PWANI UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

MASTERS OF ARTS (LITERATURE)

NAME: KENGA K. GEORGE

REG. NO. AG25/PU/36140/18

COURSE CODE: ALL G809

COURSE TITLE: EUROPEAN LITERATURE

LECTURER: DR. BUSOLO

TASK: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY:

AN
EXAMINATION OF HOW THE NOVEL BRINGS OUT THE THEMES OF CRIME
AND PUNISHMENT.
1. INTRODUCTION: DOSTOEVSKY’S EARLY AND LITERARY LIFE.

To understand how Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment rolls out its key themes, it is
undoubtedly important to consider the writer’s literary life first. This can be justified by author’s
work which attracted the proponent of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. In deed most of his works
have contributed heavily to psychoanalytic studies in literature.(Kohlberg, 2019) In fact,
Dostoevsky is reckoned as the psychopathological genius who inspired a case study approach in
psychoanalytic studies. It is therefore crucial to understand his life that influenced how he crafted
a style that efficiently communicated his ideas in the text under study.

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, Russia, on November 11, 1821, the son of a doctor.
His family was very religious, and Dostoevsky was deeply religious all his life. He began
reading widely when he was a youth. He was first educated by his mother, father, and tutors, but
at thirteen years old he was sent to a private school. Two years later his mother died. His father, a
cruel man, was murdered in 1839, when Dostoevsky was eighteen and attending school in St.
Petersburg, Russia. Dostoevsky was trained to be a military engineer, but he disliked school and
loved literature. When he finished school, he turned from the career he was trained for and
devoted himself to writing. His earliest letters show him to be a young man of passion and
energy, as well as somewhat mentally unstable.

Dostoevsky began his career writing fiction about poor people in harsh situations. In 1843 he
finished his first novel, Poor Folk, a social tale about a down-and-out government worker. The
novel was praised by critics. Dostoevsky's second novel, The Double (1846), was received less
warmly. The lack of success of The Double troubled Dostoevsky. From 1846 to 1849 his life and
work were characterized by aimlessness and confusion. He experimented on short stories and
novels during this period on different subject matters. It was at novels that he succeeded the
most. Fyodor Dostoevsky was well known in his country during his life and has since been
praised around the world as a writer. He is best known for writing novels that had a great
understanding of psychology, especially the psychology of people who, losing their reason,
would become insane or commit murder.
Dostoevsky once joined an anti-government group called Petrashesky Circle in 1847 on an
ideological basis. He was arrested and subjected to a mock death sentence with others but then
taken in to Siberia. In many of his novels the life in Siberia forms part of his intriguing
narrations. The experience of anticipating death made Dostoevsky epileptic with clinical
evidence showing that his neurotic condition resulted from too much anguish rather than normal
causative agents of traditional neurosis. He abandoned this ideological thinking that
characterized the times with sublime attacks of the ideologies in his texts. Other great novels by
him are The Idiot 1867-1869, The Possessed (The Devils in other translations) 1870 and The
Brothers Karamazov 1879-1880. (Ranked by Freud as one of the greatest artistic achievement of
all time.) He died in January 28, 1881in St. Petersburg, Russia.

2. BRIEF ON CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly
installments during 1866.[1] It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of
Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from five years of exile in Siberia. Crime
and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing.

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion
Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who formulates a plan to kill an
unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the
money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds. However, once
it is done he finds himself racked with confusion, paranoia, and disgust for what he has done. His
moral justifications disintegrate completely as he struggles with guilt and horror and confronts
the real-world consequences of his deed.

The text describes a young intellectual, Raskolnikov, willing to gamble on ideas. He decides to
solve all his problems at a stroke by murdering an old pawnbroker woman. Contradictory
motives and theories all draw him to the crime. Utilitarian morality suggests that killing her is a
positive good because her money could be used to help many others. On the other hand,
Raskolnikov reasons that belief in good and evil is itself sheer prejudice, a mere relic of religion,
and that, morally speaking, there is no such thing as crime. Nevertheless, Raskolnikov, despite
his denial of morality, sympathizes with the unfortunate and so wants to kill the pawnbroker just
because she is an oppressor of the weak. His most famous theory justifying murder divides the
world into extraordinary people, such as Solon, Caesar, and Napoleon, and ordinary people, who
simply serve to propagate the species. Extraordinary people, he theorizes, must have “the right to
transgress,” or progress would be impossible. Nothing could be further from Dostoyevsky’s own
morality, based on the infinite worth of each human soul, than this Napoleonic theory, which
Dostoyevsky viewed as the real content of the intelligentsia’s belief in its superior wisdom.

After committing the crime, Raskolnikov unaccountably finds himself gripped by “mystic terror”
and a horrible sense of isolation. The detective Porfiry Petrovich, who guesses Raskolnikov’s
guilt but cannot prove it, plays psychological games with him until the murderer at last
confesses. Meanwhile, Raskolnikov tries to discover the real motive for his crime but never
arrives at a single answer. Crime and Punishment also offers remarkable psychological portraits
of a drunkard, Marmeladov, and of a vicious amoralist haunted by hallucinations, Svidrigailov.
Raskolnikov’s friend Razumikhin voices the author’s distaste for an ideological approach to life;
Razumikhin’s own life exemplifies how one can solve problems neither by grand ideas nor by
dramatic gambles but by slow, steady, hard work.

Quite deliberately, Dostoyevsky made the heroine of the story, Sonia Marmeladova, an
unrealistic symbol of pure Christian goodness. Having become a prostitute to support her family,
she later persuades Raskolnikov to confess and then follows him to Siberia. In the novel’s
epilogue, the prisoner Raskolnikov, who has confessed not out of remorse but out of emotional
stress, at first continues to maintain his amoral theories but at last is brought to true repentance
by a revelatory dream and by Sonya’s goodness. Critical opinion is divided over whether the
epilogue is artistically successful.
3. STYLE IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

The text belongs to the 19th century tradition of realism which was an age of adornment of prose
by the attention of everyday life. Dostoevsky rationalized reality across the foreseeable and
spiritual world in narrating the world of facts and ideas as it is.(Author & Jackson, 2013) His
style is descriptive (thereby primarily using description) of the then life in St. Petersburg.
(Dostoevsky, 1866) is descriptive of Raskolinkov’s crime as a representation of the 1860’s
students’ moral, psychological and ideological sense of being. It reveals a deep set of imbalances
within the Russian society which existed in all levels including the spiritual order. The text
captured the tension between realism and philosophical idealism by describing the life of the
students’ in poor neighborhoods vis-à-vis the rich and government officials. Porfiry Petrovitch
for example states that his government quarters are being refurbished knowing very well
Raskolinkov’s disposition against those who have such privileges.

Psychoanalytically, the text also makes use “doubles” in its presentation of characters as well as
ideas. This is attributed to the authours description in biographical pieces as one who was an
epileptic, a schizophrenic, and paranoid person whose hysterical disposition paid emphasis on his
“unconscious conflicts” in his novels.(Kohlberg, 2019) Use of doubles allows the writer to
present with the economy of words a character in dual nature. Raskolinkov for instance shifts
from doing good to bad. One time he gives money to an officer to help a drunken and apparently
abused girl, but soon regrets the act. He constantly checks in on the Marmelodav family, but
reality checks in on him too for his regretful murder of the pawnbroker and her sister. This split
personality is both psychologically and philosophically availing a shift between good and evil.

One of the ways in which Dostoevsky unifies his novel is through this technique of "doubles."
The dual nature of his heroes is, of course, a commonplace of criticism. Because his protagonists
are usually split personalities, the psychological and philosophical drama in a Dostoevsky novel
is expressed in terms of a conflict between opposite poles of sensibility and intelligence, spirit
and mind, passiveness and aggressiveness, self-sacrifice and self-assertion, God-man and Man-
god, or, sometimes, "good" and "bad." To dramatize this conflict, Dostoevsky often gives his
characters several alter egos or doubles, each projecting one of the extremes of the split
personality. (Beebe, 2019)
Following the dual representation, Svidrigailov then becomes a bad double who disguises as
good but has other motives. He tricks Sonia to appear a thief in an ffort to get even with
Raskolinkov. Whereas “doubling up” a character is proof of Dostoevsky’s mental state, its
artistic use in the text is overwhelmingly good on both scores of psychology and philosophy.

The use of paradox is eminent in the text. Dostoevsky has profound attraction towards paradox.
In the text, Crime and Punishment for example he presents, “chaste prostitute” in Sonia.(Morson,
2019) Sonia is arguably pure because she is forced by poverty, into fending for her family, she
reads the gospel and literally is selfless including giving up her money for her father
Marmeladov to go drinking. The crime of murder is also presented in a paradox. Raskolinkov is
described to have only thought about it and uncontrollably being at the scene to commit the act.
Represented as an unconscious intention which he later mutters as to never forgive the person he
has just killed, Dostoevsky provokes the redaers minds into questioning how some of the
gruesome murders occur, suggesting that the one Raskolinkov conceives happens at the spur of
the moment.

The use of dreams is yet another important style in the text. Dreams offer a symbolic meaning to
the action prior to the murder by Raskolinkov. The mental anguish is presented in his
“rehearsal.” He talks a walk and sees a drunken girl, not well dressed and soon later falls into a
dream when he was young witnessing a horse being beaten to pull a carriage.(Beebe, 2019)
observes that the girl is depicted as the horse. Upon killing it, Raskolinkov rises to pick an axe by
which he kills one of the “wretches” and wakes up, wondering and asking whether he has done,
or he could do it. Definitely, there is no stopping him from there on. He seems not himself
anymore; His mental state from the dream is set to accomplish his most dreaded thought.

The epilogue is another important style in the text. Whereas it has been labeled as
redundant(Greene, 2019) has written in defense of the epilogue. Reiterating Raskolinkov’s
duality of character, the epilogue is not a premature end or forced addendum but a regeneration
of the character to redemption. The same force that uncontrollably led him to commit murder is
the same that pulls him towards Sonia, to finally making a confession.
4. THEMATIC EXPOSITION IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

The most outstanding theme is that which the text is titled; Crime and Punishment. There have
been speculations as to whether that was the original title of the text or not. But since the hero of
the text is Rodion Romanovitch Raskolinkov; the main concern is around what does and
consequences thereby. Raskolinkov commits a crime by killing an old woman who is a
pawnbroker. He kills her sister too called Lizaveta after coming to the scene. (Beebe, 2019)
observes that Raskolinkov is driven by three motives to killing the old pawnbroker. He first had
the wish to rob and kill her so as to finance his education or do good with the pawnbroker’s ill-
gotten money by distributing it to the poor. Second, is the egoistical pride to ideological play
God’s role and exercise control over common people. This urge of feeling “extraordinary” lead
to the justification of the crime. Lastly, Raskolinkov’s aggressive lust. He wanted to get thrilled
and fascinated by the whole idea that he had brooded for some time. However, his punishment
comes in the form of mental anguish, breakdown, nervousness, falling into delirium, lying, lack
of piece and a lost trust to the people around him. Porfiry Petrivitch the detective suspects him,
but does not have concrete evidence to implicate him. Raskolinkov’s nervous state seems to give
way but Porfiry bides his time. The suffering through mental anguish acts as an antidote to his
headedness for slowly he seeks Sonia’s help to hear the story of Lazarus. He later confesses, but
he has suffered and caused suffering to his mother ,sister Dounia and his only close friend
Razumikhin.

Suffering is another profound theme which features prominently alongside social class relations.
Suffering has been classified into four. According to(Simons, 2019) there is redemptive
suffering, doubly suffering, Christ-like suffering and willful suffering. Drawing the redemptive
suffering around the hero Raskolinkov, Dostoevsky explores the mental anguish to full
confession of the murder. Marmeladov has been branded masochist for drenching himself in
alcohol. He drinks to “doubly” suffer and even drains Sonia’s earning in the process. Through
Marmeladov, Dostoevsky captured the state of drunkenness around Petersburg during the time.
Nikolay who gives himself up to Porfiry despite not committing the murder is rooted to religious
suffering in the form of Christ-like. Nikolay confesses to get punishment at a time Raskolinkov
wants to invent an escape route. Psychologically, Raskolinkov is moved by someone else’s
confession to take up his place.Sonia, Dounia(Raskolinkov’s sister) and Pulcheria(Raskolinkov’s
mother) have willing gave themselves to suffer for others. Sonia suffers so as to save her family
of father, step mother and her siblings. Dounia and Pulcheria have found it worthy to deal with
Svidrigailov who is wealthy to help Raskolinkov’s education. Once he notices that, he tells them
to stop because of Svidrigailov’s mannerisms. Suffering is projected to be ideologically
worthwhile. Sonia for instance is both savior and sinner, by her compromise to suffer sins of
others like a druken father, and the transgressions of prostitution so as to provide for them.
However, there is a suffering out of poverty as explained under poverty.

Poverty is prevalent in the text. Coupled with the poor class relations between the poor and the
rich, poverty has pushed some of the characters to extreme means of living. Sonia hs to go into
prostitution. Dounia and her mother have to arrange a marriage for the sake of Raskolinkov’s
education. However, it is Katerina Ivanovna’s state that is extreme. She becomes sickly too and
is almost mad. The description of the children (four) the poor lighting in the house, the constant
moving from one house to another, all point to extreme poverty in the text.

5. CONCLUSION

Crime and Punishment has, “Theme and technique overlap.”(Beebe, 2019) The text has woven
even the epilogue with the rest of the novel. The text captured the realist ideology alongside
profound philosophy of existence. Its depiction of Raskolinkov, Marmeladov and Sonia brings
out the ambivalence of any human being. The novel’s value not only is on the material but also
its presentation. Dostoevsky’s manner of presentation is uniquely from a psychological point of
view.

Due to its versatile approach in “matter and manner,” the text has found a niche in psychology,
philosophy, crime and detective studies as well as traditionally being a literary text. It can be
read as a detective story, an ideological text in philosophy or as a psychologist text. Its matter is
deep structured, and its manner profound.
6. BIBILIOGRAPHY

Author, B., & Jackson, L. (2013). Book Subtitle : Essays on Russian Literature. Academic
Studies Press. (2013), 24.

Beebe, M. (2019). The Three Motives of Raskolnikov : A Reinterpretation of Crime and

Punishment. 17(3), 151–158.

Dostoevsky, F. (1866). CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY 1.

Greene, D. M. on L. (2019). IN DEFENSE OF THE EPILOGUE OF " CRIME AND

PUNISHMENT " Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article : IN DEFENSE
OF THE EPILOGUE OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. John Hopkins University Press,
24(1), 26–34.

Kohlberg, L. (2019). Psychological Analysis and Literary Form : A Study of the Doubles in
Dostoevsky Author ( s ): Lawrence Kohlberg Source : Daedalus , Vol . 92 , No . 2 ,
Perspectives on the Novel ( Spring , 1963 ), pp . 345-362 Published by : The MIT Press on
behalf of Ame. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 92(2), 345–362.

Morson, G. S. (2019). American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European

Languages Paradoxical Dostoevsky Author ( s ): Gary Saul Morson Source : The Slavic and
East European Journal , Vol . 43 , No . 3 ( Autumn , 1999 ), pp . 471-494 Published by :
American Associat. Languages, East European, 43(3), 471–494.

Simons, J. D. (2019). The Nature of Suffering In Schiller and Dostoevsky. Comparative

Literature, 19(2), 160–173.