Crime and Punishment:Overview

Written: 1856-66, Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( dos-tah-yev-skee)

From the Introduction:• analysis of social wretchedness and psychological disease

– violation of inner moral justice– sufferings caused largely by society

• anti-nihilist in nature

From the Introduction, continued

• Solovyov: “…the best people (morally) are at the same time the worst in view of society, that they are condemned to be poor folk, the insulted and the injured.”

• Rozanov: …”The fall is the phase that predominates over the other two - most of history is taken up with ‘crime and sin’, which is, however, always directed against the serenity that went before (it).”

• The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief - the closer to God.– Meaning of all history, and the history of spiritual

development.

From the Introduction, cont.

• Raskolnikov is able to speak to the collective human reality in all of us– far from being a madman or psychopathic

outcast…is an image of Everyman (xxviii)

• Nihilists (individual) v. theme of Family

• Raskolnikov has abandoned his faith…he has lost God, lost himself, the sanctity of his own personality; he can recover this only through penal servitude…and contact with the Russian people (xxiv)

Rumination…

• Berdyaev: “the existence of evil is proof of God’s existence: If the world consisted solely of goodness and justice, God would not be necessary, for the world would be God. God exists because Evil exists.”

How would you interpret this?

Themes and Symbols

Themes:

• Alienation from Society: Rodya’s self-importance and judgment

• Psychology of Crime and Punishment: Guilt becomes a greater punishment that the actual “punishment:” of imprisonment.

• Superman: Not. Rodya considers himself above all others and the law…but realizes that he is certainly not. He is vulnerable, as we all are.

• Nihilism Materialism Utilitarianism

Themes and Symbols

• The Stone Wall: laws of society• Poverty: that which is good is

reviled• Sonya’s Cross: Rodya’s path to

redemption• Sonya: gives of herself to help

Rodya (Jesus figure?)