections.
Essentially, the novel’s allegory is expressed in the dreams of its characters: for Raskolnikov, dreams symbolize man’s ability to find salvation after embracing humanity’s evils, but for Svidrigailov, dreams symbolize a depth of human immorality for which no form of salvation can exist (Layman 2). Memories, dreams, hallucinations, and reality often fade subtly in and out of one another in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He promoted eloquent collaboration between the vivid and the apparently typical. “Dreams, it appears, are governed not by reason, but by desire, not by the head, but the guilty heart; and yet wheat complex, crafty things are sometimes fashioned in dreams. Still, the reason encounters things in dreams that are completely inconceivable” (Rowe 96). Dostoevsky was innovative in using and examining dreams to reveal deep psychological truths about his characters (Rowe 97). He used their pasts to generate their present dreams that created their angst. Both characters were concerned to point of being haunted with what would happen to them after they committed their crimes. A need of self-punishment called forth by a strong conscious sense of guilt is the main motive behind Crime and Punishment (Abrahamsen 154). The internal torture that Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov experienced was a direct of result of the crimes they committed. Dostoevsky eloquently takes the reader through dream sequences that demonstrate the impact of foreshadowing guilt and remorse of the human spirit. Essentially, when a crime is committed humans receive more excessive punishment internally than man can impose.
psychological consequence, because dreams reveal the subconscious emotions of the characters leaving their souls stripped for the reader to examine. The psychological value of the dream is a central theme throughout Crime and Punishment. The extreme guilt caused vivid dreams, allows the portrayal of the subconscious thoughts of the character to come to the forefront which Dostoevsky portrayed as the flesh and blood of the novel (Layman 1).
Fyodor Dostoevsky believed that “Dreams, occur with horrifying clarity, with a jeweler’s meticulous mastery of detail”. His mode of expression was the imaginative juxtaposition of reality and dream; therefore, dreams became the flesh and blood of his novel Crime and Punishment (Rowe 95). Both Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov have major dream sequences by the end of the novel. These dreams are the result of the agonizing psychological torment over the crimes they have committed. The men realize the guilt that haunts them is a direct result of their actions, leading them to make critical decisions and desire for self-punishment (Bloom 153). Dostoyevsky demonstrates a profound insight into the mechanism and the deep-seated motivation for crime (Abrahamsen 155).
To better understand the actions and subsequently the guilt that haunts both characters, Dostoevsky reveals their personalities and pasts with utmost clarity. An examination of Raskolnikov’s dream about the horse reveals his subconscious fears and reinforces his conscious feelings of helplessness. Raskolnikov, a poverty stricken student, creates an interior conflict with himself by conceiving a theory in order to rationalize murder (Layman 2). He struggles with his overwhelming feelings of alienation and self-loathing guilt after committing murder early on in the novel. He is emotionally unstable and imagines he is a superman with the right to kill a pawnbroker and her daughter. In his eyes, they were worthless women and he could take their money (Abrahamsen 155). An examination of Raskolnikov’s dream about the horse reveals his subconscious fears, reinforcing his conscious feelings of helplessness he felt in his youth, quite the opposite of the man he has become. Raskolnikov unconsciously dreams in order to return back to a time of innocence to comfort himself. He realizes that the comatose state of dreaming of serenity fails him and ultimately creates additional anxiety.
This sense of disquietude is transposed through Raskolnikov’s dream where juvenile Raskolnikov and his father encounter Mikolka, a poor laborer, brutally beating an old horse to death to the delight of a crowd of peasants. The vision is set in the lucid country side where he was brought up. Here, Dostoevsky achieves a rate emotional intensification. Through Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky shows his ideas of his own childhood and how they can be reflected into a dream. It is a nightmare about cruelty, about the World’s evil. Cruelty in the dream seems inherent in the entire world. Raskolnikov’s first dream, a sojourn into memory, examines the coexisting relationships of these juxtaposed forces (Morris 153). Thus, the preface to his dream states, “Such dreams, pathological dreams, make a powerful impression on a man’s disordered, already aroused organism, and are always remembered for a long time” (Dostoevsky nb 54). In his first dream, Raskolnikov sees a huge cart, drawn by a small, emaciated mare. “…peasants always whip them so painfully, so painfully (Dostoevsky 67).” A vivid dream is comprised of memories that can haunt, such as the crowd that laughed at Marmeladov. The unfeeling peasants beating the mare represents Raskolnikov’s feeling of isolation. The child’s emotions are torn between pity and a furious need to avenge the mare’s murder (Layman 2), causing Raskolnikov’s anxiety before he commits the murders.
Therefore, the first dream has a double projection into his present. Dostoevsky makes it clear that the dream’s mood and atmosphere cast shadows across Raskolnikov’s subconscious (Rowe 109). “Thank God, it was only a dream!” he gasps sitting up in horror. “But what is this? I must be getting feverish: what a revolting dream!” Second, he himself projects the dream upon his present in sharp symbolic focus. “God! He exclaimed. “Will I really, will I really rake an axe and start to beat her head, crush her skull…” (Dostoevsky 73). This illustrates how Raskolnikov dreams of the time when he was still innocent and yet already guilty from committing the murders. The crying and the horse present to him the drama of his loss of innocence. This overriding theme of the dream, in which the mare is beaten with a crowbar, undoubtedly foreshadows Raskolnikov’s killings (Rowe 108). Killings which haunt his character long after the crime is committed.
The other central character in Crime and Punishment, Svidrigailov, is a shadowy, highly ambiguous character. He and his wife employed Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya. Svidrigailov becomes obsessed with Dunya in a disconcerting way. Svidrigailov confesses to Raskolnikov that his marriage is one of suitability. With Svidrigailov’s marriage a farce, he continues to reveal that he is a shameless “sexualist” whose favorite activity is to seduce adolescent girls. As he has a failed attempt at seducing Dunya, he spends the night in a motel troubled by dreams about his former victims.
Svidrigailov’s past indiscretions and crimes continue to painfully haunt him in his dreams. In Russian literature, historically, they feel a spontaneous and intimate satisfaction from inflicting pain in literature. (Rowe 107). This influence is demonstrated throughout the dreams in Crime and Punishment. Svidrigailov’s dream comes in three sequences showing the significance of agony and suffering. First he discovers a mouse, second he sees a coffin with flowers and a 14 year old girl victim, and third he attempts to help a lost 5 year old girl. This sequence “reveals the loathsome depths of Svidrigailov’s being, as well as a powerful degree of repressed self-revulsion” (Layman 4). The slithering mouse, in the first part, could be a foreshadowing tool showing the confrontation between Svidrigailov and his inner self. Svidrigailov is the rodent, thus his ironic disgust is indicative of his self-hatred. The second part proves that a girl did indeed drown herself after having been brutally raped by Svidrigailov. Water holds the terror of death for the corrupt Svidrigailov as it rises, symbolizing that he must share the suicidal fate. Lastly, the five year old girl dream reveals his dual character. His initial reaction was to help her, but his constitutional evil, pedophilia, showed in the young girl’s expressions (Layman 5).
Furthermore, Svidrigailov’s character develops into the epitome of a pedophile desiring young innocence and laughing about it repulsively (Rowe 111). “Stronger than the feverish flush of a normal child’s face” thought Svidrigailov. “…her crimson lips are burning, flaming” (Dostoevsky 101). These manifestations portray the depth of his feelings and how drawn he was to the young girl knowing that it was altogether wrong to have such strong emotions toward an innocent child. Because he feels so spiritually dead, he considers the only atonement suitable is to commit suicide. Svidrigailov partially acknowledges his guilt but evades the consequences of his actions by committing the suicide. His crimes result from his complete surrender to his evil nature (Telgen 75-76). Svidrigailov’s hallucinations, dreams, and suicide compromise one of Crime and Punishment’s most powerful sequences (Rowe 113). Not only imagination, but real thought occurs in dreams, and the fact is often denied (Van de Castle 292).
When confronted by such situations, such as Svidrigailov was, the individual may become “thin-skinned” for a time and experience a troubling nightmare. To dream that rape has been committed among your acquaintances denotes that you will be shocked at the distress of some of your friends (Miller 357). Dream work, a nineteenth century term, was regarded as effecting some change upon the latent thoughts, while a symbol existed more or less as a fixed object. Sexual dreams represent the most primitive ideas imaginable (Van de Castle 122). Svidrigailov was perused by his former crimes against children in the media of hallucinations and dreams (Rowe 113).
Consequently, as established throughout Crime and Punishment, guilt is an emotion where one feels over falling short of a standard of worth or excellence with which one identifies themselves (Deigh 426).
A guilty conscience contributes to the emotional and cognitive state one experiences when they have done something culpable or immoral. Commonly referred to as a ‘bothered conscience’, guilt sinks deep into our subconscious and manifests as anxious thoughts (Edward 3). Throughout the novel both characters portray their dreams as distressed emotions. Raskolnikov created the ‘Extraordinary Man’ in order to justify his killings, and Svidrigailov killed himself over his anxiety of his dreams. A person’s action and circumstances mediate between them and the emotion which locates differently between emotion and the major concepts that constitute these beliefs. As revealed by Sigmund Freud, guilt can be a powerful explanatory concept, to the idea of pairing guilt and shame (Deigh 427). If one has staked their identity on being a member of society and attributed their worth to the membership, the shortcoming they experience comes as a serious blow to their pride and
self-respect.
Therefore, dreams caused by guilt are often marked by an extraordinary vividness (Rowe 113). Both men exhibit culpability in their twisted dreams. Through the use of vivid dreams, or nightmares, as a literary technique, Dostoevsky is able to convey both characters’ true nature. An analysis of dreams aids the reader to better understand the impetus for a character’s actions. The artistic details are emphasized, as in their influence on the dreamer, after the dream. As Svidrigailov states, “And when I dream I think” (Rowe 109). Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov both “lose consciousness” (Morris 153). Both men dream freely in the unconscious and share their inner reflections.
Essentially, the novel’s allegory is expressed in the dreams of its characters: for Raskolnikov, dreams symbolize man’s ability to find salvation after embracing humanity’s evils, but for Svidrigailov, dreams symbolize a depth of human immorality for which no form of salvation can exist (Layman 2). Memories, dreams, hallucinations, and reality often fade subtly in and out of one another in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He promoted eloquent collaboration between the vivid and the apparently typical. “Dreams, it appears, are governed not by reason, but by desire, not by the head, but the guilty heart; and yet wheat complex, crafty things are sometimes fashioned in dreams. Still, the reason encounters things in dreams that are completely inconceivable” (Rowe 96). Dostoevsky was innovative in using and examining dreams to reveal deep psychological truths about his characters (Rowe 97). He used their pasts to generate their present dreams that created their angst. Both characters were concerned to point of being haunted with what would happen to them after they committed their crimes. A need of self-punishment called forth by a strong conscious sense of guilt is the main motive behind Crime and Punishment (Abrahamsen 154). The internal torture that Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov experienced was a direct of result of the crimes they committed. Dostoevsky eloquently takes the reader through dream sequences that demonstrate the impact of foreshadowing guilt and remorse of the human spirit. Essentially, when a crime is committed humans receive more excessive punishment internally than man can impose.