A Nihilistic Analysis of Crime and Punishment
This paper provides an exhaustive analysis, from a Nihilistic perspective, of the novel, Crime and Punishment. The paper is divided into many sections, each with a self-explanatory title in capital letters, such as the section that immediately follows this sentence.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARMELADOV'S RECOLLECTION SCENE
Katerina Ivanovna must deal with a man who drinks his life away while his family starves. Marmeladov recounts their suffering by first describing his loss of a job. He claims that, ". . .through no fault of mine but through changes in the office [I lost my place], and then I did touch it [alcohol]!" He attempted to educate his daughter, but what little knowledge she has amounts to nothing when she cannot even collect money from Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock, a man she sewed six shirts for. Katerina, fed up with her entire situation, screams at Marmeladov and eventually is driven to introduce her daughter to prostitution. Through the prodding of Darya Frantsovna, Sonia enters her first night of prostitution only to come home and collapse on her bed. Marmeladov recounts his drunken state as he watched Katerina kneel at her daughters bed and kiss her feet. Not only does Sonia's activity force her to sacrifice her own morals, but she also forced out of her family's apartment by Mr. Lebeziatnikov. Sonia must then continue her life of prostitution while living at the apartment of the Kapernaumovs'. The Kapernaumovs' are described as "very poor people, all with cleft palates." Marmeladov continually dwells on the fact that they all have cleft palates as he describes his daughters. This motif is used by Dostoevsky in order to bring out the theme of Sonia's own defamatio...
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...murders? Raskolnikov denies these accusations because confessing to them would be a show of submission to Porfiry. Dostoevsky wants Raskolnikov to be viewed as a respectable man who must decide his own path, to be led to confession through his own suffering.
Raskolnikov approaches his confession alone. Upon Reaching the crossroads, "He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed a second time." (Page 453, paragraph 2, line 1). Raskolnikov upon bowing and kissing the dirt feels a wild influx of pleasure, symbolic of religious retribution.
Works Cited
Dostoevsky, Feodor. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Jessie Coulson. Ed. George Gibian. New York: Norton, 1989.
Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Svidrigailov is one of the most unfathomable characters in Crime and Punishment. As the novel goes on, Svidrigailov’s pursuit of Dunya progresses into sheer harassment. After eavesdropping on Raskolnikov’s confession to Sonya, he uses his newly acquired information to lure Dunya into his room. Svidrigailov proceeds to promise help to Raskolnikov if she will give him her hand in marriage. He then threatens to rape her when she tries to run away. Right when Svidrigailov appears to be purely evil, he surprises us all when his rational side kicks in and allows Dunya to leave. Although he may seem to be the cold-hearted villain of the book, his good deeds cannot go unnoticed. It cannot be forgotten that he is willing to give Dunya the three thousand rubbles in his wife’s will and offers ten thousand rubbles to help Dunya because he thinks her marriage will be a disadvantage to her in the end. Once Katerina Ivanonva dies, Svidrigailov also promises to pay for the funeral arrangements and to provide for the children, who will be sent to an orphanage. Although...
Calling troops to act would be his last call, as he believed violence was unnecessary. As well as with the Korean War, he didn’t send in the troops to attack and recapture North Korea. He ordered them to Pusan because he wanted to secure South Korea and avoid a massive killing and imprisonment of half of Korea. But his main fear was the expansion of communism therefore that was his main aim, was not to anger the Chinese. Once MacArthur reached the coast line of Pusan he wanted to fight until the end and leave South Korea as a proud leader that accomplished and perhaps avoided the biggest turn there could be in history: the communist takeover. However he wouldn’t be given a chance, the President couldn’t to risk going further to North Korea as it could be suicide for USA, President Truman believed so as crossing the 38th parallel was known as “the point of no return”.
Raskolnikov is obsessed with his “superman theory”. He is constantly trying to prove that he is part of the 10% of extraordinary people in the world. He wants to become an eminent figure such as Napoleon. At first he believed that the murders he committed would make him part of this elite class. Once he realized that he had made mistakes during the crime he began to question his theory. After much frustration he decided to go to the scene of the crime. This gave him a rush that made him feel invincible. He believed that this would prove if, or if not he was “super”. Once he realized that he wasn’t part of this class, he suffered a mental breakdown. This pushed him to confess his crime to Sonya. She helped him rationalize his crime and admit his guilt. The outcome of this conversation was that it helped him admit his fate.
Dostoevsky does not like all of Raskolnokv though. He hates his aloofness. Dostoevsky cannot stand anti-socialism and believes that people should be together and not dislike “meeting at any time'; with anyone. Constantly Raskolnokov alienates himself from all his friends and family to go alone about his way, which ends up getting him into trouble because of his radical thinking, like his theory that some people can transcend the law because of some extraordinary powers. The trouble that Raskolnokov gets into is Fyodor’s way of showing that continually parting yourself from society is unhealthy for a person and that they need other human contact to be complete.
Children that live an unhealthy lifestyle are more prone to becoming obese later in life. Furthermore, the cause of children becoming more obese includes; children that do not participate in physical activity, children that eat lots of snacks, play video games or watch TV, and that do not eat a healthy balanced meal. In addition, the parent or guardian of the child also plays a role in whether the child becomes obese or not by “What” they offer the child to eat, and the type of environment the food is served in such as “When” and “Where” food is offered. Moreover, as a child grows there are different food exposures that create a preference for food intake, these exposures include sweet & salty foods, familiar foods, consumption of foods high
Global warming is a scientific, political, and controversial topic. Some believe it is catastrophic, a slow moving killer hiding in the shadows. Others do not even think twice about it as they race by in a Hummer. Global warming is the gradual increase of temperature throughout different climates. It is caused by the greenhouse gas effect in which greenhouse gases, like methane and carbon dioxide, reflect sunlight back and forth. This reflected ultraviolet light bounces between the earth and the ozone layer and becomes trapped, resulting in a gradual rise of temperature. Over time, the slow rise of temperature causes new climates throughout the globe. The article “What Megablazes Tell Us About the Fiery Future of Climate Change” by Tim Dickinson
During the mid- to late- 1800s in Russia, a radical phenomenon swept the nation. The idea that life was meaningless and that there was no "mind" or "soul" outside the physical world infected the minds of Russia's elite and Russia's poverty-stricken. This became known as Nihilism. According to Whitney Eggers on "Philosophies in Crime and Punishment," "Nihilists argued that there was a distinction between the weak and the strong, and that in fact the strong had a right to trample over the weak" (Eggers). Nihilism is commonly linked to utilitarianism, or the idea that moral decisions should be based on the rule of the greatest happiness for the largest number of people. Raskolnikov, the protagonist in Crime and Punishment, is a Nihilist, which is his main reason for committing the murders. As a Nihilist, Raskolnikov is a man who "approaches everything from a critical point of view...who does not bow down before any authorities, who does not accept a single principle on faith, no matter how much respect might surround that principle" (Cassedy, 1639).
Dostoevsky's 1865 novel Crime and Punishment is the story of an expelled university student's murder of an old pawnbroker and her sister. The idealistic ex-student, Raskolnikov, is ultimately unable to live up to his own nihilistic theory of what makes a "Great Man" and, overcome by fits of morality, betrays himself to the police. Exiled to Siberia, suffering redeems the unfortunate young dreamer. Crime and Punishment is similar in many ways to Balzac's Pere Goriot, especially in respect to questions of morality. In Balzac, the master-criminal Vautrin lives by an amoral code similar to Raskolnikov's theory of Great Men--unrestrained by conscience, Vautrin holds that laws are for the weak, and those clever enough to realize this may overstep any boundaries they wish and dominate the rest of mankind. But where Balzac's characters act on this idea without repercussion, Raskolnikov makes a transgression and then begins immediately to question it. The result is a psychological inner battle between rationality and sentimental moralism which is as much a contest between Empiricism and Romanticism as it is a contest between good and evil, or God and the Devil.
One of the most profound and obvious changes in Raskolnikov’s character can be seen in the newfound appreciation for other people and human relationships he discovers at the end of the novel. When the reader is first introduced to Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky quickly makes it apparent that he has little to no regard for others, writing on the very first page that Raskolnikov was “so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all” (1). Indeed, in Raskolnikov’s mind, “to be forced to listen to [the landlady’s] trivial, irrelevant gossip […] and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie” is the most loathsome thing imaginable (1). His disdain toward other people is so great that the mere thought of interacting with anyone for any length of time repulses him. On some occasions...
Within the tortured mind of a young Russian university student, an epic battle rages between two opposite ideologies - the conservative Christianity characteristic of the time, and a new modernist humanism gaining prevalence in academia. Fyodor Dostoevsky in the novel Crime and Punishment uses this conflict to illustrate why the coldly rational thought that is the ideal of humanism represses our essential emotions and robs us of all that is human. He uses the changes in Raskolnikov's mental state to provide a human example of modernism's effect on man, placing emphasis upon the student's quest for forgiveness and the effect of repressed emotion.
Instead of the results being close such as the last trait I am much more intuitive. The definition of intuition is someone who can acquire knowledge and think without reasoning. They are generally creative people. Sensing is someone who is more practical and think things through. They are less imaginative. I agree with this result since I do find myself being more intuitive because I am interested in doing things that are new and different. For example, when doing something boring I try to make it more fun. Also, I do not necessarily use my senses to think things through. My parents disagree with this result. An intuitive person is someone who is future focused, my parents believe I am the opposite of that and only look at the present. After analyzing this trait I find the test to be
An egocentric attitude can be seen in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Dostoyevsky's young Raskolnikov is staggeringly arrogant. Raskolnikov commits a murder and a failed robbery in the story. His journey in overcoming his ego can be seen through his initial crime, denial of failure, and acceptance of mistakes.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Jessie Senior Coulson, and Richard Arthur. Peace. Crime and Punishment. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
Other factors in homelessness are addiction and mental disabilities, specifically PTSD in war veterans. Many homeless persons have problems with alcoholism, drug abuse, and possibly gambling. Addiction ruins people’s lives, and many don’t realize it until it is too late. Eventually, an addiction can cause someone to steal from their own family, which then burns a bridge that could’ve helped them out of their situation. In particular cases, certain people with mental issues cannot or will not willingly be institutionalized, and since they have difficulty getting jobs, they live on the streets, panhandling and collection recyclable materials to make money. These are the main causes of homelessness and only scratch the surface of why homelessness exists and who it happens too.
This is not, in fact, what happens though. Rather, Raskolnikov is forced to confess by several factors including the very fear of being discovered. This fear is emphasized to illustrate his displacement from the “extraordinary” man; an “extraordinary” man would not have possessed such fears since he would know that he had a right to execute such actions .