Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment

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1. As Rodya analyzes Luzhin’s character, he realizes that intellect unrestrained by moral purpose is dangerous due to the fact that many shrewd people can look right through that false façade. Luzhin’s false façade of intellect does not fool Rodya or Razumikhin, and although they try to convince Dunya into not marrying Luzhin, she does not listen. Rodya believes that Luzhin’s “moral purpose” is to “marry an honest girl…who has experienced hardship” (36). The only way he is able to get Dunya to agree to marry him, is by acting as if he is a very intellectual person, who is actually not as educated as he says he is. This illustrates the fact that Rodya knows that it is really dangerous because he knows that people can ruin their lives by acting to be someone they are not. Rodya also knows that people will isolate themselves from others just so that no one will find out their true personality. This is illustrated in through the fact that Luzhin tries to avoid Dunya and her mother as much as possible. The way he writes his letter, exemplifies his isolation, for Luzhin does not know how to interact with society. He has no idea how to write letters to his fiancée and his future mother in law. This reflects on Rodya’s second dream because he is unable to get Dunya married off to a nice person. He feels isolated from everyone else because his intellect caused him to sense that Luzhin is not telling the truth about his personality. However, it was due to his lack of moral purpose that Rodya berates his sister’s fiancé. He is unable to control himself, and due to his immoral act of getting drunk, Rodya loses all judgment and therefore goes and belittles Luzhin. Although Rodya’s intellectual mind had taken over and showed him that Luzhin wa...

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...to lose the will to live; hence Rodya was unable to take the sorrow anymore and murdered Alyona. After this interview, Rodya had his third dream where no matter what he did, he was not able to kill off Alyona, who was laughing hysterically at him. Through his inability to murder Alyona, he loses all of his intellect and becomes like a crazed beast in order to try and kill Alyona. It also symbolizes the fact that no matter what, Rodya can never get rid of the grief and torture that Alyona put Rodya through and with this, the idea of her will always be there with him. This exemplifies the reason why he cannot “kill” the “old witch” for he can never forget the sorrow she had her debtors go through. He cannot kill his witch and no matter what he does, no matter how much intellect he loses, he can never get rid of her, and she will always haunt his memories and dreams.

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