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Crime and punishment character analysis essay
Crime and punishment character analysis essay
Crime and punishment character analysis essay
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The sacrificial role of women is a prevalent theme throughout the novel Crime and Punishment, and the play A Streetcar Named Desire. These pieces of literature displayed women as characters who embodied the traits of self-sacrifice and suffering. However, their sacrificial deeds were performed for significantly different reasons, either for their family or for their own sake. In Crime and Punishment, women play the sacrificial role by denying their lives out of love to rescue others from turmoil. The most prominent woman who expresses this role is Sonia. Sonia lived a depraved life with an alcoholic father, a consumptive mother, and three younger siblings. At the age of eighteen, she was forced to surrender to a life of prostitution in order to support her family. Sonia’s stepmother describes her as a girl who “…would strip off her last garment, and sell it, and go barefoot, and give you everything, if you were in need” (Dostoevsky 335). During the death of her father, Sonia meets a man named Raskolnikov, who is obsessed with the idea of murder. Raskolnikov’s obsessive-compulsive demeanor consumes his daily lifestyle to the point that it causes physical and mental illness. However, Raskolnikov’s behavior changes when Sonia reassures him that they will “suffer together” and “bear the cross together” (Dostoevsky 356). Sonia’s act of self-abnegation leads Raskolnikov back to humanity and convinces him to confess his sins. Sonia believes that one must “accept suffering and achieve atonement” (Dostoevsky 355) to claim the road of redemption. This devotion towards others allows her to embody a Christ figure and people “relied on Sonya” (Dostoevsky 455). For example, Sonia helps carry the burdens for her family and Raskolnikov like Chr... ... middle of paper ... ...right choice by sacrificing her aristocratic lifestyle, he says “You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns. I pulled you down off them and how you loved it, having them coloured lights going. And wasn’t we happy together, wasn’t it all okay till she showed here?” (Williams 112). Belle Reve represented purity and Stella sacrificed that to move to Stanley’s world of “color”, excitement, and poker nights. Like Stella, once Blanche lost Belle Reve she also lost her innocence and cleanliness. In conclusion, the theme of sacrifice played a different role in each piece of literature. The characters in Crime and Punishment sacrificed their life and happiness for the benefit of family, while in A Streetcar Named Desire, characters would sacrifice the truth for their own happiness and survival. However, they did not only sacrifice their life but their purity.
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment incorporates the significance of murder into the novel through a multitude of levels. The act of killing is not only used to further the plot point of the novel, but also offers insight to the reader of Raskolnikov’s ideology and psyche. This is portrayed through both his initial logic and reasoning behind the plotting of the crime, as well as through his immediate and long term reactions after killing Alyona Ivanovna. The emotional and physical responses instilled in Raskolnikov after killing Alyona Ivanovna as well as his justification for doing so helps illustrate his utilitarianism by offering accurate insight into the character’s moral values. These reactions also serve to show the instability of Raskolnikov’s character due to his changing emotions from being completely justified as the ubermensch to showing a sense of great regret. By including the act of killing, Dostoevsky further develops Raskolnikov’s character, and provides another level of detail to readers concerning his ideology and beliefs prior to his actions.
In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky gives the reader an inside look to the value system that he holds for himself, as well as the type of characteristics that he abhors in people as well as the characteristics that he admires in people. He uses characters in the novel to express his beliefs of what a person should be like in life to be a “good'; person. Specifically he uses Raskolnokv to show both good and bad characteristics that he likes in people. Also he uses Svidriglaiov and Luzin to demonstrate the characteristics that people should shun and his personal dislikes in people.
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment explores the themes of guilt and the consequences of committing immoral actions. Of all the deep, thought-provoking concepts put forth in Crime and punishment, the idea that guilt can be an adequate punishment more valid than any punishment executed by society as a whole is the most far reaching and supported by the novel. Crime and Punishment follows Rodian Raskolnikov’s life from just a few days before he commits two brutal murders to when he confesses his crimes and is convicted and sentenced to several years in prison. Initially, Rodian had successfully gotten away with the murder of two people. Raskolnikov’s guilt-driven madness has given him an immunity and even investigators he confesses to think he couldn’t be guilty. As a result, his guilt continues to feed on his conscience to the point where he is constantly miserable. Raskolnikov’s true punishment is the futility of his attempt to escape the guilt of his actions without confessing and feeling adequately punished.
Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it. She was passionately in love with Alan; but after discovering that he was gay, she could not stomach the news. When she revealed how disgusted she was, it prompted Alan to commit suicide. She could never quite overcome the guilt and put it behind her. Blanche often encountered flashbacks about him. She could hear the gun shot and polka music in her head. After Alan’s death, she was plagued by the deaths of her relatives. Stella moved away and did not have to deal with the agony Blanche faced each day. Blanche was the one who stuck it out with her family at Belle Reve where she had to watch as each of her remaining family members passed away. “I took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, Mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths—not always” (Scene 1, page 1546). Blanche lost Belle Reve because of all the funeral expenses. Belle Reve had been in her family for generations, and it slipped through her fingers while she watched helplessly. Blanche’s anguish caused her loneliness. The loneliness fueled her abundance of sexual encounters. Her rendezvous just added to her problems and dirtied her rep...
This gradual fall and loss of her sense of reality is truly tragic. Blanche is a person largely driven by the part of her that wants to be liked and be accepted. She cares greatly about how she is viewed and how she looks which is seen throughout the play. Even at the end when she’s living almost completely in the imaginations of her mind she asks Stella and Eunice how she looks before being taken away to an insane asylum. Tennessee Williams, the author of the play, uses all the conflict between Blanche and others, specifically Stanley, to show that fantasy is unable to overcome reality. Stanley and Blanche are both the epitomes of fantasy and reality. Stanley is a man focused on sexual drive, work, and fighting. He is exhibited as animalistic and strongly driven by his desires which is shown when he says, “Be comfortable. That's my motto up where I come from.” Stanley loves and searches after reality which is why he is so set on breaking down the facade he sees in Blanche. Blanche on the other hand is running from her reality and her past. Her fantasy of being high class and chaste is the exact opposite of her reality which is why she wants a life like that so badly. She wants marriage and stability, two things she was jealous of Stella having after arriving in New Orleans. Her fantasy she was building in her new life is shattered when Stanley is able to learn of her past and bring reality crashing down on her. Williams
During scene one, the audience is introduced to Blanche as Stella's sister, who is going to stay with her for a while. Blanch tries her best to act normal and hide her emotion from her sister, but breaks down at the end of scene one explaining to Stella how their old home, the Belle Reve, was "lost." It is inferred that the home had to be sold to cover the massive funeral expenses due to the many deaths of members of the Dubois family. As Blanche whines to her sister, "All of those deaths! The parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way!" (21). The audience sees this poor aging woman, who has lost so many close to her, and now her home where she grew up. How could anyone look at her, and not feel the pain and suffering that she has to deal with by herself? Williams wants the audience to see what this woman has been through and why she is acting the way she is. Blanche's first love was also taken from her. It seems that everyone she loves is dead except for her sister. Death plays a crucial role in Blanche's depression and other mental irregularities. While these circumstances are probably enough for the audience to feel sympathy for Blanche, Williams takes it a step further when we see Blanche's...
...oevsky’s character Raskolnikov in the novel Crime and Punishment. He has to go through the devil’s temptation, his opportunities to commit the sin, and the guilt the devil puts on him. Raskolnikov goes through metaphorical hell because of his guilt and is on the road to literal hell because he has no way out. Fortunately God does not let you suffer in your sin and sends a way to get you to confess. For Raskolnikov the way God sends him forgiveness is through Sonia the prostitute. Sonia provides Raskolnikov a way to r receive forgiveness for his crime. Although at first Raskolnikov is hesitant of Sonia and her attempts to get him to ask God for forgiveness, but in the end Raskolnikov accepts Christ and gets the forgiveness and peace of mind he desired and needed. Once again God shows that the devils power is no match to his own, and God will be victorious in the end.
Blanche who had been caring for a generation of dying relatives at Belle Reve has been forced to sell the family plantation. Blanche is a great deal less realistic than Stanley and lives in illusions which bring upon her downfall.
A Streetcar Named Desire is an intricate web of complex themes and conflicted characters. Set in the pivotal years immediately following World War II, Tennessee Williams infuses Blanche and Stanley with the symbols of opposing class and differing attitudes towards sex and love, then steps back as the power struggle between them ensues. Yet there are no clear cut lines of good vs. evil, no character is neither completely good nor bad, because the main characters, (especially Blanche), are so torn by conflicting and contradictory desires and needs. As such, the play has no clear victor, everyone loses something, and this fact is what gives the play its tragic cast. In a larger sense, Blanche and Stanley, individual characters as well as symbols for opposing classes, historical periods, and ways of life, struggle and find a new balance of power, not because of ideological rights and wrongs, but as a matter of historical inevitability. Interestingly, Williams finalizes the resolution of this struggle on the most base level possible. In Scene Ten, Stanley subdues Blanche, and all that she stands for, in the same way men have been subduing women for centuries. Yet, though shocking, this is not out of keeping with the themes of the play for, in all matters of power, force is its ultimate manifestation. And Blanche is not completely unwilling, she has her own desires that draw her to Stanley, like a moth to the light, a light she avoids, even hates, yet yearns for.
As Stanley continues torturing Blanche and draws Stella and Mitch away from her, Blanche’s sanity slowly dwindles. Even though she lied throughout the play, her dishonesty becomes more noticeable and irrational due to Stanley's torment about her horrible past. After dealing with the deaths of her whole family, she loses Belle Reve, the estate on which her and her sister grew up. This is too much for Blanche to handle causing her moral vision to be blurred by “her desperate need to be with someone, with ancestors for models who indulged in “epic fornications” with impunity, [Blanche] moves through the world filling the void in her life with lust” (Kataria 2). She also loses a young husband who killed himself after she found out he was gay when she caught him with another man. After that traumatic experience she needed “a cosy nook to squirm herself into because ...
Firstly, she sees herself as a means to and end. She became a prostitute to help her family and supports them on her small income. Sonia also proves her devotion to Raskolnikov by following him to Siberia. After the jury convicts him, they sentence Raskolnikov to serve 8 years in a Siberian work camp. In that time, Sonia moves to Siberia as well and starts her life over with him. Sonia doesn't promote dishonesty in the novel. She frequently tells Raskolnikov to confess his crime after he tells her. Sonia is also quite serious for her age. She isn't shown to smile or laugh much, nor does she seek personal pleasure anytime in the novel. Lastly, she is very Catholic. She keeps a bible in her bedroom and reads it for Raskolnikov when he ask. She believes Raskolnikov should confess solely to save his immortal soul. Her religion is the cornerstone of her choices. It guides her through her development. The combination of these characteristics makes her into a type of Mother Mary. She does everything for the good of others and her only goal in life is to see others prosper. Marie Cardona on the other hand is more of the young disposable
Stanley’s treatment of Blanche leaves her alone once again, with what little dreams of returning to her previous status destroyed like the paper lampshade that once gave her the shield from the real her she desperately craved. Stella, the one person Blanche believed she could rely on, sides against her husband after Blanche’s ordeal, leading Blanche to be taken away, relying on the “kindness of strangers”. This final image that Williams leaves us with fully demonstrates that Blanche has been cruelly and finally forced away from her “chosen image of what and who” she is, leaving an empty woman, once full of hope for her future.
In the opening scene Blanche puts some of the blame on Stella for the loss of Belle Reve using a mixture of simple declaratives and interrogative sentences saying 'I let the place go? Where were you. In bed with your - Polack! '. This is similar to Brabantio 's views on Desdemona 's marriage - Blanche expects Stella to put her perceived obligations to her family over her own personal marital
Throughout the book, “Crime and Punishment,” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, we see key words that play major roles in the plot and development of the story. Five words, in particular, act as front-runners in symbolic themes; they are crime, punishment, poverty, suffering, and child. There is no doubt that these words play a major factor in the novel because not only do we see these words often, but also we experience the words as they are lived through by many of the major characters. What some readers might not realize is that Dostoevsky does not let only one of the words dominate a scene in the book; they are intermingled concepts. Where there is one of the five major words of the novel, Dostoevsky usually accompanies it with another. All five of the words are dependent of each other and without one of them, the novel would not demonstrate the story and powerful themes that Dostoevsky was looking to present.
Belle Reve means "beautiful dream" is where Blanche, grew up. "Beautiful dream suggests that something beautiful, which has once existed, faded away. Therefore, the name’s symbolic meaning became true. Blanche loses the plantation that means it existed, but she yearns for it, because she has lost it. Therefore, the aim of Belle Reve, is to provide the perspective of once what was. Dreams are typically illusions, however, Belle Reve, their "heritage," is very much real. In the play, Blanche cries out, "But you are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!". Belle Reve was Blanche's childhood home, and because she lost it, she can only dream about it; the plantation becomes an illusion