The Motif of Poverty Throughout Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

Poverty is an essential motif in Crime and Punishment that enables characters to expose their isolation from society. Raskolnikov demonstrates the true effect that poverty can have on an unemployed man in the 1860s. Razumikhin is seen as Raskolnikov’s foil character that reacts to his form of poverty in the opposite way of Raskolnikov towards society. The weight of being desperately pour effects Marmeledov to extensive lengths that ultimately ends in his death.

Crime and Punishment revolves around Raskolnikov and his amplifying guilt after he murders the pawnbroker, Alyona. From the beginning of the novel his poverty is displayed in his living condition, which is further described by the “yellowish dusty wall-paper peeling off the walls” (Part 1. 3) and the sofa that Raskolnikov designates as his bed is “taking up almost the whole of one wall and half the width of the room, and with a print cover now old and worn into holes” (Part 1.3). Raskolnikov is disgusted by the way he lives and even more appalled by the depressing city of St. Petersburg that is full of unemployed drunken men and molesters. The repugnance of the city is further explained to have an “insufferable stench from the pothouses, which are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men” (Part 1. 1). Raskolnikov’s opinion of the city is shown by having “an expression of the profoundest disgust” (Part 1. 1). The cities overall pessimistic charm sets a tone that Raskolnikov is greatly influenced by his low social class and will contain repercussions as the novel goes on. However, Raskolnikov has a pride that differentiates him from his surroundings and separates him from the society he lives in. His self-confidence gives him the illusio...

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...d acts as those he wishes to experience if he were to develop the same desperate and derelict being.

Throughout Crime and Punishment, poverty accentuates a growing alienation from society. In a town like St. Petersburg where money is never truly worked for by many of the characters and only taken, the desperate effects that debt has creates a never ending conflict throughout the novel. Poverty is a driving force for unfortunate circumstances. Raskolnikov’s poverty leaves him unmotivated and desperate, ultimately pushing him to the point where he sees killing a pawnbroker to potentially gain back all that he had lost. However, poverty is not a dead end road, which Razumikhin displays successfully. Poverty’s overall plight, if not embraced in a motivational manner, leads to a life of demise and desolation, which Marmeladov embraces as his only course to travel.