Reflective Statement
During the discussion several ideas were brought up surrounding key ideas in Crime and Punishment, mainly focusing on the concepts of dreams and setting. Before the discussion I believed that Raskolnikov differed from society somehow, and often was portrayed as crazy within his dreams/hallucinations. I also thought that St. Petersburg was a dirty and disgraceful town located somewhere within Russia. Afterwards I learned that really, Dostoevsky was using dreams to show Raskolnikov’s differing perspective of the world, and that St. Petersburg is really a beautiful city (where the wealthy live) located in the west of Russia.
Raskolnikov committed murder because he thought that the money he could gain through it would allow him to redirect the wealth to several other poverty stricken people, which is an allusion to socialism. However, his dreams show that he really committed the murder because he had a differing sense of reality, and believed himself to be extraordinary. Dostoevsky uses this to show that people who differ from social norms are often punished, and characterized as being inhumane. He tries to show this in Raskolnikov’s dreams by showing how Raskolnikov views the world. He is characterized as disobeying law and resisting social norms, and instead he becomes characterized as a more progressive figure because he cares about the well-being of women, whereas the common society does not.
Ideas brought up concerning setting also helped me understand some of the author’s craft within the novel. The fact that St. Petersburg is a western city that is trying to mimic parts of Europe (particularly France) shows how it is cut off from the rest of Russia, and filled with the wealthy. This made the book make mo...
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...s a whole they help Dostoevsky point out problems within societal norms (such as the treatment of women) and allow him to further develop the characterization of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov. The technique implemented within the dreams even enable Dostoevsky to show how differing realities collide because each individual character has a different interpretation of what is right and wrong within the society. Ultimately he proves that the characters’ individualistic principles collide with that of societies and as a result the characters are punished for differing. This final idea gives the reader the reader the impression that alternative characterizations and realities must be crushed and eliminated so the system does not become corrupted.
Work Cited
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. 1866. Trans. Constance Garmett. New York: Bantam- Random, 2003. Print.
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.
Dostoyevsky's writing in this book is such that the characters and setting around the main subject, Raskolnikov, are used with powerful consequences. The setting is both symbolic and has a power that affects all whom reside there, most notably Raskolnikov. An effective Structure is also used to show changes to the plot's direction and Raskolnikov's character. To add to this, the author's word choice and imagery are often extremely descriptive, and enhance the impact at every stage of Raskolnikov's changing fortunes and character. All of these features aid in the portrayal of Raskolnikov's downfall and subsequent rise.
In Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov's dream about the mare can be used as a vehicle to probe deeply into his mentality to discover how he really feels inside. The dream suggests that Raskolnikov is a "split" man; after all, his name in Russian means "split". His personality has a cruel and thoughtless side as well as a caring, compassionate side. Through the dream and the symbols therein, a reader can cast Raskolnikov, as well as other characters from Crime And Punishment, into any of the various parts in the dream. Each part that a character plays leads to a different conclusion about that character. Raskolnikov himself "fits" into the positions of Mikolka, the child, and the mare.
Often in works of fiction there exists a clear distinction between characters who are meant to be seen as good and those as evil. The hero saves the day by way of thwarting the villain's evil plan. However, in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment we are introduced to the characters of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov who display acts of moral ambiguity and are neither fully hero nor villain. These character’s acts are not black and white, but fall in a gray area of uncertainty. They each show signs of villainy and heroism and their stories can be parallelled. In the final chapter of part five, the reader is given a summary of the overarching storyline via Katerina Ivanovna’s actions leading up to her death. This scene contributes to the argument of morality because it reiterates the uncertainty of the distinction between right and wrong of Raskolnikov's crime which run through the pages of this novel by showing a condensed recount of how the combination of the desire to help others and the inability to do so because of poverty have tainted both character’s moral actions.
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.
Raskolnikov, the main character of the novel Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoevsky, actually possesses two completely contradicting personalities. One part of him is intellectual: cold, unfeeling, inhumane, and exhibiting tremendous self-will. It is this side of him that enables him to commit the most terrible crime imaginable - taking another human life. The other part of his personality is warm and compassionate. This side of him does charitable acts and fights against the evil in his society.
Dostoevsky's three great novels, Crime and Punishment, the Possessed, and the Brothers Karamazov, represent a continuum. That is, in those works, Dostoevsky traces the degenerative effects on the Russian psyche of the doctrines of radical and Nihilistic idealogues by beginning with a psychoanalytic study of one solitary man and then chronicles the movement of that crisis from the intelligentsia outward to the masses.
In Crime and Punishment, we see Raskolnikov caught between reason and will, the human needs for personal freedom and the need to submit to authority. He spends most of the first two parts stuck between wanting to act and wanting to observe. After he acts and murders the old woman, he spends much time contemplating confession. Raskolnikov seems trapped in his world although there is really nothing holding him back; he chooses not to flee and not to confess, but still acts as though he's suffocation (perhaps guilt?)In both novels defeat seems inevitable. Both characters believe that normal man is stupid, unsatisfied and confused. Perhaps they are right, but both characters fail to see the positive aspects of humans; the closest was the scene between the narrator of Notes from the Underground and Liza. In this scene he almost lets the human side show, rather than the insecure, closed off person he normally is.
... end of the novel confesses to the crime. Dostoevsky purposefully chooses to have him confess in the end to demonstrate a lesson in humanity: that we are all human, have a conscious and are most often inexplicably driven by emotions. Dostoevsky shows through the development of Raskolnikov’s internal conflicts that it is human nature, to feel and be driven by certain ethical principles. Although these principles might differ from culture to culture and place to place, humanity is universal and carries a conduct of being that we all have. As ethics drive our conscious, individuals often forget basic principles of human nature that differentiate us from other species and make us individual in our complexity. Raskolnikov comes to this realization after a punishment that he would not have had, if he were not human.
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...
Raskolinov’s dreams are continual conflicts between his dark and hateful mind and his conscience. His mind drives him to murder and inflates his ego to make him feel as an “extraordinary man.” On the other hand, his conscience struggles to hinder these violent motives. Raskolinov’s mind is at battle with itself in a conflict of morals and corruption that is manifested into the dream of the mare. Dostoevsky uses the dream as evidence of Raskolinov’s psychic illness. Raskolinov can be identified as all of the characters in his dream: Mikolka, the jeering crowd, the beaten horse, and the innocent child. Raskolinov’s confusion and obvio...
Readers are given full access into his psychological state and we are able to to see his personal thoughts and dreams throughout the murder case. Although at the end of the chapter Raskolnikov becomes at peace with what he does and the paranoia and guilt go away, he is still rationalizes his crime, as though he had valid reasons to commit the murder. As readers, we can see Raskolnikov's crime as an act of evil because we know it is detrimental to society to have people that come up with their own rationale to justify murder, but Raskolnikov saw it as a way to confirm to himself his power in society, to better society, and that he was just disposing of a bad person. Raskolnikov's actions left him in jail, however it is here where Raskolnikov finally realizes and comes to peace with what he
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis once wrote, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (Freud 1). This remark appears in Freud’s work named, “The Interpretation of Dreams”. Freud’s comment demonstrates that because dreams are such an unconscious activity, they give a direct intuition into the workings of the senseless mind, meaning that a dream shows a person’s unrestrained feeling that an individual cannot show to others easily. The idea that dreams can give a direct insight into a person’s mind is seen clearly throughout Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky uses dreams as a symbol to portray the internal conflicts of Raskolnikov through his four dreams.
It is important to understand Raskolnikov’s character before the crime takes place. Although the reader might be tempted to give importance to the aftermath of the crime and observe the effects committing the crime had on Raskolnikov’s physic and psyche, it is necessary to know what kind of person Raskolnikov was and what circumstances led to his being that way before he decided to commit the crime. What preceded the crime is more crucial to unraveling and comprehending Raskolnikov’s motivations. Just as we do not learn Raskolnikov’s name until another character utters it in dialogue to him, likewise the reader comes to build a character profile of Raskolnikov through the observations others offer regarding Raskolnikov. His friend Razumikhin.provides a candid description s...
... What Crime?” “I killed a vile, pernicious louse, a little old-money lending crone who was of no use to anyone, to kill whom is worth forty sins forgiven, who sucked the life-sap from the poor – is that a crime?” (Dostoevsky, pp. 518) Raskolnikov is freely talking about the murder he committed and he does not see it a crime and sees it as doing society a favor by taking life away from the old lady.