Exploring Dostoyevsky’s Philosophy in Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is not just a tale of crime and its consequences but a profound exploration of the human psyche and philosophical inquiry.

At the heart of this masterpiece lies a complex interplay of moral dilemmas, existential crises, and the quest for redemption. Dostoyevsky uses the journey of his protagonist, Raskolnikov, to delve into profound questions about morality, free will, and the nature of evil. Through Raskolnikov’s internal struggles and interactions, Dostoyevsky presents his philosophical views, challenging readers to contemplate the boundaries of right and wrong.

Dostoyevsky’s philosophy in Crime and Punishment is deeply rooted in the existentialist tradition, grappling with the themes of guilt, punishment, and the possibility of redemption. The novel presents a stark examination of utilitarianism, as Raskolnikov initially believes that his crime can be justified by a greater good. However, as the narrative unfolds, Dostoyevsky dismantles this notion, illustrating the inescapable nature of moral law and the inherent value of human life.

Through a rich tapestry of characters and events, Dostoyevsky’s work challenges readers to reflect on the essence of justice, the power of conscience, and the transformative potential of suffering and repentance.

According to Goodreads, Crime and Punishment is one of the best books ever.

INTRODUCTION TO CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

When the first instalment of Crime and Punishment appeared in the journal Russian Messenger in January 1866, its debt-ridden author, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, had not yet finished writing the novel.

However, even before the entire work had appeared in serial form, the novel was a public success. Russian readers and critics recognized that, artistically and socially, Crime and Punishment was one of the most important novels of its time, and it was widely discussed.

On the surface, Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder, set in the city of St Petersburg, then the Russian capital. It is not, however, a murder mystery: we know the murderer’s identity from the very beginning. Moreover, although Dostoyevsky depicts the crime and the environment in which it takes place with great realism, he is more interested in the psychology of the murderer than in the external specifics of the crime.

Like many of the great 19th-century novelists, Dostoyevsky often uses coincidences to move the plot forward, and the story takes on a compelling life of its own. Dostoyevsky’s use of parable and of dream sequences is also original and remarkable.

Furthermore, Dostoyevsky creates a gallery of memorable characters, including the proud and tormented ex-student Raskolnikov and his two murder victims; the drunken civil servant Marmeladov and his daughter; the meek prostitute Sonya, whose love helps to redeem Raskolnikov; Raskolnikov’s devoted sister, mother, and best friend (Dunya, Pulkheria Aleksandrovna, and Razhumikhin); Dunya’s scheming suitor Luzhin and the sinister Svidrigailov; and the canny police investigator, Porfiry Petrovich.

Finally, beyond its powerful plot and colourful characters, Crime and Punishment is marked by its insightful treatment of several major themes. Among other things, the book is an exposé of social conditions in 19th-century Russia, a satirical analysis of liberal and radical politics, and a religious call for redemption through suffering.

As an intensely dramatic study of the nature of good and evil, it is commonly considered the quintessential Russian novel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in the mid-1860s, he was already a well-known author. Nonetheless, he lived in near-poverty and was plagued by gambling debts.

Born in Moscow in 1821, he was the second child in a family that eventually consisted of seven children. Family life was unhappy: Dostoyevsky’s father, a doctor, ruled with an iron hand; his mother, a meek woman, died when the author was 16. Young Dostoyevsky developed a love of books and enthusiastically read Russian, French, and German novels. However, his father insisted that Dostoyevsky study engineering, and from 1838 to 1843 Dostoyevsky trained in this subject at the military engineering academy in St Petersburg. During this time the elder Dostoyevsky was murdered by one of his serfs, an incident that had a profound impact on Fyodor.

In the mid-1840s Dostoyevsky embarked on a literary career, writing several short stories and novels, including The Double (1846). The concept of the “double”—the notion that a person may have a divided personality, symbolized by a good or evil twin—surfaced in several of his later works, including Crime and Punishment.

His early published works brought Dostoyevsky some recognition. In 1848 Dostoyevsky joined a group of radical intellectuals (known as the “Petrashevsky Circle” after their leader, Mikhail Petrashevsky). The group discussed literary and political ideas and advocated reforming the autocratic tsarist government. Dostoyevsky and several of his friends were arrested for treason, tried, and sentenced to death.

Just as they were lined up in front of the firing squad, a messenger arrived with news that the tsar had commuted the death sentence to a term of hard labour in Siberia. Dostoyevsky later alluded to this event in Crime and Punishment and in other books. (It is believed that the authorities intended a mock execution all along.) During his five years in prison, Dostoyevsky came to know many of the inmates, the great majority of whom were ordinary criminals rather than political prisoners. Through his dealings with them, the writer developed an understanding of the criminal mentality and the Russian soul. His political views also changed.

He rejected his earlier pro-Western liberal-socialist ideas and instead embraced a specifically Russian brand of Christianity. His prison experiences provided the material for his later book The House of the Dead (1861-1862).

After his release from the prison camp in 1854, Dostoyevsky had to spend several more years in Siberia as an army private. He returned to St Petersburg in 1859 and resumed his literary career; in the early 1860s he travelled extensively in Western Europe.

However, he was troubled by personal misfortune, including the death of his wife and his brother, with whom he edited a literary journal. He was also afflicted by epilepsy, a condition little understood at the time.

Moreover, he was unable to control his compulsive gambling habit, and he found himself on the brink of poverty. His writing during this period was stimulated not only by an intense desire to express important ideas but also by the need to earn money. In 1864 he wrote Notes from the Underground, whose narrator is a self-confessed “sick… spiteful… unattractive man”, an embittered character who resents society. Immediately after this book, Dostoyevsky started work on Crime and Punishment (1866), regarded as his first true masterpiece.

Important Russian critics hailed the work, and Dostoyevsky was acclaimed as one of Russia’s most significant writers and thinkers. However, he still faced financial ruin, and in just one month he wrote a short novel called The Gambler (1866) in order to pay his debts. He subsequently married the stenographer to whom he had dictated the work, Anna Snitkina; she helped reform his life, and they lived abroad for several years.

Foremost among his later novels are The Idiot (1868-1869), The Possessed (also translated as The Devils, 1871-1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880). With Crime and Punishment, these books express the essence of Dostoyevsky’s social and moral philosophy and his insight into human character. In the last decade of his life, Dostoyevsky finally gained critical acclaim, social prestige, and financial security. He died in St Petersburg in 1881.

Dostoyevsky’s reputation and his influence remain strong to the present day; virtually all his books have been translated into English and are in print. His insights into the complexities of human psychology anticipated the theories of Sigmund Freud and other early psychologists. (Indeed, Freud acknowledged Dostoyevsky’s importance in this field.) Later novelists as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Iris Murdoch all drew inspiration from Dostoyevsky’s themes and characters, while Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has carried on Dostoyevsky’s unique brand of Russian nationalism and Christianity. 

Some scholars have gone so far as to claim that Dostoyevsky’s view of the Russian character and politics prophesied the Russian Revolution and the terrible deprivations that Russia suffered under Soviet Communist rule in the 20th century. 

With his contemporary Leo Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky is today regarded as one of the two greatest 19th-century Russian novelists and indeed as one of the most important novelists of any nation or period.

PLOT SUMMARY TO CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

BOOK 1

As the novel Crime and Punishment begins, an impoverished student named Rodion Raskolnikov sets out to visit a pawnbroker in a poor section of St Petersburg, the Russian capital. This visit serves as a trial run for a sinister mission: Raskolnikov plans to murder and rob the old woman. After the visit, Raskolnikov feels miserable, so he stops at a tavern for a drink.

There he meets a drunk named Marmeladov who tells him how his daughter Sonya became a prostitute to support her family. Raskolnikov helps Marmeladov home and he is touched by the pitiful scene of poverty he sees there. After leaving the family some money, he returns to his cramped room.

The next day, Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother. She informs him that Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya is set to marry a bachelor named Luzhin. Raskolnikov realizes that his mother and sister are counting on Luzhin to give Raskolnikov financial assistance after the wedding. As he sees it, Dunya is sacrificing herself for her brother, a sacrifice that reminds him of Sonya’s prostitution. He berates himself for his passivity.

Soon afterwards, he falls asleep, and he dreams of watching a peasant beat an overburdened horse to death. When he awakens, he articulates for the first time his plan to kill the pawnbroker with an axe. Hearing that the pawnbroker’s sister would be away from their flat the next evening, he realizes that the time to execute his plan has arrived.

The murder itself does not unfold as intended. Lizaveta, the pawnbroker’s sister, returns home unexpectedly, and Raskolnikov kills her too. Distraught, he finds only a few items of value, and he is nearly discovered by two of the pawnbroker’s clients who knock at the door. When they leave momentarily, Raskolnikov slips out of the flat undetected.

BOOK 2

During the next few days, Raskolnikov alternates between lucidity and delirium.

He feels torn between an impulse to confess his crime and an impulse to resist arrest. He begins a game of cat-and-mouse with the examining magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich. Porfiry has read an article written by Raskolnikov in which Raskolnikov expounds the theory that a few select individuals may have the right to commit crimes if they think it necessary to attain special goals. Raskolnikov now explains his theory to Porfiry, beginning with the idea that there are two categories of people in the world—the masses and the elite.

“The first group, that is the material, are, generally speaking, by nature staid and conservative, they live in obedience and like it. In my opinion they ought to obey because that is their destiny, and there is nothing at all degrading to them in it. The second group are all law-breakers and transgressors, or are inclined that way, in the measure of their capacities.

The aims of these people are, of course, relative and very diverse; for the most part they require, in widely different contexts, the destruction of what exists in the name of better things. But if it is necessary for one of them, for the fulfilment of his ideas, to march over corpses, or wade through blood, then in my opinion he may in all conscience authorize himself to wade through blood—in proportion, however, to his idea and the degree of its importance—mark that. It is in that sense only that I speak in my article of their right to commit crime.”

Porfiry wonders whether Raskolnikov might consider himself to be an “extraordinary man”, and if so, whether the murder of the pawnbroker could be connected with his cynical theory. Porfiry hints that he suspects Raskolnikov of the murder, but he avoids making definitive accusations at first, thus keeping Raskolnikov on edge.

While this covert duel between Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich continues, Dostoyevsky develops several subplots. Marmeladov is run over by a carriage, and when Raskolnikov takes the dying man home, he sees Sonya. Struck by her image of humble self-sacrifice, he feels drawn to her. In the meantime, Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya breaks off her engagement to Luzhin, who has become insufferably demanding. Yet she now must contend with a new pursuer, her former employer Svidrigailov.

Svidrigailov is rumoured to have abused young women and to have beaten his wife. He had made advances to Dunya when she worked for him, and his scandalous behaviour had unjustly given her a bad reputation. Now he turns up again.

Wracked by continuing anxiety, Raskolnikov makes two important visits to Sonya’s flat. In the first visit, he alternates between antagonizing her and seeking her sympathy. He wonders how she could go on living despite her humiliating profession. It occurs to him that the answer may lie in religion. He asks Sonya to read aloud the Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus.

This story of a dead man restored to life perhaps suggests to Raskolnikov that he too may someday be able to return to normal life. He tells Sonya that on his next visit he will disclose to her the murderer’s identity.

During his second visit, Raskolnikov reveals to Sonya his awful crime. The moment of confession takes place without words. In a scene that uncannily recalls the original murder of the pawnbroker and Lizaveta, Raskolnikov looks into Sonya’s eyes, and she reacts with the same terror he had seen on Lizaveta’s face. In an instant, she perceives his guilt.

Instead of turning away with horror, however, she embraces him and shows that she understands how much he suffers. Her selfless acceptance of his suffering gives Raskolnikov new strength. He tells her that he committed the murder to find out whether he was someone special, someone with the right to disobey conventional codes of behaviour.

He now asks her what he should do. She tells him to go to the crossroads, kiss the earth, and make a public confession. God will then send him new life. Yet Raskolnikov is not ready to surrender, and he leaves her flat in a renewed state of indecision.

Unbeknownst to Raskolnikov and Sonya, Svidrigailov had been eavesdropping on their last conversation, and he attempts to use Raskolnikov’s confession as a tool to win Dunya’s affections. Luring her to his flat, Svidrigailov tells Sonya that he knows of Raskolnikov’s crime, and he indicates that he will save Raskolnikov if Sonya gives herself to him. She tries to leave the room, but he has locked the door. She takes a revolver out of her pocket, and while he taunts her to shoot him, she pulls the trigger twice. The first bullet misses, and then the gun misfires. Although Svidrigailov gives her the opportunity to shoot again, Dunya throws the gun down.

Svidrigailov hopes that she will now surrender to him, but she tells him that she will never love him, and he lets her go. Disheartened by her rejection, Svidrigailov spends a fitful night in a cheap hotel. A series of dreams reveals to him the extent of his internal corruption. In the morning, he leaves the hotel and shoots himself in front of an astonished guard.

On that same day, Raskolnikov resolves to give himself up to the police. He makes a final visit to Sonya and departs for the police station. Crossing a public square, he recalls Sonya’s words about confessing to the world. He falls to his knees and kisses the ground.

The mockery of the bystanders, however, quells his impulse to make a public confession, so he moves on to the police station. There he learns that Svidrigailov has committed suicide. He begins to leave the station, perhaps feeling the lure of suicide himself. Outside the building, however, he sees Sonya looking at him in anguish. He re-enters the station and declares in a loud voice: “It was I who killed the old woman and her sister Lizaveta….”

Epilogue

The novel’s epilogue focuses on Raskolnikov’s experiences as a convict in Siberia.

Raskolnikov initially feels a deep sense of alienation from his fellow prisoners. During Lent and Easter, he falls ill, and he has a strange dream in which everyone in the world becomes infected with a disease that causes each person to believe that he or she is the sole bearer of truth. The deluded people kill each other, and the world heads towards total collapse.

After recuperating from his illness, Raskolnikov walks to a riverbank and gazes at the landscape. Sonya appears at his side. Suddenly, Raskolnikov is seized with an entirely new sensation of love and compassion. Both he and Sonya realize that something profound has occurred within his soul.

Love has raised him from the dead, and he will become a new man. Dostoyevsky concludes his novel by stating that the story of Raskolnikov’s regeneration might be the subject of a new tale, but that the present one has ended.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS

1. Pulkheria Aleksandrovna

Pulkheria Aleksandrovna is Raskolnikov’s mother.

A widow, she is 43 years old, but her face “still retains traces of her former beauty”. When she arrives in St Petersburg with her daughter Dunya and meets Raskolnikov, whom she has not seen for three years, she is deeply concerned about him. She finds his behaviour puzzling, and she worries about him. Raskolnikov is embarrassed (among other things) by his mother’s attention, and he attempts to rebuff her. In his final encounter with his mother, Raskolnikov reveals his love for her but does not tell her about his crime.

However, with a mother’s intuition, she is more aware of what is happening to her son than he realizes.

2. Alyona Ivanovna

Alyona Ivanovna is the pawnbroker whom Raskolnikov murders.

The widow of a college registrar, in Raskolnikov’s eyes she is a suspicious, miserly old woman who preys on unfortunate people who are forced to pawn their few possessions with her. Raskolnikov reasons that she is a “vile, harmful louse” who is no good to anyone and who only causes pain and suffering to others (including her simple-minded sister, Lizaveta Ivanovna). Therefore, for Raskolnikov, her murder is justified.

However, Dostoyevsky suggests that the murder of even such an unsympathetic character is a crime against humanity.

3. Katerina Ivanovna

Katerina Ivanovna is the wife of Marmeladov.

Marmeladov tells Raskolnikov that she is “full of magnanimous emotions” but “hot-tempered and irritable”. The daughter of a military officer, she was a poor widow when she met Marmeladov, and since her marriage to Marmeladov she has been reduced to total poverty.

She has three children from her previous marriage. She is “a thin, rather tall woman, with a good figure and beautiful chestnut hair”; Raskolnikov guesses that she is about 30 years old. She suffers from consumption (tuberculosis) and has been driven to despair by her husband’s drunkenness and extreme poverty. In this piteous state she abuses her children, and on her deathbed she refuses to forgive Marmeladov for his irresponsibility.

After her husband’s death, she retreats into the fantasy that she has an aristocratic background. She dies shortly thereafter.

4. Lizaveta Ivanovna

Lizaveta is the simple-minded younger half-sister of the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna.

Raskolnikov kills Lizaveta when the woman unexpectedly enters the flat where he has just murdered Alyona Ivanovna. Ironically, Raskolnikov had earlier expressed some sympathy for Lizaveta, a poor soul who was abused by her sister. Raskolnikov learned that Alyona would be alone when he overheard Lizaveta talking to someone in the market. Curiously, his unpremeditated killing of the innocent Lizaveta plays little part in his subsequent feelings of guilt.

He later learns that Lizaveta was a friend of Sonya Marmeladova.

5. Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov

Lebezyatnikov is a former student of Luzhin, with whom Luzhin lodges temporarily in St Petersburg.

Lebezyatnikov belongs to a radical utopian organization. Luzhin attempts to enlist him as a witness when he accuses Sonya of robbery. However, Lebezyatnikov realizes that Luzhin has framed Sonya, and he speaks up on her behalf and tells the truth.

Dostoyevsky ridicules Lebezyatnikov’s naive political ideas, but he is commended for his basic honesty and decency.

6. Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin

Luzhin is the manipulative fiancé of Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya. Luzhin is related to Svidrigailov and Svidrigailov’s wife, Marfa Petrovna, for whom Dunya had previously worked as a governess. In his early 40s, Luzhin is depicted as a self-important dandy with uncertain government connections.

He clearly does not love Dunya, and his motives for marriage are suspect. After a brief acquaintance, he has arranged for Raskolnikov’s sister and mother (Dunya and Pulkheria Aleksandrovna) to follow him to St Petersburg. However, his arrangements are less than satisfactory. Raskolnikov takes an instant dislike to Luzhin and insults him; Raskolnikov vows to stop his sister’s marriage to a man whom he regards as a hypocrite and an opportunist.

Luzhin later falsely accuses Sonya of having robbed him, but the charges are disproven and Luzhin is humiliated. For Dostoyevsky, Luzhin embodies superficiality and corruption.

7. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov

Marmeladov is a drunken civil servant; the father of Sonya and the husband of Katerina Ivanovna.

In the novel’s second chapter, Raskolnikov encounters Marmeladov in a tavern, where Marmeladov tells the former student the story of his degeneration. Despite his drunkenness, Marmeladov is intelligent and perceptive, but he has abandoned his job and lost all self-respect.

Consequently, his family has fallen into dire poverty, and his daughter Sonya has resorted to prostitution in order to help support them. Marmeladov is fully aware of his irresponsibility and its disastrous consequences for his family; indeed, he seems to take pleasure in his depravity and suffering. However, he is unwilling or unable to change his ways and reform himself. Marmeladov is later run over by a carriage and is fatally injured; Raskolnikov happens to come along and has the older man carried to his [Marmeladov’s] flat, where he dies. Both comic and pathetic, Marmeladov is regarded as one of Raskolnikov’s “doubles”.

Dostoyevsky may also have intended him to be symptomatic of a Russian national tendency towards slothfulness and irrationality and an inability to reform or modernize.

8. Sonya Marmeladova/Sofya Semyonovna/Sonia Marmeladova

Sonya is the meek young prostitute to whom Raskolnikov first confesses his guilt.

The 18-year-old daughter of the drunken civil servant Semyon Marmeladov, and the stepdaughter of Katerina Ivanovna, Sonya has become a prostitute in order to help support Katerina’s children. She is thin, fair-haired, and has “remarkable blue eyes”.

Raskolnikov first learns about her from Marmeladov. Although other characters scorn Sonya because of her profession, Raskolnikov is drawn to her because of her innocence. She reads Raskolnikov the biblical passage about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. She also tells Raskolnikov that she was a friend of the murdered woman Lizaveta. When Raskolnikov confesses that he is the murderer, Sonya is horrified because she realizes that he has murdered his own human spirit. She forgives him and urges him to go to a public place and bow down and confess his sin to God.

Sonya follows him to Siberia. Sonya represents Dostoyevsky’s religious faith. Her Christianity emphasizes redemption through suffering.

9. Natasya

Natasya is the cook and only servant of Raskolnikov’s landlady.

Dostoyevsky describes her as a “country peasant woman, and a very talkative one”. She tells Raskolnikov that the landlady has been talking about calling the police because he has been behind with his rent and will not leave. She is very kind to the poor student, bringing him tea and urging her cabbage soup on him, rather than taking his money to buy sausage.

10. Nikolay

Nikolay is one of the workmen. He is a house painter who confesses to the murders and who is described by Porfiry as a “child… responsive to influences”. His false evidence serves to distract people from suspecting Raskolnikov and provides Porfiry with a chance to urge Raskolnikov to make a full confession for his own good.

11. Porfiry Petrovich

Porfiry Petrovich is the police inspector whose interviews with Raskolnikov provide dramatic tension in the book.

A relative of Raskolnikov’s friend Razumikhin, he is about 35 years old and podgy. At times he seems a somewhat befuddled, comical character, but in fact he is extremely perceptive and intelligent. His investigative methods are highly unorthodox. He is more interested in criminal psychology than in standard police procedure or material evidence. Raskolnikov is uncertain how much Porfiry really knows about the crime, and he attempts to outwit the detective.

However, Porfiry’s friendly but persistent and all-knowing manner upsets and confuses Raskolnikov. In the end, Raskolnikov breaks down and confesses.

Porfiry’s emphasis on criminal psychology reflects Dostoyevsky’s own ideas and interests as a novelist.

12. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov/Rodya

Raskolnikov is the central character of Crime and Punishment.

He is a poverty-stricken 23-year-old. Described as an “ex-student”, Raskolnikov has dropped out of the university presumably because of his inability to pay his fees.

Beyond this, he has been suffering from a spiritual crisis. Proud, aloof, and scornful of humanity, at the beginning of the novel Raskolnikov has become obsessed with the idea that he is a “superman” and therefore not subject to the laws that govern ordinary humans. He has published an essay on his superman theory. To prove this theory, he intends to kill an old pawnbroker, whom he regards as worthless. However, the murder goes horribly wrong: he also kills the old woman’s simple-minded innocent sister (Lizaveta), who stumbles upon the scene of the crime.

Moreover, the crime fails to confirm Raskolnikov’s cool superiority. Tormented by feelings of guilt, he acts erratically, and he fears that his guilt will be obvious to others. Much of the novel centres on Raskolnikov’s irrational state of mind and the eccentric behaviour that follows from this.

On several occasions he comes close to boasting that he could have committed the crime, and dares others (notably the detective Porfiry Petrovich) to prove that he did it. He insults his friend Razumihkin and deliberately offends his mother and sister.

However, he also acts in ways that show he still has a moral conscience. For example, he defends his sister against her scheming fiancé Luzhin. He gives money to Marmeladov’s widow Katerina Ivanovna. He recoils in horror from the depraved Svidrigailov. Most significantly of all, he is drawn to the young prostitute Sonya Marmeladova, who is morally pure and innocent despite her terrible life. He ultimately confesses his crime to her and begins his journey to redemption. The Russian word Raskol means “schism”. The term was used to describe a split in the Russian Orthodox Church that occurred in the mid-1600s.

Dostoyevsky’s Russian readers would have been aware of the significance of Raskolnikov’s name, which suggests contradictions in his own personality as well as his rebellion against God.

13. Dmitry Prokovich Razumikhin

Razumikhin is Raskolnikov’s best friend.

A former student himself, Razumikhin helps to nurse Raskolnikov back to health after the latter’s breakdown (following Raskolnikov’s murder of the pawnbroker and her sister).

His attitude towards Raskolnikov is complex: he often berates his wayward friend, but he is also protective towards him. Razumikhin falls in love with Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya, and he subsequently acts as her protector. He is a cousin of the police inspector Porfiry Petrovich, to whom he introduces Raskolnikov. On the surface, Razumikhin is himself no paragon of virtue. He is unkempt and ungainly, and when he meets Raskolnikov’s mother and sister after a party he is drunk. Razumikhin’s name derives from the Russian word for “reason”.

Some critics have compared Razumikhin and his role in the novel to Shakespeare’s character Horatio, the friend of Hamlet.

14. Dunya Avdotya Romanovna/Dunechka

Dunya is Raskolnikov’s sister. She bears a physical resemblance to her brother, but in contrast to his morbid character she is self-confident, strong, and straightforward.

She is devoted to Raskolnikov, and initially decides to marry Pyotr Luzhin primarily for her brother’s financial benefit. With her mother (Pukheria Aleksandrovna), she unexpectedly arrives in St Petersburg from the provinces and visits Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov is horrified at the thought of her loveless arranged marriage to Luzhin and attempts to stop it. Indirectly through Dunya, Raskolnikov also encounters Svidrigailov, whom Dunya had served earlier as a governess and whose intentions towards Dunya are not entirely honourable.

Raskolnikov’s friend Razumikhin falls in love with Dunya and serves as her protector; he eventually marries her.

15. Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov

A mysterious wealthy landowner, Svidrigailov is a shadowy, highly ambiguous character.

He does not appear directly until the last third of the novel, although he is mentioned earlier. He is about 50 years old but looks younger. His “strange face” resembles a mask.

He has blue eyes, a blond beard and blond hair, and ruby-red lips. Svidrigailov’s background is thoroughly distasteful. He and his wife had employed Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya as a governess, and he became obsessed with her. (Marfa Petrovna helped to arrange Dunya’s engagement to Luzhin in order to remove the girl from Svidrigailov’s attentions.) He confesses to Raskolnikov that his marriage to an older woman, Marfa Petrovna, was one of convenience; he is a shameless sensualist whose favourite activity was seducing young girls.

There are rumours that he is responsible for the deaths of a servant, a girl whom he had raped, and his wife; he is occasionally visited by their ghosts. Svidrigailov has recently arrived in St Petersburg. While lodging in the flat next to Sonya’s, he overhears Raskolnikov tell Sonya that he [Raskolnikov] is a murderer. Svidrigailov subsequently lets Raskolnikov know that he is aware of the young man’s secret, and he attempts to blackmail Raskolnikov emotionally.

Yet, for all his lurid interests, Svidrigailov is apparently capable of compassion. He gives much-needed money to both Dunya and Sonya, and he arranges for Katerina Ivanovna’s children to be put in a good orphanage after their mother dies.

(However, he hints that his motives for this last act may be entirely selfish.) After his last meeting with Raskolnikov he again attempts to seduce Dunya. When this fails, he spends the night in a run-down hotel and is troubled by dreams about his former victims. In the morning he goes outside, puts a gun to his head, and commits suicide. Svidrigailov is often considered Raskolnikov’s “double”.

His utterly selfish, callous, and destructive nature points to what Raskolnikov might become if Raskolnikov were to abandon all conscience and follow his theories through to their logical conclusion.

16. Zametov

Zametov is the police clerk who tells Porfiry of his suspicions that Raskolnikov is the murderer early in the story. When Raskolnikov asks for him at the end of the novel in order to make his confession, he learns that Zametov is no longer there.

17. Dr Zossimov

Dr Zossimov is a young physician and friend of Razumikhim who comes to treat Raskolnikov. Described as “a tall fat man with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair”, he is fashionably dressed and nonchalant in manner, but he is known to be excellent at his work.

Dr Zossimov continues to look after Raskolnikov, “his first patient”, he says, and is one of two friends to attend the wedding of Razumikhim and Raskolnikov’s sister.

THEMES AND SUBJECTS

On the surface, Crime and Punishment belongs to the popular genre known as the crime novel.

A young man (Raskolnikov) commits a murder and then tries to conceal his guilt and evade arrest.

In the end, he confesses, is arrested, and is sent to prison, where he begins a process of spiritual regeneration. The novel’s suspense arises not only from the question “what will happen next?”, but from Dostoyevsky’s close and relentless examination of the murderer’s psyche. Dostoyevsky is more interested in important philosophical questions than in the technical police procedures of bringing a criminal to justice. He is also interested in the criminal’s motives, which are ambiguous. The title indicates Dostoyevsky’s interest in opposites and in the duality of human nature.

The nature of guilt and innocence, the role of atonement and forgiveness, and the opposition of good and evil (and God and the Devil) all play an important thematic role in the book.

While Dostoyevsky also examines social and political problems in the Russia of his day, his concerns are universal.

Guit and Incorruptibility

In large part, Crime and Punishment is an examination of the guilty conscience.

For Dostoyevsky, punishment is not a physical action or condition. Rather (much as in Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost), punishment inherently results from an awareness of guilt. Guilt is the knowledge that one has done wrong and become estranged from society and from God. From the very beginning of the novel, Raskolnikov (whose name derives from the Russian word for “schism”) suffers from this estrangement.

In murdering the pawnbroker, he seeks to prove that he is above the law. However, his crime only reinforces his sense that he is not a part of society.

Although she is a prostitute, Sonya is the embodiment of innocence. She is embarrassed by, and ashamed of, her profession. In Dostoyevsky’s eyes, she is not guilty of any transgression. She does what she does out of sheer necessity, not out of any base instincts or any hope for personal gain.

In contrast to Sonya’s sense of shame over the life she leads, Pyotr Luzhin is shameless in the way he manipulates Raskolnikov’s sister and mother (Dunya and Pulkheria Aleksandrovna).

He is guilty of emotional blackmail as well as fraud. Arkady Svidrigailov is an even more “guilty” character. Luzhin’s crimes are calculated, whereas Svidrigailov’s crimes result from his complete surrender to his evil nature. Rather than facing up to his guilt and its consequences, as Raskolnikov does, Svidrigailov partially acknowledges his guilt but evades the consequences by committing suicide. Although Raskolnikov is the central figure of Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky suggests that Raskolnikov may not quite be the book’s most guilty criminal. Svidrigailov and Luzhin are also guilty of criminal misdeeds, and they are less open than Raskolnikov to the possibility of redemption.

Penance and Forgiveness

The theme of atonement and forgiveness is closely related to that of guilt and innocence.

As Dostoyevsky’s title suggests, punishment is the only logical and necessary outcome of crime. Punishment, however, does not mean merely a legal finding and a sentence of imprisonment. In Dostoyevsky’s view, the criminal’s true punishment is not a sentence of imprisonment. Nor is legal punishment the definitive answer to crime. The criminal’s punishment results from his own conscience, his awareness of his guilt.

However, he must not only acknowledge his guilt; he must atone for it and seek forgiveness.

Raskolnikov at first tries to rationalize his crime by offering various explanations to himself. Foremost among these is his “superman” theory. By definition, the superman theory denies any possibility of atonement. The superman does not need to atone, because he is permitted to commit any crime in order to further his own ends. Raskolnikov also rationalizes his crime by arguing that the old pawnbroker is of no use to anyone; in killing her, he is ridding the world of an unpleasant person. Driven by poverty, he also claims that he wants to use her money to better his position in life.

In the course of the book, he comes to realize that none of these excuses justifies his crime.

Raskolnikov’s reasons for fearing arrest are equally complex. It is clear, however, that without the example and the urging of Sonya, he would not be able to seek forgiveness. He finds it remarkable that when he confesses his crime to her, Sonya immediately forgives him. She urges him to bow down before God and make a public confession.

This act of contrition, she believes, will enable him to begin to cleanse his soul.

Svidrigailov is aware of his own guilt, but he does not seek forgiveness. Unlike Raskolnikov, he does not believe in the possibility of forgiveness. In giving money to Sonya and others, he attempts a partial atonement for his sins. However, even these gestures are motivated partly by base self-interest.

He feels that the only atonement he can make is to commit suicide because he is spiritually dead.

Übermensch (“Superman”)

Part of the motive for Raskolnikov’s crime comes from a theory that he has developed.

In an essay that he publishes, Raskolnikov argues that humankind is divided into two categories: ordinary people, and geniuses or supermen.

Ordinary people must obey the law, but “supermen”—of whom there are very few in any generation—are entitled to break existing laws and make their own laws. Raskolnikov cites the French emperor Napoleon as the epitome of the superman type. He argues that Napoleon rose to power by overstepping the laws that govern ordinary people.

Napoleon made his own laws and achieved his goals by killing tens of thousands of people in wars. Since Napoleon was a genius, Raskolnikov reasons, he was not regarded as a criminal. On the contrary, he was hailed as a hero. Early in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov has become obsessed with the notion that he himself is a “superman”. Therefore, he thinks, he is not subject to the laws that govern ordinary people. (In the original Russian text, Dostoyevsky frequently uses a word that means “overstepping” or “stepping over”—that is, transgressing.

This word is closely related to the Russian word for “crime” (prestuplenie). Raskolnikov decides to murder the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna partly to prove that he is a superman.

However, his indecision and confusion throughout the novel indicate that he is not a superman. Moreover, in the course of the novel, Dostoyevsky seeks to prove that there is no such thing as a superman. Dostoyevsky believes that every human life is precious, and no one is entitled to kill.

Dostoyevsky’s formulation of the superman theory (through Raskolnikov) clearly anticipates the ideas developed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1880s. For Nietzsche, the superman and his “will to power” were supreme ideals. Christianity stood in the way of the superman, and Nietzsche scorned Christianity as a “slave morality”. Dostoyevsky’s view of the superman is absolutely opposed to Nietzsche’s. For Dostoyevsky, following the “superman” theory to its natural conclusion inevitably leads to death, destruction, chaos, and misery.

Rather than seeing Christianity as a “slave mentality”, Dostoyevsky views it as the true vision of the human place in the world and of the human relationship with God. In Dostoyevsky’s view, all people are valued in the eyes of God.

LITERARY STYLE

a. Account

Crime and Punishment is written in the third person.

However, Dostoyevsky’s narrative focus shifts throughout the novel. Crime and Punishment is widely credited as the first psychological novel, and in many passages Dostoyevsky is concerned with the state of mind of the central character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. In these passages—including those that relate Raskolnikov’s brooding, the murder itself, and his encounters with the inspector, Porfiry Petrovich—Dostoyevsky puts us inside Raskolnikov’s head. We view the action from Raskolnikov’s viewpoint and share his often-disordered and contradictory thoughts.

These passages read more like a first-person confession than a detached third-person fictional narrative. At the same time, he describes exterior events with clear realism.

Critics have pointed out that Dostoyevsky is essentially a dramatic novelist. He does not so much tell a story as enact it. Crime and Punishment is full of dramatic scenes, of which Raskolnikov’s murder of the pawnbroker is only one. There are also a number of dramatic confrontations between characters. Dostoyevsky’s characters rarely have calm discussions; rather, they have fierce arguments and verbal duels. Generally (but not always) Raskolnikov is at one end of these confrontations.

 At the other, in various scenes, are his friend Razumikhin, his sister and mother, his sister’s corrupt suitor Luzhin, the police investigator Porfiry Petrovich, the innocent prostitute Sonya, and the cynical landowner Svidrigailov. These duels and pairings help to illustrate the idea of the double, discussed further below.

b. Background

The action of the book takes place in St Petersburg, the capital city of Russia, in the summer of 1865.

(The brief epilogue is set in Siberia.) Crime and Punishment is a distinctly urban novel. In choosing a definite urban setting, Dostoyevsky was paving new ground for Russian fiction. His Russian predecessors and contemporaries such as Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy generally set their stories on country estates. In confining the action of his novel entirely to St Petersburg, Dostoyevsky was emulating Charles Dickens, who set his well-known stories in London.

Moreover, St Petersburg is not only a backdrop, but an inherent part of the novel. Dostoyevsky recreates St Petersburg’s neighbourhoods and its streets, bridges, and canals with great realism. In his narrative, Dostoyevsky does not give the full street names, but uses only abbreviations. (In the very first paragraph, for example, he refers to “S—— Lane” and “K——n Bridge”.)

Readers who were familiar with St Petersburg would probably have been able to identify most of these specific locations, as modern scholars have done.

Much of the action takes place indoors, generally in cramped tenement flats. With these settings, Dostoyevsky creates a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere.

For example, in the weeks before he commits the murders, Raskolnikov has been lying in his tiny room, brooding. He retreats to this room after the murders, occasionally leaving his hideaway to wander the city’s streets.

Most of the book’s main characters are not natives of St Petersburg, but have come to the city from Russia’s far-flung rural provinces.

Thus, they are not at ease in this urban setting. Provincial Russians might normally regard the capital city, created by Peter the Great as Russia’s “window on the West”, as a place of opportunity. However, for Raskolnikov, Katerina Ivanovna, Svidrigailov, and other characters, the city turns out to be a destination of last resort, a place where their diminished expectations are finally played out. (Svidrigailov remarks that “there aren’t many places where there are as many gloomy, harsh and strange influences on the soul of man as there are in St Petersburg”.)

This sense of the city as a dead-end is emphasized by the settings. The flats where Raskolnikov and the Marmeladovs live are so small that there is scarcely enough space for a small group of visitors.

Moreover, at several points in the novel, characters are threatened with eviction and fear that they will end up on the streets. Near the end of the book, Katerina Ivanovna and her children beg on the streets by singing and dancing.

Most readers tend to think of Russia as a “winter” country, with lots of snow and cold weather. Dostoyevsky contradicts these expectations by setting his story during an unusual summer heat wave. The heat and humidity add to the general sense of discomfort that pervades the narrative. They also reflect and reinforce the feverish state that afflicts Raskolnikov throughout the book.

c. Construction/Structure

Crime and Punishment is divided into six parts plus an epilogue.

Each part is broken further into several chapters. For the most part, each chapter centres around a self-contained dramatic episode.

Much of this episodic structure is attributable to the fact that Crime and Punishment was written for serialization in a magazine. Magazine readers wanted each instalment to be complete in itself and to contain colourful incidents. Many chapters end with the sudden, unexpected arrival of a new character. By introducing such developments at the end of many of the chapters, Dostoyevsky maintained a high level of suspense. He knew that his readers would be curious to know what would happen in the next chapter and that they would look forward to the next instalment.

Moreover, an unresolved complication at the end of a particular chapter would stimulate Dostoyevsky to write the next chapter. This method of writing helps account for the numerous abrupt shifts in the plot focus.

d. Coincidence

Like many other important 19th-century novelists, Dostoyevsky does not hesitate to use coincidence to advance the plot.

Indeed, many of the crucial developments in Crime and Punishment depend on sheer coincidences that seem highly unlikely to the modern reader. However, coincidence was an accepted literary convention of the period. Dostoyevsky does not attempt to explain away these coincidences, but on the contrary he simply states them as matters of fact.

He uses this technique as a short cut to bring together certain characters and set up dramatic situations.

While he is walking down the street, Raskolnikov comes upon the scene of an accident. The accident victim turns out to be Marmeladov, a drunken civil servant whom he had met earlier in the novel. Marmeladov has been run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Raskolnikov takes charge of the situation and has Marmeladov carried home, where the injured man dies. This coincidence leads to Raskolnikov’s first meeting with Marmeladov’s daughter Sonya, who has turned to prostitution to support the poverty-stricken family. Drawn to Sonya by her meek nature and pure heart, Raskolnikov will later confess to her. In another coincidence, Sonya turns out to have been a friend of Lizaveta.

This disclosure serves to increase Raskolnikov’s sense of guilt and further points up Sonya’s selflessness.

It is also purely coincidental that the scheming Luzhin happens to be living temporarily in the same building as Katerina Ivanovna. This makes plausible his appearance at Katerina’s funeral party and his attempt to frame Sonya for robbery. Later, Svidrigailov just happens by coincidence to be renting the flat next door to Sonya’s flat. Thus, he is able to overhear Raskolnikov’s murder confession. Svidrigailov’s awareness of Raskolnikov’s guilty secret helps set into motion another chain of events. There are many more such coincidences in the course of the story. That such coincidences involving a relatively small number of characters would occur in a large city like St Petersburg is highly unlikely.

However, Dostoyevsky’s narrative has such dramatic force that the implausibility of these coincidences is quickly forgotten by the reader.

e. Allegory and Imagery

As already discussed, Dostoyevsky’s literary technique mixes narrative realism, dramatic scenes, and psychological analysis.

He also uses symbolism and imagery, not so much for aesthetic effect as to emphasize certain points about his characters’ psychology. One of his main symbolic devices is the pairing of certain characters. Early in his writing career, Dostoyevsky formulated the idea of the “double”. That is, the belief that there may be two sides to a human personality.

In giving a character like Raskolnikov several “doubles”, Dostoyevsky emphasizes certain aspects of Raskolnikov’s personality by contrasting him with these “doubles”.

Among Raskolnikov’s symbolic “doubles” are Marmeladov, Razumikhin, Dunya, Sonya, and Svidrigailov. Where Raskolnikov is obsessed with a theory, Marmeladov lives entirely by impulse. Where Raskolnikov is extreme, Razumikhin is reasonable. (The Russian word razum means “reason”.) Raskolnikov cuts himself off from his family, while his sister Dunya is completely dedicated to the family. Sonya too sacrifices herself for her family; furthermore, her meekness and faith contrast with Raskolnikov’s pride and his rejection of God.

Raskolnikov is literally sickened by his crime and does not give any indication that he will commit more murders, whereas Svidrigailov takes pleasure in his criminal lust and persists in it.

Appropriately enough, blood and blood imagery pervades the book. Before he commits the murder, Raskolnikov has a horrific nightmare in which a group of drunken men flog “a little grey mare” to death. The notion of “shedding blood” becomes quite literal. Raskolnikov’s murder of the pawnbroker and her sister with an axe is naturally a bloody act.

As he attempts to escape notice, Raskolnikov becomes obsessed with the idea that he is covered in blood and that this will give him away. Towards the end of the novel, his sister Dunya tells him that “you have blood on your hands”; Raskolnikov defiantly replies that the world is covered in blood.

It can be noted, as well, that the novel’s blood imagery is paralleled by frequent references to tears.

Dostoyevsky uses dreams to give insight into his characters’ psychology, as well as for symbolic purposes. Critics have debated the meaning of Raskolnikov’s nightmare about the horse, mentioned above. As well as indicating his tormented state of mind, this nightmare may also symbolize the brutality of murder and the helplessness of the innocent. In the book’s epilogue, in Siberia, Raskolnikov dreams that the world is swept by a terrible plague that turns people mad. This dream is generally believed to symbolize what would happen if everyone rejected traditional morality and acted out Raskolnikov’s “superman” theory.

Svidrigailov, too, has terrible dreams and claims that he has seen the ghosts of his deceased wife and of a servant. The night before he kills himself, he dreams about a little girl whom he has victimized. In this dream, he sees the moral consequences of his crimes.

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

Dostoyevsky’s Russia: Social and Political Background

Sir Winston Churchill’s comment in 1939 that Russia “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” applies equally to the Russia of the 1860s when Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment.

In the most simple terms, much of Russia’s historical difference from the West has to do with the fact that for centuries it was cut off from Western Europe. The Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment that helped transform the countries of Western Europe from feudalism to modern nations with well-educated citizens and important cultural institutions barely touched Russia.

Moreover, large-scale foreign invasions (from the Mongols in the 13th and 14th centuries to the Nazi armies in the early 1940s) periodically devastated the country. As a result, Russia has historically been suspicious of other nations. Also, early in its national history, Russia developed a tradition of government that centralized immense power in the hands of an emperor—the tsar—and a handful of his advisers. (The Russian title “tsar” derives from the Latin word “Caesar”.)

In the mid-1500s, Tsar Ivan IV (known as Ivan the Terrible) established what for more than the next 400 years became the model for Russian government, short-lived periods of ineffectual reform alternated with periods of severe repression.

Relatively “liberal” rulers such as Tsar Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1725) and Tsarina Catherine the Great (who was actually German; reigned 1762-1796) pursued a policy of “Westernization”. They attempted to import modern technology and manners from Western Europe.

At the same time, however, they held tightly onto absolute power and ruthlessly suppressed any challenge to the established political order.

During the period when Dostoyevsky was receiving his education and then establishing his literary career—the 1830s to the 1860s—Russia was stirred by intense intellectual debate. The small class of educated people recognized that major changes were needed if the huge but backward country was to address its social problems and prosper.

One general approach to change was proposed by certain intellectuals collectively known as Westernizers. The Westernizers were influenced by German philosophy and by social ideas that developed in Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution. They were also influenced by contemporary European revolutionary movements. The Westernizers were not united in their goals or methods. There were various factions. Some favoured gradual democratic reforms, while others called for revolution to replace the tsarist government with a socialist regime.

Among the leading Westernizers was Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848), the most famous Russian literary critic of his day. Belinsky praised Dostoyevsky’s first book, Poor Folk (1846), and declared that Dostoyevsky was the literary successor of Gogol.

Another group of thinkers, known as the Slavophiles, proposed an entirely different approach to Russia’s problems. Broadly speaking, the Slavophiles felt that Western ideals of rationalism and modernization were dangerous and alien to Russia. Rather than relying on a programme of legislation and material improvement, the Slavophiles argued that Russia could only fulfil its destiny when Russians returned to their native spiritual values.

Although they disagreed with the Westernizers, the Slavophiles were also opposed to the existing Russian government. By Western standards, the Slavophiles could be considered romantic and reactionary, but they made an important contribution to the debate over the future of Russia.

As a young man, Dostoyevsky was influenced by the Westernizers.

In the mid-1840s he joined the so-called Petrashevsky Circle, a small group that met weekly to discuss socialist ideas. The group demanded political reforms and generally opposed the government of Tsar Nicholas I. In the spring of 1849 the members were arrested; 21 of them, including Dostoyevsky, were sentenced to death but were pardoned at the last minute.

During his subsequent imprisonment in Siberia, Dostoyevsky underwent a profound spiritual and political change. He renounced political radicalism and came to believe that Russia’s hope lay in Slavic idealism. His travels in Western Europe in the 1860s and 1870s reinforced his distaste for modern industrial society.

In the great novels of his mature period, including Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky expresses his sympathy with the Slavophiles and attacks the Westernizers and radicals. Raskolnikov reflects the viewpoint of the radical Nihilists, who rejected the traditional conventions of society.

By the time when Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, Tsar Alexander II (reigned 1855-1881) was in the midst of a significant reform policy. In 1861 the Tsar signed a proclamation that freed millions of Russian serfs (peasants who lived and worked in conditions similar to slavery). This was followed by reforms of local government, the courts, and the army. (The police inspector Porfiry Petrovich refers to the reforms.) However, these reforms failed to resolve the major problems in Russia and helped to create new problems.

Again, the immense social problems facing Russia at the time—widespread poverty, ignorance, and social agitation—form the background to Crime and Punishment.

Crime and Punishment in a Literary Setting

In the words of the historian Nicholas Riasanovsky, “Literature constituted the chief glory of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century.”

Like most educated Russians of his time, Dostoyevsky knew and revered the work of the great Russian poets Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) and Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841).

In his verse novel Eugene Onegin (written 1823-1831), Pushkin cast a clear light on Russian society and its problems. Dostoyevsky was also familiar with the work of the novelist Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852), the most important Russian novelist before Dostoyevsky himself.

Gogol was a master both of realism and of the fantastic. In his masterpiece Dead Souls (1842), Gogol examined the state of Russia with deep psychological understanding. Significantly, certain elements in Crime and Punishment can also be traced to two non-Russian writers whose work Dostoyevsky knew and admired, the French novelist Victor Hugo (author of Les Misérables) and Charles Dickens (author of David Copperfield, which Dostoyevsky read while in prison). Indeed, Dostoyevsky frequently mentioned Dickens in his letters and notebooks.

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky shares Dickens’s concern with contemporary urban life, poverty, crime, and the sufferings of children and the innocent.

Among Dostoyevsky’s Russian contemporaries, two other major novelists stand out. Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) sided with the Westernizers and lived in Western Europe for much of his life; however, his subjects are thoroughly Russian. In his best known novel, Fathers and Sons (1862), he examines the relations between the older Russian democratic reformers and the younger, more radical generation; he also coined the term nihilist. Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is often placed as Dostoyevsky’s equal, although he was very different. His epic novel, War and Peace (1865-1869) began to appear in instalments around the same time as Crime and Punishment.

In his later years, Tolstoy developed a unique philosophy of nonviolence that has been compared to the philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi.

Interestingly, both Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy knew and respected Turgenev although both disagreed with him, but Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy never met.

Read more: Why Don Quixote is Considered the Greatest Work of Western Literature

Conclusion

In conclusion, Crime and Punishment serves as a profound philosophical treatise, intricately weaving Dostoyevsky’s exploration of morality, free will, and the nature of evil into the fabric of its narrative.

Through the character of Raskolnikov, Dostoyevsky challenges the reader to confront the complexities of ethical reasoning and the consequences of one’s actions. The novel’s deep psychological insight and existential themes continue to resonate, highlighting the enduring relevance of Dostoyevsky’s philosophical inquiries.

By examining the tumultuous journey of guilt, punishment, and potential redemption, “Crime and Punishment” compels readers to reflect on the universal truths about human nature and the moral imperatives that govern our lives.