All dreams have a meaning. Some dreams are used to help foreshadow what is to come in the future. Other dreams act as a person's conscience trying to communicate to them. In the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the main character, Raskolnikov, experiences four dreams. His first dream foreshadows an event that will occur in the future. While the third dream he has shows that his conscience in trying to get him to feel guilty. Both of these dreams help the reader understand Raskolnikov and his mental process. Raskolnikov's first dream starts off when he is a young child with his father as they’re walking down the street. They see drunk men loading up a carriage with one horse that won’t be able to carry the load. Mikolka, the owner of the horse, begins to beat the mare after it’s unable to …show more content…
When he gets to the apartment he notices a coat that wasn’t there previous to the murder. He goes over and moves the coat to find Alyona in a chair. He then pulls out the axe and hits her on the head multiple times. She begins to fall down in the corner, but then “the old hag was sitting there and laughing” (Dostoyevsky 267). After she laughed people began to crowd outside the opened bedroom door. Raskolnikov continued to beat Alyona, but the laughing just got louder. He realized he couldn’t run because the hallway was blocked, lucky for him he woke up. This dream shows the guilt that Raskolnikov is dealing with. Alyona represents Raskolnikov’s conscience and how he regrets what he did and knows it was the wrong thing to do. All of the people that crowd outside the room represent Raskolnikov’s hope for being caught for the crime. The laughter that is exhibited by everyone shows that Raskolnikov will always feel guilty until he is punished for the murder. Raskolnikov’s dream helps understand the guilt that he is faced with and how he feels about committing the
Dostoyevsky further develops Rodia’s split personality through the use of symbolism of the mare dream. Through the use of the third person omniscient point of view, the author reveals his thoughts on dreams and how they “often have a singular actuality, vividness and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpected, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer… could never have invented them in the waking state” (44). Dreams are not merely dreamt for entertainment; they all contain a symbolic meaning that represent a truth of the dreamer. In Rodia’s nightmare, his conflicting and chaotic state of mind is disclosed
However, it soon emerges that he, despite the physical nature of his situation, has a very active mind. To reveal whether he is of a special "breed" of humans, he finds it necessary to kill, and the unfortunate subjects of his experiment are an old pawnbroker and her sister. After the murders, Raskolnikov is subject to a series of mental and emotional changes, eventually leading to his confession and, later, his arrest, trial and eight-year prison sentence.
The main character in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, has nihilistic ideas, which ultimately lead to his own suffering. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student, conceives of himself as being an extraordinary man who has the right to commit any crime. He believes that as an extraordinary man that he is beyond good and evil. Since he does not believe in God, he cannot accept any moral laws. To prove his theory, he murders an old pawnbroker and her step sister. Besides, he rationalizes that he has done society a favor by getting rid of the evil pawnbroker who would cheat people. Immediately after the murders, he begins to suffer emotionally. Raskolnikiv “[feels] a terrible disorder within himself. He [is] afraid of losing his control…” (Dostoevsky 95). He becomes ill and lies in his room in a semi-conscious state. As soon as he is well and can walk again, he goes out and reads about the crime in all the newspapers of the last few days. The sheer mention of the murder...
Although the novel begins by focusing on the crime itself, the majority of the book discusses Raskolnikov's struggle through denial and redemption after the murder has been committed. His own "greatness" leads to his denial of God, and his attempt to suppress his conscience causes insanity and sickness. However these negative consequences force him to acknowledge his rectitude and realize his need for confession.
In Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Raskalnikov undergoes a period of extreme psychological upheaval. By comparing this death and rebirth of Raskalnikov's psyche to the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, Dostoevsky emphasizes not only the gravity of his crimes, but also the importance of acceptance of guilt.
The character’s suffering is thrown in the readers face right from the beginning. Raskolnikov’s suffering has two apparent layers, “he was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him” (1). It seems that the suffering caused from his current state of mind is so great that he does not even feel the suffering caused by his poverty. Throughout Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov’s main point of suffering is caused by his inability to let others know of the crime he has committed and as a result he alienates himself from those who show him compassion (156). As the novel progresses he decides to tell Sonia because expressing his crimes would alleviate some of the suffering, however, her morals encompass the idea that it is inconceivable to “go on living” without suffering and “expiation” (416). At this confession, the reader is presented with a righteous character (probably the most) that does not judge Raskolnikov for what he has done but instead sympathizes and tells him that turning himself in and bearing the consequences will relieve him of the suffering caused mentally.
In his dream about the gray nag, Raskolnikov as an unshaped child is innately compassionate; he weeps for horses being cruelly beaten, but already society, in the form of his parents, begins to shape him, to train him, to numb his compassionate feelings for those in pain. His mother draws him away from the window when he sees such a horse pass and his father tells him when the men kill the nag "They're drunk, they're playing pranks, it's none of our business, come along" (59). Already Raskolnikov is being taught to rationalize murder, for all those people who watched and did not interfere are partly to blame as they rationalize that "it's none of our business."
One of the aspects of Crime and Punishment that stands out is that it is much more than a simple crime story. It is in fact a great study of the mind of a murder. Raskolnikov is a terrifying but sympathetic main character precisely because he is just twisted enough, just ill enough, for the reader to believe anyone is capable of such atrocities. The jumping off point for Raskolnikov is his idea of extraordinary and ordinary people. Looking at his theory and applying it as a tool for analysis of Raskolnikov himself leads not only to a deeper understanding of this idea but also of Raskolnikov. It also explains to some degree how seemingly benign ideas can lead a believer to do unspeakable things.
Raskolnikov, in Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, is a complex character difficult to understand. He believes himself superior to the rest of humanity, and therefore he believes he has the right to commit murder. After he kills Alena Ivanovna, an old pawnbroker, Raskolnikov discovers his supposed superiority has cut him off from other people. He exists in a self-created alienation from the world around him. Raskolnikov mearly drifts through life, unable to participate in it anymore. It is only through Sonya that Raskolnikov is able to gradually regain his connection to humanity; she helps him to understand that, although he cannot be superior to others, she loves him regardless. Although he finds it difficult to reject his theory that certain individuals may commit acts not permitted ordinary people, Raskolnikov does accept that he is not such an individual, that he is ordinary. Through this realization and Sonya's love for him he finds the strength to confess to his crime and accept responsibility for it; this allows him to slowly began to rejoin the world around him.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's remarkable insight into the psychology of man is seen here in the development of Raskolnikov's dream on the beating of a horse by drunken peasants. The dream is significant on several planes, most notably in the parallel of events in the dream with Raskolnikov's plan to murder the old pawnbroker. It also serves as perhaps the most direct example of the inseparable tie between events of the author's life with the psychological evolution of his protagonists, as well as lesser characters, through the criminal minds of Raskolnikov, Rogozhin, Stavrogin, and Smerdyakov, and into the familial relationships of The Brother's Karamazov.2
After the botched crime Raskolnikov is plagued his failures. "He was conscious at the time that he had forgotten something that he ought not forget, and he tortured himself." (107) After he carelessly kills both women, and allows for the evidence to be found, Raskolnikov realizes he did not commit the perfect crime. This devastates his ego, so he tries to cling to his previous self perception. He is also plagued with feelings of guilt. His guilt, combined with the mistakes he made during the crime, shatter his self perception of perfection.
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...
...nfess his crimes in front of everyone. By admitting to his crimes, God would forgive his sins. Sonya is an important individual in Raskolinkov’s life because she gives him strength to confess and redeem himself.. As they both found in love at the ending, Raskolinkov starts following the theory of the ordinary men. He has a relationship with another ordinary person who helps him understand morals.
Dostoevsky felt the same guilt and anxiety that his character Raskolnikov did for committing his crime. Dostoevsky’s portrayal of Raskolnikov’s
Dreams and Criminal Psychology Henry David Thoreau said, “Dreams are the touchstones of our character.” Dreams have the power to show someone a side of their self which has never been seen before, or a desire that they never knew they harbored within them.¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ There are several dream sequences throughout Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment which help readers to better understand the characters and their behavior by delving into a hidden part of their psyche. The word dream has a figurative interpretation in the novel as well, which is evident in Raskolnikov’s “dream” that he is extraordinary. Dreams are important to psychology in general and to the story because they reveal hidden aspects of the psyche and manifest latent feelings of guilt and other emotional conflicts.