ABSTRACT: Crime and punishment is a novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky

.It focuses on mental anguish and mmoral dilemmas of Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-
student in saint petersburg who formulates a plan to kill unscrupulous pawnbroker for her
money . Before the killing , Raskolnikov believes that with ther 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 justifications
disintegrate completely as he struggles with guilt and horror and confronts the real-world
consequences of his deed. This paper aims at providing an insight about novel “crime and
punishment” .

KEY WORDS: Money , poverty, Intellectual

1. INTRODUCTION
Foydor mikhailovich dostoevsky was born in moscow in 1821, the second is family of seven
children. Dostoevsky’s first teacher was his mother. At a later stage two teachers- a priest and
a french undertook his teaching. Dostoevsky’s early education was in engineering school
where he was apparently bored with the regimented routine and the uncreative student life.
Therefore, he spent most of his time dabling in literary matters and in reading the latest
authors ; his penchant for literature was obessed . After spending two years in the army
Dotoevsky launched his epistolary novel named poor folk and the critical opinion was that
‘a new Gogol had appeared’.
Perhaps the most significant years of Dotoevsky’s melodramatic life occurred soon after the
publication of poor folk. These years included some of the active , changing phases in all of
Russian history,and dotoevsky’s had an unusually role in this era of change. Using influences
acquired with his literary achievements, he became involved in a politicsal intrigues of a
questionable nature. He deeply influenced and inspired by new radical ideas that became
famous in russia influenced from the west. Soon Dotoevsky became associated with those
who came forward to revolutionize russia with myriads of western reforms. During this time
he started publishing different articles that concerned various political questions even though
they were illegal along with printing that was controlled and censored by government.
Physically and psychologically Dotoevsky was never what one may call normal. He showed
symptoms of irregular pulse and nervous disorder and headaches. He was since his boyhood a
hypochondriac. A victim of frequent depression , he had hardly any playmates. Needless to
say, the year 1866 is a significant year in dotoevsky’s life.The novel was first published in
the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 18661 .
Crime and punishment is considered the first great novel of his “mature” period of
writing.2since its publication, it has been acclaimed as one of the supreme acievements in
world literature.He started writing crime and punishment, his magnum opus, and met his
future wife , Anna Grigorivenna sanitkina. He had creditors galore , and, therefore he fled
from petersburg.

1
University of Minnesota- study notes for crime and punishment
2
Frank (1955),p.96
Crime and punishment focuses on mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion
Raskolnikov , an impoverished ex-student in Saint petersburg who formulates a plan to kill
an unscruplous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing , the Raskolnikov 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 justifications disintegrate completely as he struggles with guilt and horror and
confronts the real world consequences of his deed.
3
At the time Dostoevsky owed large sums of money to creditors and was trying to help the
family of his brother Mikhail katkov.Dostoevsky offered his story or novella (at the time he
was not thinking of novel4)for publication in katkov’s monthly journal The Russian
Messenger.In a letter to katkov written in September 1865, Dostoevsky explained to him that
the work was to be about a young man who yields to “certain strange .5 He planned to explore
moral and psychological dangers of the ideology of “radicalism”. 6In the letters written in
November 1865 an important conceptual change occurred:the “story”has become a
“novel”.From then on , crime and punishment is reffered to as a novel
Dotoevsky’s last novel , The Brothers Karmazov , was his great masterwork and is today
considered a masterpiece of western literature.only a year after its publication, dotoevsky was
dead, but actually he was acknowledged to be one of Ruusia’s greatest writters .Crime and
punishment is the first of the five long novels of Dotoevsky’s maturity. In this novel he seeks
to prove that crime is always followed by Nemesis or punishment. 7The novel’s central theme
is based upon great psychological traumaand physical tension which was fuelled by
Dotoevsky’s si nister evocation of petersburg.

2. OVERVIEW OF NOVEL ‘CRIME AND PUNISHMENT’

The novel is about impoverished student named Rasikolnikov who believes that he is an
extraordinary man .He then formulates the theory where he suggests that the extraordinary
men of world must have a right to commit any crime.Rasikolnikov is the protagonist of the
book.He is a successful student studying at the faculty of law in St.Petersburg.Because he is
poor, he has a hard time of continuing his life and education and he had to leave law school.
His life begins to cause permanent damage to his inner world and many ciontradictions
within himself. He came to study in St.petersburg and he can’t pay her rent. He goes to a

3
Yousef, about crime and punishment
*Fanger (2006),pp.17-18
4
Frank(1994),p.168
5
Miller(2007),p.58
6
Frank(1994),p.179
7
Miller(2007),pp.58-59
pawnbroker who no one likes ,sells his watch. He goes to the tavern with the money he
recieves in return. He drinks and akso darkens the life of the people in the tavern too. He
could not understand the brutal separation between the poor and the rich.
In a process to prove his theory , he first murders an old, then a dispescable pawnor broker
and later her half sister because she happenened to seem him suddenly. He killed a dishonest
pawnbroker for her money . He justifies this by citing the good he can perform with the
money, saying that not only would that make up for the deed, but it would also rid the world
of an undesirable person. He sees this as an experiment to weigh up his theory that some
people are instinctively able to commit acts such as murder and thus have a responsibility to
do so. Feeling that killing is acceptable if the end result is noble in nature, Rasikolnikov
compares himself to Napolean Bonaparte.
Although his friend Razumikhin offers to help him sustain himself, rasikolnikov believes it
is his destiny to kill pawnbroker/ money lender Alyona Lvanovna. While making his plans ,
he meets marmeladov, a drunk who has lost what bit of wealth his family had, and
Raskolnikov recieves a letter from his mother, Pulcheria , and his sister, Dunya , announcing
their imminent arrival in saint petersburg to discuss the sister’s wedding plans. Raskolnikov
ponders the situation around him and proceeds to kill Alyona with an axe. When her half-
sister appears, he kills her as well. In a panic to leave the scene of the crime, he steals a few
itmes but leaves much of woman’s wealth behind. He leaves the apartment in which he
committed the crime without being seen. As time goes on, he begins to obsess over what he
has done. He hides the stolen items and attempts to clean his clothing of any evidence of the
attack. He falls into a state of delirium and wanders around almost asking to be connected to
the crime and caught.
Pulcheria and Dunya arrive in saint petersburg. Dunya had left her job as a governess for the
svidrigailov family when married head of the family, Arkady , was attracted to her and tried
to court her. She then met Luzhin, whom she agreed to marry to obtain security for herself
and her mother. Raskolnikov rejects Luzhin as a husband for his sister upon realizing the
reason she accepted his proposal. Next Raskolnikov meets porfiry , a detective looking into
murders and who views Raskolnikov as a suspect. Raskolnikov ,meanwhile, has begun a
relationship with sonya, the daughter of Marmeladov , who has turned to prostitution to
support her family. Their relationship is not sexual. Svidrigailov arrives in the city to tell
Dunya of his wife’s death ; he tries to win her hand by offering her a lot of money. She
refuses believing he is being deceptive.
As the days unfold , porfiry becomes more and more convinced that Raskolnikov is the
responsinle for the murders but cannot find any solid evidence with which to connect him to
them. Additionally , anotherman has been questioned and arrested and takes the blame for the
crime.Raskolnikov becomes more and more unstable and confesses to sonya. Svidrigailov
overhears the confession and tells Raskolnikov that he will use what he now knows for
blackmail if need be. Raskolnikov, in the meantime, has heard rumors about svidrigailov’s
past and he suspects that he may have committed murders himself.
Due to fullness of his confession at a time when another man had already confessed
Raskolnikov is sentenced to only eight years of penal servitude. Dunya and Razumikhin
marry and plan to move to siberia , but Raskolnikov’s mother falls ill and dies . Sonya
follows Raskolnikov to siberia , but he is intially hostile towards her as he is still struggling to
acknowledge any moral culpability for his crime, feeling himself to be guilty only of
weakness. It is only after some time in prison that his redemption and moral regeneration
begin under sonya’s loving influence.

3.CONCLUSION
The novel crime and punishment is both a philosophical novel and a psychological one
where we can find a true picture of russian society . The protagonist , Raskolnikov ,
represents one of the st.petersburg’s deperate , poor, and hungry individuals who goes to
great lengths to survive- and is tomented by his own conclusions about morality. The main
title of the novel also gives us clear impression of the subject matter as well as the whole
theme of the novel. Moreover , Dotoevsky’s literary output explores human psychology in
the troubled political , social and spiritual context of 19 th century Russian society. His works
has been translated into so many languages in the world. This novel has become a matter of
great reading books in world literature.

REFERENCES:
Beebe maurice , “The three motives of raskolnikov”; a Reinterpretation of Crime and
punishment, college English ,vol.17, no.3 , 1955,p151
Burnham , william . ‘The legal context and contributions of Dostoevsky’s crime and
punishment Michigan Law Review, vol100, no.6,2002 , p1227
Dostoevsky fyodor ‘Crime and punishment’,oxfird university press, 2008 edition.
Mirsky , D.S., ‘The History of Russian Literature’, Routlege and Kregan paul, 1968
Rubinstein ,Leonard,’Dostoevsky: The identity of Crime and Punishment’,The journal of
general education,vol 26,no 2
Stream, George G’The moral world of Dostoevsky’,Russian Review, vol 16, no 3
Dostoevsky ,Fyodor(1866). Crime and punishment. Tzarist Russia : The Russian messenger
.p.60

Dostoevsky ,Fyodor(1866)crime and punishment . Tzarist Russian (present day Russian

federartion) :The Russian messenger .p.18
“on the structure of crime and punishment”,in:PMLA,march 1959, vol.LXXIV,No.1,pp.132-
33
Dostoevsky ,Fyodor .Crime and Punishment . Toronto: Bantam books,1987.p.62
 RESEARCH PAPER
ENGLISH
TOPIC:-Crime and Punishment

NAME- SHIVANGI
ROLL NO-1077
SEM- 2
SUBMITTED TO- Dr.Gunjan Dubey