Q.1 Raskolnikov’s confession in ‘Crime and Punishment’.

What light does it throw on the

reasons for the murder? Discuss.

Ans.  Feodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a murder mystery unlike most murder
mysteries. In this novel the reader knows "who done it"; the mystery lies in why the murder is
committed.  Raskolnikov gives a number of different reasons for murdering Alyona, many of
which involve pride. The clearest, most powerful reason seems to be a desire to prove his
superiority to the rest of humanity. But he also claims, at times, that he committed the crime
for utilitarian reasons—that the death of such a despicable “louse” would increase society’s
overall happiness—or that he did it solely out of a need for money. The narrator suggests in
Part I that Raskolnikov’s physical hunger, the squalid environment in which he lives, and his
poor health may be responsible for weakening any impulses that might have prevented him
from committing the murder. Raskolnikov said he wants to be a Napoleon. He also said that he
wanted to kill himself. He said that the devil tempted him. His theory that
 "one bad deed can be justified if the bad deed is used for many goods". His theory that
some extraordinary people (Napoleon) can break the law. Personally I think that his
depression and mislead rational lead him to committing a crime. His pride also kept him from
admitting his mistake. 

Raskolnikov had this idea, that we can Raskolnikov’s confession in ‘Crime and Punishment’.
What light does it throw on the reasons for the murder? Discuss.separate people in to two
groups: the ordinary men and the extraordinary men. Ordinary people have followed the
great leaders, they have done everything the way other people have done, the way they had to.
The exraordinary people had some kind of a goal and for that goal they would do everything,
even if they had to kill someone for that. Raskolnikov wanted to see, if he belongs in the
extraordinary group, if he is able to commit a murder. When he was thinking about his idea,
he got a letter of his mother, which said that his sister Dunya is getting married. He knew, that
the wedding will not be out of love, but because of a sacrifice for Dunya’s family. Luzhin, her
future husband, was rich, but Raskolnikov and his family were living poor life. The news about
Dunya’s wedding hurt Raskolnikov a lot, because he was the one, who was keeping and
protecting his family after his father’s death. This - helping his family - was one of the reasons
he killed an old lady. The money he would steal from the lady could finance his college, he
could help his family, but he didn’t even touch it.

Raskolnikov was always overthinking and lost in his thoughts, for every action he had to have
multiple explanations and even though Dostoyevsky takes us deep into Raskolnikov’s thoughts,
it is very hard to understand him. When he kiled this old lady, Alyona Ivanovna, he was ready,
he knew that he was just testing his idea. But when Alyona’s sister came, he wasn’t prepared.
He had to kill her, otherwise she could have told someone. In his eyes she was an orinary
person too, but he didn’t kill her for that, she was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
This action, these two murders chased Raskolnikov, but one more than the other. He forgot
about Lizaveta’s murder, he blamed himself just for killing Alyona.

At the beginning I didn’t understand the murder at all, I thought Raskolnikov wanted to help
himself and his family. His thinking is revealed later in the book, when he presents one of his
essays, in which he is describing his idea about ordinary and extraordinary people, to an
attorney, Porfiry Petrovich.
Raskolnikov did not realise his idea, he thought about the murders too much. He belived he
could escape the legal punishment, that he could make it, that the hardest part was murder,
which would be the succesful end of his idea. He really did killed the lady, maybe not as he
planned, but he still didn’t leave any evidence behind. Raskolnikov got a punishment. When he
killed Alyona and Lizaveta he got really sick, he had weird dreams, he walked around the city,
he became really depressed. All of his thinking, his guilt and his bad conscience unabled him
to escape the punisment, he had to end his suffering with admitting everything. Because of all
of these feelings he didn’t succed in his idea. He proved, that even if he has a purpose, it
doesn’t mean that he is able to walk over bodies.

Raskolnikov, having dropped out of college, was confronting feelings of shame. He was
supposed to be the ‘man’ of the family, so to speak, since his mother was a widow. His mother
and sister had been sending him money to help pay for his housing and tuition fees. He had
been going on a few months not telling them out of shame, yet still receiving the money and
using it to pay his rent and, as we can assume from his actions in the story, giving it to those
less fortunate than himself.

Raskolnikov craves the morality that was stripped from him in college. His embrace of nihilism
caused him to lose focus on his purpose for attending - to help his family. His drive to help his
mother and sister continues after his embrace of nihilism, but his dropout occurs as a result of
his loss of faith in himself. He no longer trusts the morality that gave him purpose in life. If
there is no morality, then why should he believe in it? If he can't believe in his own morality,
then why should he help his family by graduating? He never loses his innate compassion
entirely, but the logical tangles of nihilism cause him to lose his footing.

In his confused, quasi-nihilistic state, the plot to carry out the murder begins to take hold as a
means of justifying his belief in nothing. He justifies the murder by seeing it as a proof of his
belief in nihilism and with unseen irony as a means of acquiring the money his mother and
sister need to survive. The letter he receives detailing the marriage of his sister to the wealthy
lawyer makes him all the more shameful, yet he becomes more fervent in his desire to acquire
money to protect his sister from a life of abuse. The letter is the real tipping point where his
compassion seemed to line up with his logic in finally having a purpose to murder. The
murder, in his logic, is a means of proving the irrelevance of morality. The irony is that he has
to justify the ‘irrelevance of morality’ by deciding to take Anna Ivanovna’s stash of pawned
items, planning to later sell them for the benefit of his family, itself a moral action.

Conclusion:-
He justifies the murder logically with the idea that Anna Ivanovna is a burden to society, but
emotionally he justifies the murder as a means of repaying the compassion of his family.
Raskolnikov would never have robbed Ivanovna if he didn't plan to pay his mother back and
save his sister. Even when he believed he had lost faith in all of his morals and purpose for
living, he still unconsciously loved his family and had compassion for them. To sum it up, he
carries out the murder because he thinks and feels it is a win-win situation - it seems justified
in his mind logically and emotionally. Inevitably it crushes him because, although he believed
he was a nihilist, he never let go of the compassion that bound him to morality.