Crime and Punishment

The novel crime and Punishment written by Fyodor Dostoevsky is setup in St. Petersburg, Russia
during the 1980’s. The novel explores the life of an ex- student Raskolnikov who is a socially
awkward person, who has a fantasy to kill someone but keeps it restricted it to a mere fantasy by
calling it a ‘plaything’ until he overhears someone saying that it would be easier for students had the
old pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna be dead which makes him kill her. Before committing the murder,
Raskolnikov alienates himself from the society due to his egoistic attitude. He views people as tools
to fulfil his personal goals. After committing the murder, he finds himself to be alienated by the
society where his guilt and shame overtakes his pride. He pushes away people who try to help him
and then suffers its consequence in the end. Raskolnikov thinks himself to be a kind of messiah who
is above the society. He deems himself to be on a higher moral pedestal than the others. After
committing the crime he realizes that he is nowhere close to his ideal version of himself and is
unable to control his feelings of guilt. The novel explores crime from a psychological aspect which is
portrayed through the behaviour of Raskolnikov. The exact time of the crime and the confession are
not the focus points of the novel but the events that take place between the commission of the
crime and punishment. Through the novel, Dostoevsky conveys that the punishment for a crime
given through imprisonment is far less than the anxieties, guilt and mental battles that the criminal
faces. The psychological torture faced by Raskolnikov is further aggravated by Porfiry Petrovich who
realizes that Raskolnikov is the criminal at a very early stage. He uses mind games to toy with
Raskolnikov by using subtle refences to indicate that he knows who the criminal is. Petrovich
believes that Raskolnikov will either confess to his crime or go mad sooner or later. The novel also
has instances of nihilism which plays an important role in the novel. Russia saw a rise in nihilism in
the 1980’s which is also the time period that the novel is set in. The idea of nihilism rejected societal
and emotional values and focused more on materialism. Utilitarianism is another concept used by
Raskolnikov to justify his murders claiming that he had a removed a louse from the society. He
disagrees with the social norms that run counter to his beliefs. This utilitarian mindset could be the
cause of him committing the crime where he saw himself to be different from the society which
made him deviate from the socially accepted way of conducting one’s life. Dostoevsky himself
deviated from the societal norms by propagating western ideologies in Russia which almost had him
executed before his sentence was mitigated. Crime and Punishment also showcases the role played
by love in shaping the behaviour and attitude of a person. Raskolnikov confesses to his crime only
when he realizes his love for Sonya which made him discover a new self which was contrary to the
previous version of himself and made him surrender the feeling of guilt that he carried with him for
a long time by confessing his crime thus breaking free from the shackles of mental isolation which he
had imposed on himself.

Crime and Punishment covers the themes of alienation from the society existing social structures, a
protagonist with a superiority complex, utilitarianism, which when combined together affects the
psychology of a criminal that leads him to deviate from the status quo. He uses the characters in his
novel to show that everyone deviates in their own capacity in an unequal society where Sonya
chooses to be a prostitute to feed her family or Alyona who is a pawnbroker who dictates the price
of goods according to her own calculations without a set trade mechanism. The novel provides
nuances into the psychology of a criminal which makes the reader understand how a person views
things before and after committing a crime which in turn leads them to sympathize with the criminal
on certain occasions and appreciate Dostoevsky’s writing who does not antagonize a criminal but
understands the mind of a criminal in relation to the society that he lives in.

Raghavendra K Nadgauda (SM0122049)