Comparing Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment

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The systematic failure of the law in the specific case
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a 19th century novel that chronicles the story and adventures of a poor former student, Raskolnikov, who kills an old pawn-broker, Alyona Ivanovna, and her sister, Lizaveta, who happened to be on the crime scene. After the crime, Raskolnikov loses his cold blood and starts leaving trails after him that would be fatal for him afterwards. In the novel there are also a lot of psychological theories that somehow preceds Edgumund Freud's SUCH AS... The psychological part in the novel is most evident in the confrontation between the protagonist and the police detective, Porfyry Petrovich. Even though these two characters seem to be antithetic, they have more in common than it seems. Porfyry Petrovich takes a life …show more content…

It is evident from Razumikhin's analytical and rigorous reasoning that Mikolai cannot possibly be the murderer. In addition, he claims that half of the game is knowing how to handle the facts (Dostoevsky 135). But what is worse is that authorities seem to "lie and then worship their own lies" (Dostoevsky 135) as if they needed someone to blame to make an example out of them. Another fundamental detail is that Mikolai, the painter, did escape and tried to hang himself; this was one more evidence for the police to convict him. The painter justified himself saying that having the law on him, even though he was innocent, was scary enough in order to make him commit suicide, but the police did not believe him. However, what Mikolai says is very plausible, in fact, although in the 19th century Russia underwent several reforms that concerned politics, justice, and education, the way in which interrogations were carried were still somehow

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