Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
SETTING
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is set against the backdrop of the historic Russian city of St. Petersburg, which stands on the River Neva. Although born and raised in Moscow, Dostoevsky was very familiar with the streets, buildings and other landmarks of this great city because he spent six years of his youth at the college of Military Engineering in St. Petersburg. His close familiarity with the city is immediately evident to readers of the novel. He offers a kind of guided tour of the city, featuring many authentic locales of St. Petersburg, as the vast narrative unfolds. St. Petersburg was later called Petrograd from 1914 to 1924, then re- named Leningrad in honor of the communist leader, Lenin. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it was renamed St. Petersburg in the 1990s.
The period of the novel is the nineteenth century; the novel was written in 1866. By this time, the city had served as the capital of the Russian empire for over a century. Tsar Peter the Great, who founded the city in 1703, shifted Russia's capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1712. At the time of the novel, it had established itself as the social and intellectual center of Tsarist Russia and became the country's "Window to the West." The choice of this city, rather than Moscow, suited Dostoevsky's purpose of introducing the influence of decadent western ideas through the central character, Raskolnikov, who has formulated a theory of "the extraordinary man" using ideas borrowed from German philosophy.
Most of the action of the novel takes place in seedy surroundings: the dingy rented rooms of impoverished students like Raskolnikov and Razumihin, the cramped apartment of the pawnbroker, Alena Ivanovna, lower-class taverns, and the houses of prostitutes like Sonia. Some crucial scenes are set in the open streets of the city (as, for example, the death of Marmeladov), the police station where Raskolnikov finally confesses his crime, or in the scenic surroundings of St. Petersburg. The islands of the River Neva, where aristocratic Russians had their luxurious 'dachas' (summer houses), play an important role early in the novel.
The epilogue of the novel is set in the cold stretches of Russia's eastern most province, Siberia, where Raskolnikov is sent to serve his sentence for the murders he has committed. At a more subtle level, however, the psychological topography of Dostoevsky's novel is the tortured mind and tormented soul of the murderer in whose perceptions and consciousness most of the action in Crime and Punishment unfolds.
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Major Characters
Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov
An impoverished law student. He writes a brilliant thesis on the role of "the extraordinary man," who, he believes, stands above the law. He later attempts to justify his crime of murdering two women on the basis of this fantastic theory. (He is also referred to by such pet names as Rodya, Rodka and Rodenka). The Russian word, raskol, from which the protagonist's name is derived, means "schism" or "split." Thus Raskolnikov's very name implies duality, which is the crux of his nature. Porfiry Petrovitch
A police official in charge of investigating the double murder. He suspects Raskolnikov and plays a sort of 'cat- and-mouse' game with him all through the novel. When he finally is convinced of Raskolnikov's guilt, he offers him a chance to confess of his own accord.
Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov
Usually called "Sonia," she is the daughter of the alcoholic clerk, Marmeladov. Her father's ineptitude and philandering virtually force her into a life of prostitution for the sake of supporting the family. In the end, she redeems both herself and Raskolnikov, who falls in love with her.
Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigailov
Acts as a kind of foil (contrast) to the character of Raskolnikov. He is the former employer of Raskolnikov's sister, Dounia, and follows her to St. Petersburg because he is obsessed with her.
Minor Characters
Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov
The mother of Raskolnikov and Dounia. She is a rather conventional Russian woman, who cares for her family and is especially concerned about her son.
Avodtya Romanovna Raskolnikov
Raskolnikov's sister, who is often referred to as "Dounia." She once worked in the Svidrigailov household. She and her mother come to St. Petersburg soon after Raskolnikov commits the double murder.
Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin
A government employee who is in love with Dounia and is engaged to her. They do not get married because Raskolnikov objects to Luzhin as a suitor for his sister.
Dmitri Prokofitch Razumihin
Raskolnikov's fellow student and confidante who later marries Dounia. Alena Ivanovna
An old woman in her sixties who operates a money-lending business. She is Raskolnikov's first victim.
Lizaveta Ivanovna
The half-sister of Elena. She enters their apartment just after the murder, and Raskolnikov is forced to kill her, too.
Nikolai and Dmitri
House-painters working in an apartment below the moneylender's rooms when the murder is committed. Strangely, one of them confesses to the crime although they are both innocent.
Zametov
Razumihin's friend. He works as a clerk in the police station. Ilya Petrovitch
A rather loud-mouthed police official. Nikodim Fomitch
The Chief of Police in St. Petersburg. Zossimov
A doctor who is a friend of Razumihin. He attends to Raskolnikov, who falls ill soon after the murders.
Praskovya Pavlovna Chebarov
Raskolnikov's landlady who at the time of his crime, registers a complaint with the police because he has not paid his rent.
Nastasya
Works as a servant for Raskolnikov's landlady and is rather friendly with him. Semyon Zakharovitch Marmeladov
A government servant who loses his job because he is an alcoholic. Sonia is his daughter by his first wife. His second wife, Katerina, has three children from her previous marriage: Polenka, Lida and Kolya.
Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov
Marmeladov's second wife and a woman of higher social status than her husband. Her first marriage was to an army officer.
Amalia Fyodorovna
Marmeladov's landlady. As a German, she is treated with disdain by Katerina. Andrei Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov
He lives in the same apartment house where the Marmeladov family lives. He considers himself a liberal.
Marfa Petrovna Svidrigailov
CONFLICT
The central conflict in Crime and Punishment stems from Raskolnikov's crime of murder and his struggles with his conscience over whether or not he should confess to the police. At one level, therefore, it is a kind of detective story where the police seek the criminal, and he evades arrest until the last pages of the novel.
On a deeper level, the conflict springs from Raskolnikov's exaggerated theories of "the extraordinary man" and how such western ideas are opposed to the Slavophile concepts indigenous to Russia. The novel also highlights the eternal conflict between the forces of good and those of evil.
Protagonist
Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoevsky's novel, is a handsome and brilliant law student who holds firm but unusual views. He believes that certain superior people in a society stand above the ordinary human and moral laws. To test his thesis, he murders an old woman that is a greedy moneylender. He feels her death is no great loss to society because she preys upon the misery and poverty of her fellow humans.
After the dastardly deed, he is seized by alternate moods of great cunning with which he tries to outwit the police and moments of nagging guilt when he resolves to confess his crime. However, he does not confess until the last chapter of the novel. Through this fascinating study of a criminal's conscience, Dostoevsky also examines complex intellectual theories about human reason and the 'will to power.' Such theories were made popular in mid- nineteenth century Europe by German philosophers like Hegel and Nietzsche.
Antagonist
On the surface level, the antagonist is apparently the police force of St. Petersburg, especially Porfiry Petrovitch, who investigates the murders that Raskolnikov has committed. All through the novel, the murderer attempts to evade arrest and to mislead the police. However, on a deeper level, the very order of autocratic society in Tsarist Russia seems to be the antagonist against whom Raskolnikov is pitted. He theorizes that vicious, predatory humans like the pawnbroker are evil and deserve to be eliminated in a society that permits such vile people to prosper.
Raskolnikov also believes that some "extraordinary" humans like himself have the right to transgress and oppose ordinary social laws in order to create a new and more just social order. At another level, ironically, Raskolnikov himself may also be looked upon as the antagonist of conventional society and its unjust system.
Climax
Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov toys with the idea of confessing his guilt. However, he never manages to do so. At last, in the concluding chapters of Part V, he finally brings himself to reveal to Sonia that it was he who murdered the moneylender and her half-sister, Lizaveta. Although she is deeply shocked by his terrible revelation, Sonia promises to share in Raskolnikov's future sufferings and punishment in a Siberian prison camp. Raskolnikov's redemption begins here, after having established a connection with Sonia, but his actual confession to the police occurs at the close of Part VI.
Outcome
Part VI of Crime and Punishment focuses on Raskolnikov's final moments of hesitation before he confesses to the police. It deals with unresolved issues, like Dounia's escape from Svidrigailov, and the latter's suicide. Freed from his repulsive attentions, she is able to marry Razumihin with Raskolnikov's full approval.
In the Epilogue that rounds off the story, the reader hears details of Raskolnikov's trial, where friends gave testimony about his generosity and his noble character. This perhaps helps him to obtain a rather light sentence of eight years in a Siberian prison camp. His mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, falls ill during the trial and dies soon afterward. She is never told of her son's terrible crime or his sentence.
Sonia follows Raskolnikov to Siberia using the money left to her by Svidrigailov and his wife. In prison, Raskolnikov is at first quite distant and cold to his fellow prisoners and even a bit antagonistic towards Sonia. Her devotion to him impresses the other prisoners and they consider her to be an angel of mercy. After a long period of illness and alienation in the first year of his imprisonment, Raskolnikov finally realizes how good and kind Sonia is to him. Thus, he slowly rehabilitates himself into the world of human understanding and compassion. After taking the reader to the depths of human suffering, this novel ends happily.
Part I
Crime and Punishment centers around the life of Raskolnikov, a law student at the university in St. Petersburg. He lives in a dilapidated boarding house and is very poor. He is young, handsome and quite intelligent. He writes a brilliant if somewhat shocking paper on a theory that he has developed: that the world consists of two types of people; the ordinary and the extraordinary. In his thesis, he asserts that the extraordinary human has the right to commit any crime, as long as this is done to further an important goal. As he considers himself one of these superior people, he decides to test his theory by putting it into practice. He meticulously plans the murder of a greedy old moneylender, Alena Ivanovna, as he feels she is a parasite who preys upon the poor and deserves to die.
After committing the first murder, Raskolnikov is then forced to murder Alena's stepsister, Lizaveta, who unexpectedly enters the scene of the crime before he can leave. When he returns to his lodgings after the double murder, he is exhausted and stays in his room for several days, feverishly drifting in and out of consciousness.
Part II
During this period, a fellow student and friend, Razumihin, arrives. Raskolnikov is also visited by Nastasya, his landlady's servant, and a police officer that summons him to the police station. He fears that his crime has been detected but is soon relieved to learn that his landlady has complained about him to the police for not paying his rent. He returns home after signing an IOU at the police station. Then he hides the money and some other objects he stole from the old moneylender under a large rock in a nearby park. However, his fears about his crime do not subside, and he falls under another spell of illness and delirium.
His friends, Razumihin and Nastasya, and Dr. Zossimov look after him. Whenever they discuss the recent murders and how the police have arrested two painters working near the scene of the crime, Raskolnikov expresses a keen though morbid interest in the matter. He even defends the painters, claiming they are innocent. However, one of them later confesses to the crime, strangely enough. At the close of Part II, Luzhin visits Raskolnikov. He is a suitor for Dounia, Raskolnikov's sister, who has just arrived in St. Petersburg along with her mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
Raskolnikov resents Luzhin's rather patronizing attitude and his shabby treatment of Dounia and her mother. He put them up in a shoddy apartment that everyone feels is "a disgusting place . . . of doubtful character." Raskolnikov drives Luzhin out of his room. When Raskolnikov recovers from his illness, he goes out and reads about his crime in the recent newspapers. In a tavern he meets Zametov, a police official, and alludes to his crime, thereby arousing the man's interest. He even visits the scene of the crime and once more resolves to go to the police and confess. However, he changes his mind.
Part III
Shortly afterward, he witnesses the death of Marmeladov, a former government clerk, who is knocked down by a carriage when he is wandering, drunk, in the street. Raskolnikov had met him previously in a tavern, and he helps the man's family and meets his daughter, Sonia, for the first time. She has turned to a life of prostitution to help support her father's family.
Back at his room, Raskolnikov objects to his sister's impending marriage to Luzhin, saying: "I won't accept the sacrifice." Meanwhile, Razumihin develops feelings for Dounia. Matters get more complicated when her former employer, Svidrigailov, follows her to St. Petersburg. He had once tried to seduce her, and so now Raskolnikov will not permit him to meet his sister.
Luzhin tries to create a rift between Raskolnikov and his family. He insinuates that Raskolnikov has given money to Sonia, and not to Marmeladov's widow, Katerina. A reunion between Luzhin and his fiancée's family is interrupted by the arrival of Sonia. She invites them all to a memorial service for her father and shares a brief moment alone with Raskolnikov. From the shabbiness of his room, she realizes that he has given them all his money. She begins to feel a fondness for him.
Raskolnikov soon learns that the police are interviewing all those who borrowed money from the old moneylender. So he decides to meet Porfiry, who is Razumihin's uncle. At the meeting, he discusses his theory of the "extraordinary man" with the inspector. However, he does not reveal his role in the recent murders. He fears the police suspect him but thinks they have no proof of his guilt. On his way home, a stranger taunts him with the word, "Murderer!" This incident leaves him shaken, and he begins to have terrible nightmares about the murder.
Part IV
This part of the novel begins with an encounter between Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, an evil man who resembles the murderer in certain respects. They both share a propensity for evil and a domineering will. Rumor has it that Svidrigailov often beat his wife. When she died, she left 3,000 rubles for Dounia, who had worked for them. Having rejected Luzhin and Svidrigailov as suitors for Dounia, Raskolnikov advises Razumihin to take care of his mother and sister.
Then, in a state of deep agitation Raskolnikov visits Sonia. He asks her to read the biblical story of how Christ raised Lazarus from the dead. Ironically, she reads this story from a Bible that Lizaveta once gave her. He leaves Sonia with the promise to tell her who killed Lizaveta and her elder sister.
Parts V and VI
Raskolnikov has a second, disturbing interview with Porfiry. He then decides to reveal everything to Sonia. Svidrigailov overhears this confession and uses the information in a sadistic attempt to seduce Dounia. After she escapes his lustful designs, he commits suicide. Porfiry then meets Raskolnikov and tells him that he knows who murdered the two women. However, he says that he prefers to have the murderer come forward and confess his crime of his own accord.
Raskolnikov finally goes to the police and reveals that he is the murderer. He is tried and sentenced to eight years hard labor in a Siberian prison camp. His sister marries Razumihin, while his mother dies soon after, blissful ignorant of her son's deadly crimes. Sonia follows Raskolnikov to Siberia and, after a year, he is finally able to reach out to her and to his fellow prisoners. He then begins his slow journey to emotional and spiritual rehabilitation. Dostoevsky hints that when Raskolnikov is free in seven years time, he and Sonia may find a degree of happiness and peace in their life together.
THEMES
Major Themes
The apparent theme of the novel is that of planning and executing the perfect crime, as well as the subsequent suffering on the part of the criminal and his obsessive need to confess. Only the first part of the novel deals with the careful planning that precedes the crime. The other five parts are concerned with Raskolnikov's intermittent moments of remorse and his overwhelming desire to confess and to rid himself of the guilt. However, he is unable to do so until the end of the novel. The act of murder and its effects on the mind of the killer form the central subject of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
Linked closely to this cycle of crime and confession is the motif of all-encompassing fear. This fear reduces Raskolnikov to a quivering mass of indecision, subject to spells of illness, emotional outbursts of anger and horrible nightmares. The crime and its long- term effects on Raskolnikov's behavior and peace of mind become the very punishment itself. Only in Siberia does he overcome the fear and begin the difficult process of social rehabilitation and moral regeneration.
Minor Themes
One of the important minor Themes of this novel is that of the emotional estrangement and social isolation suffered by Raskolnikov, especially after he turns into a criminal. He feels terribly lonely and utterly devastated by his inability to turn to anyone after the double murder. He feels some sympathy for the unfortunate Marmeladov, who dies in a street accident and for the woman who attempts suicide in the River Neva. Sonia's patience and profound understanding finally help him to bring himself to confess his crime and ultimately to reintegrate into ordinary human society.
To reinforce the theme of isolation and alienation, Dostoevsky makes Raskolnikov often think of "the square yard of space" to which his crime has confined him. In addition, the novelist frequently introduces the motif of "fresh air" as a cure for the criminal's isolation and intermittent periods of sickness.
Another recurrent theme in the novel is the idea that man must undergo suffering before he can find redemption from a life of sin. The first sign of Raskolnikov's suffering is his illness after the murder, his terrifying nightmares and his recurrent failure to confess, although he often comes close to revealing his crime. A consistent pattern of suffering and hardship extends to almost all of the other characters.
Another significant theme is that of the Superman or "extraordinary man," who, according to Raskolnikov's startling thesis, stands above ordinary humans and is exempt from obeying the law. What Dostoevsky tries to show is that although Raskolnikov believes he is an extraordinary human being and thus commits the murders, he is no better or worse than an ordinary man. He cannot escape the consequences of his crime, and he is not above the common human experience of suffering the effects of one's deeds. On the one hand, Raskolnikov thinks of himself as a sort of superior human. On the other hand, he realizes as the novel progresses that he is a part of common humanity.
MOOD
The mood throughout Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is somber, brooding and profoundly contemplative. For the most part, the reader lives in the consciousness of the protagonist, Raskolnikov, who is introspective and rather gloomy. He first contemplates how to commit the perfect murder and thus eliminate the predatory moneylender. Afterwards, he is haunted by his guilt and the fear of exposure, and he is driven by a compulsive need to confess, which he cannot transform into action.
Furthermore, a mood of suspense and anticipation is created, as in any good detective story. Here, the identity of the murderer is known to the readers, although not to the police, who are close to the criminal. There are also moments of extreme horror, as at the scene of the murder or when other characters die by accident, suicide or prolonged illness. A sense of panic and terror is also created by the nightmares that the murderer has and the almost claustrophobic ruminations that haunt him after he commits the crime. Until he confesses and begins to serve out his sentence, he seems to undergo the tortures of a living hell
BACKGROUND INFORMATION - BIOGRAPHY
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The life and literary career of the author makes for as much fascinating reading as that of any of his great novels. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-81) was born on February 8, 1821 in a Moscow hospital, where his father, Mikhail Dostoevsky, was the chief doctor. The second of eight children, he was given to reading and a life of solitude. His mother, Maria, a generous, fragile and religious woman, faced the wrath of a miserly, possessive and jealous husband. She died tragically of consumption in 1837 at the age of thirty-three. The author experienced another tragedy in 1839, when his father, an alcoholic, was murdered on his country estate by his serfs because of his cruel and despotic ways. The portrait of Fyodor Karamazov, the father in The Brothers Karamazov who is murdered by one of his sons, is based partially on Dostoevsky's own father.
In 1838, Dostoevsky entered the Military Engineering School in St. Petersburg. Six years later he resigned his commission in the army in order to devote himself fully to a literary career. The success of his first story, Poor Folk (1846), brought him into contact with the leading writers of the time. In 1847 he joined a progressive circle of intellectuals led by the revolutionary socialist, Butashevich-Petrashevski. Like Raskolnikov in his novel, Dostoevsky adopted radical ideas, derived mostly from western thinkers. The anti-autocracy stance of this circle angered Tsar Nicholas I, who ordered the arrest of its members, including Petrashevski and Dostoevsky, in April of 1849.
For eight months, the prisoners were kept in solitary confinement in the fortress of saints Peter and Paul. Then they were sentenced to death. As Dostoevsky and the fifteen other revolutionaries were about to face the firing squad, a last-minute reprieve came from the Tsar. Actually, he had intended only to frighten the prisoners and did not plan to have them executed. Dostoevsky was terribly shaken by this experience that served to aggravate his congenital epilepsy and left him bitter all through his later life. Dostoevsky had his sentence commuted to five years hard labor in Siberia, and subsequently served four more years of punishment as a common soldier in the Siberian regiment (1854-58). He rose to be a commissioned officer and was granted amnesty by Tsar Alexander II in 1859.
In the cold and unforgiving climate of Siberia, Dostoevsky served his years of penal servitude. He was constantly kept in shackles and was made to bake bricks and unload barges on the River Irtish. His experiences as a prisoner in Siberia are reflected in The Manor of Stepanchikovo (1859) and, in Memoirs from the House of the Dead (1862). While in prison he was surrounded by rapists, robbers and murderers, but there were also innocent political prisoners like himself who were the victims of the Tsar's oppressive regime. Ironically, he meekly accepted his rather unjust punishment, seeing it as an opportunity to make amends for his faults. This conviction that man must repent and suffer to find his salvation remained an obsession all through his life and dominates his novels.
In 1857 Dostoevsky married Maria Isaeva, the widow of a colleague. Her sickly nature and Dostoevsky's fondness for gambling and women made their marriage an unhappy one. To supplement his meager income, he often gambled desperately both in Russia and at various casinos in Europe. He tells of his wild compulsion for gambling in his story, The Gambler (1866). Between the years of 1862 and 1864, he visited Paris and London; he also passed through Germany, Switzerland and Italy. While in Paris, he had a tempestuous affair with a sensual but enigmatic woman named Pauline Suslova.
On returning to Russia, he found his wife grievously ill. She died of tuberculosis in 1864. In the months before her death, Dostoevsky wrote Notes from the Underground. It is, in his own words, a "harsh and bizarre" piece containing the ravings of an almost schizophrenic mind. It defines, in greater detail, Dostoevsky's concepts on the psychology of duality that he first explored in The Double (1846). It also introduces the realm of "the underground" and the image of "the underground man." Later in 1864, his elder brother Mikhail (to whom he was very close and who was his fellow-editor) died, leaving Dostoevsky in serious debt.
The author was keenly aware of the unstable political and social situation in both Russia and Europe in those days. He commented on it in magazines like Vremya (Time) and Epoka (Epoch), which he published, and the journal, Grazhdanin (The Citizen), of which he was an active editor. In 1865, after Epoka was shut down by the Tsar's censors, Dostoevsky began work on Crime and Punishment (1866). In that same year he completed The Gambler in 26 days. He had hired a stenographer, the twenty-year-old Anna Grigorievna Snitkin, to help him with his work. Attracted by her selfless devotion, Dostoevsky married her in 1867.
His second marriage was a happy one, and it led to a fruitful period in his literary and personal life. To escape their creditors, the Dostoevskys lived abroad for four years. There he wrote The Idiot (1868), which tells of the need to preserve one's faith in goodness and to trust one's fellow humans, despite the presence of greed, selfishness and evil in the world. In it Dostoevsky created the memorable character of Prince Myshkin, a Russian variation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, and like his creator, an epilepsy patient.
When Dostoevsky returned to Russia in 1871, his son Fyodor was born. The Dostoevskys now began to lead a prosperous and more settled existence. In 1872 the novel The Possessed was published. This novel is also known as The Devils, and it portrays political radicals as ambitious men who turn against God. From 1876 onwards, Dostoevsky brought out an influential journal called A Writer's Diary. In it he discussed social, political, religious and literary issues. His greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, appeared in 1880. It is a tale of a bitter family feud caused by the presence of a domineering father. The novel centers around the murder of the evil Fyodor Karamazov and its effect on his four sons.
In the same year, 1880, Dostoevsky made a famous public speech on Pushkin (1799-1837). Dostoevsky was by now firmly established as one of Russia's greatest novelists, as Pushkin, his ideal, was Russia's greatest 19th-century poet. His political conservatism and faith in the Russian Orthodox Church won him favor in his final years even from Tsar Alexander II. Dostoevsky died in 1881 and was given an impressive public funeral by the state. His grave at the Tikhvin cemetery in St. Petersburg is adorned with a fine bust of the author by the famous Russian sculptor, Nikolai Laveretsky.
LITERARY INFORMATION
In the early decades of the 19th century, Russian literature was predominantly Romantic. By 1840, however, Realism emerged as an important literary trend, mainly as a reaction to Romantic writing and mostly in prose fiction. These Russian realists often wrote about social and political problems because they believed that literature should portray life with unapologetic honesty. One of the founders of Russian realism was the renowned critic, Vissarion Belinsky (1811-48). He held that literature should serve the needs of society by depicting a clear picture of its many shortcomings and by advocating viable social reforms. His views influenced the great 19th-century Russian realists in fiction from Turgenev and Goncharov, to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekov.
In the 1850s and early '60s, Turgenev's novels, such as Rudin and Fathers and Sons, reveal his deep understanding of Russian society and people. Goncharov, in novels like Oblomov (1859), tried to convince his readers that only practical action, not sentiment or romance, could lead to social reform. By the 1860s and '70s, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were the principal realists in fiction. They replaced the elegant style of Romanticism with the simplified and practical prose of realism. They also discarded certain Romantic notions of sentiment and heroism. In their work, they depicted instead a deep concern for the natural stages of individual behavior and human development.
Tolstoy's War and Peace (begun in 1865) is an epic novel that captures the intense passion and dramatic sweep of Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia. His Anna Karenina (1875) attacks romantic love as self-indulgence and encourages a sense of family love and moral duty. It explores and reflects upon the destructive power of love when Anna leaves husband, child and home to follow her desperately doomed love for a handsome officer called Vronsky. Dostoevsky rivals Tolstoy in the depth and scope of his genius through his great novels such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
As a novelist, Dostoevsky has been interpreted in different ways. Some see him as a writer keen on portraying social realities in the manner of a Balzac or a Dickens. Others look upon him as a psychologist delving into the depths of the human mind, and often depicting characters that are either mentally sick or spiritually depraved. Still others insist that he is, primarily, a philosopher in search of the ultimate truth, looking for reasons to explain human existence and searching for solutions to the most profound human problems. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky is a mix of all these characteristics and much more. His understanding of the most basic human needs, and his portrayal of a depressed and lonely human being, is finely depicted here.
Dostoevsky's fictional works are essentially novels of "ideas" which are embodied in the great characters he creates in them. These characters are highly individualized, vital, intense and complex humans who are far from being stereotypes. He usually places them in a vortex of conflicting passions and tumultuous ideas. The reader sees them caught in highly dramatic situations, often floundering in the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, yet making laudable efforts to attain salvation through their suffering. Dostoevsky gives the reader dramatic portrayals of the inner conflicts in his central characters. They often experience a violent spiritual struggle between their belief in goodness (or God) and their strong sense of pride and self-centeredness.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
As Crime and Punishment is a novel set against the sociological conditions prevailing in 19th-century Russia, it is necessary to understand something of the repressive nature of the Tsarist regimes that ruled this great country at that time.
From the times of its founding in the early 18th century by Tsar Peter the Great, St. Petersburg was Russia's "Window to the West" (the rest of Europe). One of his successors in the latter half of the 18th century, Catherine II, made Russia a formidable European power. In 1801, Tsar Alexander I tried to introduce a few social reforms. Actually, he did fairly little to reduce the Tsar's despotic power or to end the cruel practice of serfdom under which the vast majority of Russian peasants were forced to live. Other parts of Western Europe discontinued the practice of serfdom soon after the Renaissance (by the 16th century).
After Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, the Tsar's reform program was further reduced. Hence, many young aristocrats and intellectuals turned to secret revolutionary organizations to overthrow the Tsar. In 1825, the year Dostoevsky was born, the new Tsar Nicholas I was crowned. Later the same year, he suppressed the Decembrist Revolt and introduced strict control over the press, education, foreign travel and political organizations through his secret police system. He soon came to be called, "The Policeman of Europe." A number of educated Russians and intellectuals began to admire the values of Western European life as opposed to the conventional and repressive Russian system. Orthodox Russians, however, favored the older ways that included a strong Russian Orthodox Church, a Tsarist government and the traditional lifestyle of the vast Russian countryside. When Dostoevsky was a young man in the 1840s, many new and radical ideas were entering Russia from West European countries, especially France and Germany. Like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky soon came under the influence of such revolutionary ideals and he hoped that Russia could also become a liberal country by adopting freer systems of thought and life, as then prevailed in Western Europe. However, Dostoevsky's soul- shattering experience with death (when he and his revolutionary friends were arrested and almost executed by the Tsar) and his later experience of squalid prison life forced him to do some serious thinking upon his return from Siberia in 1858. He now began to feel that rash acceptance of every new idea from the West was perhaps not the best thing for Russia.
When he traveled through Europe in 1862-64, he hated what he saw of capitalist western civilization and soon became an ardent Russian nationalist. These were troubled times for both Western Europe and Russia, as many countries underwent turbulent social change. Happily, serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861 under the new Tsar, Alexander II.
The revolutionary Populists in Russia, however, continued to be anti-tsarist and they staged a number of terrorist attacks in an attempt to destabilize the regime. More often than not, these attempts failed, and the revolutionary leaders landed either in prison for long-term sentences or before the Tsar's execution squad.
Dostoevsky now began to believe that it was more important to cultivate and propagate new and independent ideas that were specifically Russian or Slavic in origin. Such a total commitment to indigenous thought soon made him a Slavophile, like the character of Porfiry in Crime and Punishment. Hence, in this novel, he contrasts the ultra-radical views of Raskolnikov on the "extraordinary man," or "superman," with Porfiry's slavophillic notions. These two characters essentially dramatize the conflict that faced every thinking Russian in those troubled times when social change was imperative if the entrenched tsarist power was to be curtailed and the lot of the common Russian improved.
OVERALL ANALYSES
CHARACTER ANALYSIS
Raskolnikov
In his profoundly psychological novel, Dostoevsky's main interest lies in the depiction of the multifaceted personality of his protagonist, Raskolnikov. With deep insight, the novelist explores the complex and confused motivations that prompt Raskolnikov to commit murder. Dostoevsky also studies the obscure and often ambiguous theories of crime that plague the mind of the central figure. In addition, he expounds upon the closely inter-related Themes of isolation, suffering and moral salvation through this portrait of a criminal mind.
The Dualism in Raskolnikov's Character:
The protagonist of Crime and Punishment is a rather solitary intellectual, an impoverished student of law at the university in St. Petersburg. If he seems somewhat introverted at times, there is good reason to attribute this to the constraints of his financial circumstances and his rather stifling attic-room. Sometimes, he can be warm, friendly and even compassionate to others more miserable and unfortunate than himself. For instance, he is extremely generous towards Marmeladov's family after the man dies in a street accident. The testimony of certain witnesses at his trial substantiates the general nobility of Raskolnikov's character. These witnesses cite examples of his many charitable acts before and after the murders.
One way of looking at this duality in Raskolnikov's character is to regard it as a conflict between the alienated intellectual and his hostile social environment. Another approach is to view Raskolnikov's nature as a struggle between his solitary mind and his own moral consciousness. In an early chapter of Part III, Razumihin remarks to Raskolnikov's mother and sister: "It's as though he (Raskolnikov) were alternating between two characters." On the one hand, he finds Raskolnikov "morose, gloomy, and haughty," and on the other, Razumihin confirms: "He has a noble nature and a kind heart."
In a certain symbolic sense, the two murders that he commits correspond to these dual facets of Raskolnikov's personality. While Alena represents the cold and vicious side of his nature, Lizaveta is the humane and submissive side. In killing these two women, he attempts to stifle or destroy both sides of his own inner character. Ironically, he rarely thinks of the murder of Lizaveta and is disturbed mainly by the memory of his murdering Alena. Significantly, again, he kills Alena with the blunt side of the axe, while he murders Lizaveta with the sharp blade. It is as if, in doing so, he smashes the submissive and compassionate elements in his nature with greater ferocity and viciousness than he employs in killing Alena.
PLOT ANALYSIS (Structure)
Dostoevsky's great dramatic narrative has six separate parts, with an epilogue divided into two smaller sections. Central to the whole story are the dual murders committed by Raskolnikov. He plans and executes them within the space of a chapter in Part I. The remaining five parts of the novel are devoted to the gradual unfolding of his suppressed guilt. They trace in detail the slow evolution of his punishment and sufferings, both physical and psychological. The Epilogue tells of his trial and imprisonment in Siberia where, at last, he begins the slow process of his moral regeneration and emotional re-integration into ordinary human society.
Central to the structure of Crime and Punishment is the character of Raskolnikov. The plot of the novel unfolds around him; for the most part, the reader lives in his consciousness and experiences the occurrences in the book through the perceptions of the protagonist. Dostoevsky portrays Raskolnikov as a complex and puzzling character who seems to be a sort of split personality. On the one hand, he is cold and calculating, as seen in the manner he plans and executes the murder, as well as in his skill in evading detection. On the other hand, the reader often sees him as a kind and helpful soul, always willing to offer assistance and sympathy to those in distress. Despite the conflicts in his character that seem to tear him apart, the character of Raskolnikov gives the novel a sense of cohesion and artistic unity.
Apparently, Dostoevsky's aim is to depict the essential conflicts in mid-19th-century Russian national life through his brilliant study of the contradictions in the personality of this young law student. Raskolnikov represents, in part, the fate of young Russian intellectuals who faced social injustice and moral degeneration under the tsarist autocracy, but found they could do very little to reform society. Hence, they turned to revolutionary ideas, often derived from Western Europe, represented by Raskolnikov's radical views on crime and the 'extraordinary' man. These disgruntled Russians often turned quite cynical, if not utterly nihilistic, in their attitudes.
Gradually, such radical opinions led their defenders to believe they could commit any crime if their goal was to benefit suffering humanity. They were thus alienated from the established codes of social authority and common morality, often even defying the existing laws. This led them to be no less evil or degenerate than those whom they sought to eliminate from society for society's own good, as they claimed. Thus, Raskolnikov, whose action and thinking holds the entire narrative together, is essentially dualistic in his inner nature and becomes a difficult character to understand.
The two murders that Raskolnikov commits ironically represent a crime against common humanity (two helpless women) and also a crime for humanity. Raskolnikov considers Alena Ivanovna a parasite because she preys upon the misery of the poor by lending money at exorbitant interest rates. Hence, she must be eradicated from society. This crime, with its dual implications, sets off dual reactions in its perpetrator. On the one hand, he is an isolated individual pitted against an unfeeling and hostile world. On the other hand, he endures a soul-wrenching inner conflict between his ethical awareness of evil and his desire to reform society through drastic means. The latter trait makes him cynical and doubtful of any goodness in this world. So he refuses to redeem himself by confessing.
These contradictory impulses in Raskolnikov's character lie at the very core of the novel. This dichotomy makes him vacillate between extremes of willful behavior, wherein he sees himself as a superior person, and moments of low self-esteem, during which he appears meek and submissive to the forces around him. Against his cold, inhumane and detached intellect, Dostoevsky juxtaposes the sympathetic, humane aspect of Raskolnikov's character. In this respect, his opposing traits can be seen as extensions of what appears separately in Sonia, who is meek and submissive, and Svidrigailov, who is violently willful.
Obviously, through this contrast between Raskolnikov's views on the Hegelian and Nietzschean concepts of a superman, and Porfiry's indigenous or Slavophillic view point, Dostoevsky is able to structure his novel into a sociological commentary on the need for reform in 19th century Russian society. The problem of Raskolnikov's duality is symptomatic of both the individual psyche and the soul of a nation caught in the turmoil of social change. Besides, elements of this duality are also distributed among various other characters such as Sonia, Porfiry and Svidrigailov.
By probing deeply into this dichotomy in the character of Raskolnikov and those around him, Dostoevsky gives to his novel an essential unity of plot and makes it an artistic whole. The two extremes of individual self-centeredness, and self-denial or sacrifice, are the novelist's primary concern in his construction of the plot for Crime and Punishment. A closely linked purpose is to study the psychology of the murderer and to analyze the effects of his horrible deed. Thus, by the end of novel, Dostoevsky is able to restore the moral balance of social laws by returning Raskolnikov to human society and re-establishing his ability to discern the differences between good and evil, hope and despair, love and hatred, cynicism and faith.
Thus, the structure of this great novel is designed to expose the dangers of excessive individualism that may begin in a seemingly humanist quest. Dostoevsky shows clearly that the ends, however noble, never justify the means used to secure them. Raskolnikov's crime must meet with its inevitable punishment.
THEME ANALYSIS
Major ThemesThe dominant theme of Dostoevsky's classic novel is obviously stated in its title. Ostensibly, it deals with the crime of murder and the punishment that follows it. It is a profoundly psychological treatment of the murderer's criminal instincts (or lack thereof) and his dual personality. Dostoevsky focus much of his attention in Crime and Punishment on the rather obscure and contradictory motives that prompt Raskolnikov to commit the extreme action of murder. He combines this theme of criminal behavior with the allied theme of moral redemption through suffering.
As in most of Dostoevsky's fiction, one of the central concerns in this novel is the portrayal of the world of human suffering. Thematically, the structure of Crime and Punishment may be regarded as a pyramid of ideas. The broad foundation or base of this pyramid is made of intricate portrayals of human suffering: Raskolnikov's wrestling with his conscience, Sonia's humiliation as a prostitute, or the social and financial degradation of Katerina, Marmeladov and her family. Dostoevsky peoples the universe of this novel with a vast range of characters, most of whom suffer for a wide variety of complex reasons, stemming from personal or societal factors.
From this broad foundation of human suffering rises the massive problem of duality within the central character. Raskolnikov's rebellious streak alternates with moments of docility. His defiance of moral and social authority, as well as his pride in his intellect, is contrasted with his abject fear of the consequences of his crime and the weakening of his mental state after the murder. At the apex of this thematic pyramid, Dostoevsky takes up the philosophical problems of life and death and the eternal conflict between good and evil.
Undoubtedly, Dostoevsky is a master artist when it comes to depicting the vast gamut of human suffering, from the physical torture of the human being to the terrifying anguish of the human soul. The scenes of physical punishment, such as Svidrigailov's whipping of his wife, the flogging of a horse to death by its drunken owner, or the violent scene of the dual murder, affect any sensitive reader of the novel. However, such incidents of purely corporal punishment pale in comparison with the scenes of psychological degradation, such as Sonia's humiliation when she turns to prostitution at the age of seventeen to support her drunken father's family, or Luzhin's false accusations against Sonia.
Another moment of great suffering in the novel is the death of Katerina Marmeladov. First, she suffers social and economic deprivation after the death of her first husband, the army officer. Then, her second husband turns out to be a drunkard who is unable to provide for his family. At the death of Marmeladov, she and her children are forced into a life of beggary on the streets. This leads to her total physical and psychological deterioration. At the point of her death, she stoutly refuses help from doctors or priests. She feels she has suffered so much that God will accept her just as she is.
However, the greatest suffering is reserved for Raskolnikov. His eventual salvation is closely linked to his capacity to undergo great suffering. He commits his first murder under the false notion that he is helping to reduce the sufferings of humanity by getting rid of a predatory social parasite. Ironically, he winds up killing her half- sister, Lizaveta, although he had no intention of doing so. Now Raskolnikov must suffer intensely the consequences of his ignoble actions. His sufferings begin soon after the crime, in the form of intermittent bouts of illness, irrational outbursts of anger and terrifying nightmares.
More than all this, his greater sufferings spring from his total social isolation after the murders. He is unable to trust himself and his sordid secret with his friends or even his close family members. Most of all, his inability to confess his crime torments his soul and shatters his peace of mind. Until he can bring himself to reveal his guilt and thus suffer his due punishment, he cannot re-integrate himself into normal human society.
Soon after the murders, he thinks of confession but shrinks from it almost at once. Then, in the next chapter, he thinks of confessing again when he is summoned to the police station: "If they question me . . . I'll go in, fall on my knees and confess everything." Twice more, in the same chapter, he toys with the idea of confession but cannot summon up the courage to do so. At the close of Part II, when he meets Zametov, the police clerk, he almost confesses to the crime by reconstructing it hypothetically. He even taunts Zametov with the insolent statement: "And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Lizaveta?" Later, when he observes the woman who attempts suicide in the river, he once again thinks of confessing. When he revisits the scene of the crime, he offers to go to the police with the men there and confess all he knows about the murders.
Again in Part III, he realizes with growing desperation that his crime has left him "alone, utterly alone." Instead of freeing him to become the "extraordinary man" he dreams of being, it has not raised him above the fears and guilt of any ordinary human. After defending his theory of crime before Porfiry and hearing a stranger call him a "murderer," he again feels the need to confess. Once more in Part IV, after Sonia reads to him the story of Lazarus, he leaves her with the startling revelation that he will tell her all about the murders on the next day. Here, he almost confesses the truth to Sonia but postpones the dreaded moment by a day.
Finally, at their next meeting, he reveals to Sonia the sordid truth about his crimes. Yet he cannot bring himself to confess his deed at the public crossroads, as Sonia suggests. When he goes to the police station in the final chapter of Part VI, he hesitates confessing to the clerk who is on duty and turns away. However, on seeing Sonia's crestfallen face outside, he steels himself to go back and say: "It was I who killed the old pawn broker and her sister, Lizaveta." Thus, on a dozen occasions or more, Raskolnikov is tempted to confess and relieve the pressures of his guilt, but he cannot do so until the very end. This inability to come to terms with himself and his own heinous crimes constitutes in itself his worst punishment.
It is his fear of humiliation and public disgrace that keeps him from confessing all through the novel. This weakness defines Raskolnikov as an ordinary human being with the usual human sensitivities. If he were "extraordinary," according to his own theory, he would have risen above his fears. He would have blatantly told the whole world the horrible truth about himself, just as Sonia advised him to do at the crossroads. His fear of discovery and his sense of shame over his crime also cut him off from all human contact. He tries to avoid his mother, his sister and even his best friend, Razumihin.
Finally, he is released from his fears when he finds the courage to confess, face the world, and suffer his due punishment. Thus, Raskolnikov's crime and its resulting punishments, the agonies of isolation, the pangs of a guilty conscience, and the fears about confessing the crime all form the central theme of this novel. It must be noted, however, that Raskolnikov hardly feels a sense of remorse over his crime or a twinge of regret for the two women he has killed. Only after a year of imprisonment does he begin to fraternize with his fellow prisoners and slowly awaken to the virtues of love and supreme self-sacrifice that Sonia has shown him all through the novel.
Minor Themes
The theme of isolation is another major concern in Crime and Punishment. From the very first chapter, the reader sees Raskolnikov as a "loner," perhaps due to the constraints of his impoverished lifestyle. He experiences all the deprivations of poverty as a university student living in a depressing, lower class lodging house. This makes him view the world around him with utter disgust and cynical contempt that further alienates him from other humans.
Raskolnikov's brilliant thesis on the "Extraordinary man" springs in part from his notion that the larger part of humanity suffers poverty and deprivations due to the selfish excesses of a few rich individuals. Hence, he also develops the theory that parasitic and predatory individuals in society, who prey upon the misery of other humans, deserve to be eliminated from the world. His theory of crime and the "Extraordinary man" is, thus, a result of his morbid view of the world, developed through long spells of introspection and isolation.
When he propounds his theory of crime and the "Extraordinary man," Raskolnikov is aware that a crime such as murder isolates the criminal from the rest of human society. He believes that the "Superior" man must be able to face the isolation that follows his crime. Raskolnikov, later, begins to feel that the worst part of his punishment for his crimes is his total alienation from others. After all, his crime springs from his utter isolation and introversion. This leads him to suffer an even deeper despair and loneliness soon after the deed. His act of murder isolates him from all human compassion and love. It also alienates him from the established order of society, its moral laws and common human decency.
His sister, Dounia, suffers a similar isolation. She is willing to sacrifice herself in a loveless marriage to the rather patronizing and contemptible Luzhin. Although Raskolnikov has no means to prevent this shabby marriage of convenience, he firmly proclaims, "I won't accept this sacrifice." Dounia's desperate situation irritates him because he knows he is powerless to help her. He feels bitter about the fact that she is willing to marry Luzhin just so that her brother may complete his law studies. This makes Raskolnikov impotent with suppressed rage, and it alienates him further from society.
After the death of her first husband, a Russian army officer, Katerina is forced to marry the drunken clerk, Marmeladov, who can barely support her children and herself. When he dies in an accident, she is evicted from her lodgings, along with her three children. She suffers both a physical and a psychological breakdown, and dies defiantly refusing help from either priest or doctor. Her intense sorrows and misery in life, again, underscore Dostoevsky's theme of human sufferings and isolation.
Above all, Sonia experiences soul-shattering humiliation and solitude. She is forced to take up a life of prostitution in order to help support her drunken father's second family. Men like Luzhin treat her with unwarranted contempt. Poor Sonia has to suffer vile rebukes that naturally would tend to isolate her from a world full of cruel and despicable people like Luzhin. It is her loneliness and silent suffering that draws Raskolnikov to her and prompts him to reveal his dreadful secret. He confesses to Sonia mainly because he has no one else to turn to in his great distress. Besides, he can no longer endure his terrible isolation from ordinary humanity.
The theme of the "Extraordinary Man" or "superman":
Raskolnikov's theories about the "superman" or "Extraordinary Man" also form a major theme in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. In fact, the theory of crime that he formulates constitutes the very basis for his murders. His fantastic concepts about crime and men of superior intellect bring Raskolnikov to the point of committing a crime to prove the viability of his thesis in actual practice. The main-spring of action in the novel is, no doubt, the double murders that he commits. This heinous deed is motivated by his theory that the "Extraordinary man," with his superior intellect, stands outside and above the boundaries of common moral and human laws. Raskolnikov believes that there are two types of humans in society: the ordinary and the extraordinary. Ordinary men merely propagate the species and, hence, they are inferior. Extraordinary men are those who help society develop through their contribution to the store of humanity's intellectual achievements.
This theory is based partially on views drawn from Hegel and Nietzsche, two German philosophers, as well as from Raskolnikov's own notions of the Superman. There are, however, certain inherent contradictions in his theories, as they are not fully developed. In order to complete and test his thesis about the "Extraordinary man," he has to commit a crime to see what effect the crime would have on its perpetrator. Thus, Dostoevsky exposes Raskolnikov's weakness as one of the young, misguided revolutionaries who was dissatisfied with social conditions in mid- 19th century Russia. They drew their inspiration from Western thinkers whose views they had only partially digested.
Raskolnikov's thesis draws partially from the Hegelian view of the Superman as one who exists to do good for humankind. Hegel also held that the ends justify the means, provided the ends were noble. Hence, Raskolnikov believed that killing the evil moneylender was essentially a good act, as he hoped thereby to remove from society a harmful person who preyed on the misfortunes of the poor and whose money could be put to good use.
Although Nietzsche had not yet published his explicit theories of the "Superman," Dostoevsky may have been exposed to some related ideas when he visited Germany a few years before writing Crime and Punishment. In Nietzsche's view, the "Superman" does not exist for the good of society, but for his own advancement and satisfaction. He has no specifically noble motives. He wants only to assert his own strong will, achieve his desires and dominate others. In Dostoevsky's novel, Svidrigailov represents the Nietzschean type of "Superman" more than Raskolnikov. The assertion of his dominant will and vulgar desires is his defining characteristic. However, neither Svidrigailov nor Raskolnikov can endure the extreme isolation from others that is required of the "superman."
By using a blend of prevailing ideas about the "Extraordinary Man," Dostoevsky shows how men like Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov adopted revolutionary stances against the established order of Imperial Russian society. They derived inspiration from contemporary West European thinkers. They often used Napoleon as a "role-model" because of his daring vision, his enterprising exploits and his dauntless spirit. However, they failed to realize that Napoleon proved ultimately to be a failure, and his dreams of conquering all of Europe and Russia ended disastrously both for himself and others. After his years of penal servitude and a visit to Europe in 1862- 1864, Dostoevsky was disillusioned by the radical socialist ideas that had earlier enthralled him. He now saw the tragic contradictions inherent in the French Revolution and distrusted the rising bourgeois capitalist society throughout Europe. In Russia he sensed the widening gulf between the fanciful dreams of the "raznochintsy" (people of various social ranks who often had progressive ideas) and the simple aspirations of the common people. Viewing the political reactions that engulfed Europe in the 1850s and early 1860s, Dostoevsky became increasingly skeptical about ultra-revolutionary movements and their dangerous possibilities.
This brought Dostoevsky in opposition to his earlier political mentors, like Chernyshevsky and the revolutionary socialist, Petrashevsky. Hence, in Crime and Punishment, he attempted to depict two extremes of the revolutionary ideologies of Russian intellectuals through his complementary portraits of Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov.
AUTHOR'S STYLE AND USE OF LANGUAGE
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a landmark in the annals of Russian fiction. It marks the beginning of a new trend in the writing of both Russian and world literature. It can be considered a pioneering work in the realm of psychological fiction, as well as an important piece of realistic sociological criticism. On the one hand, the novel reflects its author's anguish at the immensity of human suffering in language that steers clear of the trappings of sophistication or sentimentalism. On the other hand, Dostoevsky delves deeply and into the most complex workings of the human psyche. He probes the obscure motives and subtle shifts of mood in the mind of a criminal. Hence, a large part of the 'action' of the novel takes place in the criminal's mind. At such moments, the style adopted by Dostoevsky may be compared to that of a great dramatic monologue.
This great Russian novelist not only shows the tortured psyche of the criminal, Raskolnikov, but also attempts to lay bare the ideological struggles and social conflicts that give rise to individuals who resort to crime. His integrity as a writer forces Dostoevsky to explore the diverse roots of crime in a society where exploitation of the many by the few is the established norm. For such an ambitious novel, the style used is rather simple, direct and unpretentious. It has a remarkable precision both in its narrative and analytical sections. With almost uncanny intuition, Dostoevsky displays a keen understanding of the human psyche, which subsequent developments in modern psychology have substantiated.
Dostoevsky's powers of fictional narration leave the reader fully absorbed in the complex and subtle shifts of thought in Raskolnikov's mind. To depict his dark and obscure motives for the crime, the novelist explores different theories of crime. To capture the sordid depths of the criminal mind, Dostoevsky employs dreams and nightmares, and other images, like the tiny attic and its contrasting symbol of "fresh air." Other symbols, like Svidrigailov's whip, correspond to the flogging to death of a horse in Raskolnikov's dream and suggest great cruelty. The sight and smell of blood and fresh paint are cleverly used as recurrent symbols of Raskolnikov's guilt after the murder.
Thus, by clever and controlled use of symbols and imagery, Dostoevsky sets forth a graphic picture of the interior of the murderer's mind. Apart from this ability to plumb the depths of the human soul, Dostoevsky also excels in capturing mid-19th century Russian society in all its realistic detail. The social conditions that then prevailed also had some effect on the way individuals thought, felt and behaved. From the agonizing scenes of desperate solitude and grinding poverty that fill the pages of this novel, the novelist is able to portray the grief and misery that has tormented humankind all through the ages. The squalor and humiliation of social degradation is seen clearly in the plights of Sonia, her stepmother, Katerina, and in Dounia's near disgrace by Luzhin and Svidrigailov. Very few authors capture human suffering as movingly as Dostoevsky.
