Rodia's Split Personality

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Dostoyevsky further develops Rodia’s split personality through the use of symbolism of the mare dream. Through the use of the third person omniscient point of view, the author reveals his thoughts on dreams and how they “often have a singular actuality, vividness and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpected, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer… could never have invented them in the waking state” (44). Dreams are not merely dreamt for entertainment; they all contain a symbolic meaning that represent a truth of the dreamer. In Rodia’s nightmare, his conflicting and chaotic state of mind is disclosed …show more content…

The justification that Mikolka gives for killing the horse is that she is unable to fulfill her role to contribute to society. He describes her uselessness by saying, “This brute, mates, is just breaking my heart, I feel as if I could kill her. She’s just eating her head off” (46). Mikolka feels apathetic towards the life of the horse. It represents Rodia’s belief that killing the pawnbroker is not a crime but merely an act that is justified and shows his loss of value for human life. In contrast, the little boy represents his affectionate side. The boy shows immediate emotion to the violent beating. His compassionate heart does not understand why the blameless soul is being killed. Through his perspective, the mare’s life still has significance and he views Mikolka as a murderer. Both sides do represent Rodia’s thoughts, however as he awoke by “gasping for breath [and] his hair soaked with perspiration” reveals that Rodia himself is terrified by Mikolka’s actions and subconsciously rejects that aspect. Thus, Rodia naturally embraces more of the good natured thoughts in his …show more content…

Similar to Rodia’s dual personality, there are many contradictions against the theory. Rodia claims that the extraordinary human commits crimes that are beneficial to society and thus, surpass moral laws. They have “a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and the law is not for them” (205). These men have a right to help society because they are different from ordinary men; at the same time, the extraordinary men are above the ordinary and can overlook all of the moral laws because their crimes are justified for their good purpose. At the time of his murder, Rodia’s theory is underdeveloped and his crime was more of an experiment. When he confesses to Sonia, Rodia says, “I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn’t want to lie about it even to myself” (329). In truth, Rodia wanted to test out his theory, despite his earlier justifications, and find out if he was an extraordinary human or not. He desperately wanted to believe that he did have the right to kill, but his subconscious knew that he was not. His constant guilt, uneasiness, and instability confirmed that he is not an extraordinary man but he had a hard time accepting the fact. Ultimately, Rodia tunrs himself in in the end to free himself from the guilt he was chained up to. Rodia had no revolutionary cause to kill the

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