Crime and Punishment

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Book Summary

Raskolnikov, an impoverished student, conceives of himself as being an extraordinary young man and then formulates a theory whereby the extraordinary men of the world have a right to commit any crime if they have something of worth to offer humanity. To prove his theory, he murders an old, despicable pawnbroker and her half-sister who happened to come upon him suddenly. Immediately after the crime, he becomes ill and lies in his room semi-conscious for several days. When he recovers, he finds that a friend, Razumihkin, had looked for him. While he is recovering, he receives a visit from Luzhin, who is engaged to Raskolnikov's sister, Dunya. Raskolnikov insults Luzhin and sends him away because he resents Luzhin's domineering attitude toward Dunya.

As soon as he can be about again, Raskolnikov goes out and reads about the crime in all the newspapers of the last few days. He meets an official from the police station and almost confesses the crime. He does go far enough in his ranting that the official becomes suspicious. Later, he witnesses the death of Marmeladov, a minor government official, who is struck by a carriage as he staggers across the street in a drunken stupor. Raskolnikov assists the man and leaves all his money to the destitute widow. When he returns to his room, he finds his mother and sister who have just arrived to prepare for the wedding with Luzhin. He denounces Luzhin and refuses to allow his sister to marry such a mean and nasty man. About the same time, Svidrigailov, Dunya's former employer, arrives in town and looks up Raskolnikov and asks for a meeting with Dunya. ly Svidrigailov had attempted to seduce Dunya and when Raskolnikov had heard of it, he naturally formed a violent dislike for the man.

Raskolnikov hears that the police inspector, Porfiry, is interviewing all people who had ever had any business with the old pawnbroker. Therefore, he goes for an interview and leaves thinking that the police suspect him. Since he had met Sonya Marmeladov, the daughter of the dead man that he had helped, he goes to her and asks her to read to him from the Bible the story of Lazarus. He feels great sympathy with Sonya who had been forced into prostitution in order to support her family while her father drank constantly. In her suffering, she becomes a universal symbol for Raskolnikov. He promises to tell her who murdered the old pawnbroker and her sister who was a friend of Sonya's.

After another interview with Porfiry, Raskolnikov determines to confess to Sonya. He returns to her and during the confession, Svidrigailov is listening through the adjoining door. He uses this information to try to force Dunya to sleep with him. She refuses and he kills himself later in the night.

Porfiry informs Raskolnikov that he knows who murdered the pawnbroker. After talking with Sonya, Raskolnikov fully confesses to the murder and is sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison. Sonya follows him, and with her help, Raskolnikov begins his regeneration.

Character List

Russian Names

The middle name of all male characters end in "ovitch" and of all female characters in "ovna." This ending simply means "son of" or "daughter of" the father whose first name is converted into their middle name and is called a patronymic. For example, Rodya and Dunya's father was named Roman Raskolnikov. Thus, Rodya's middle name Rodion Romanovitch means son of Roman and Dunya's middle name, Avdotya Romanovna, means daughter of Roman.

Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov (Rodya, Rodenka, or Rodka) A poverty-stricken student who conceives of a theory of the "Ubermensch" or extraordinary man who has the right andor obligation to trangress the laws of the ordinary man in order to give a New Word or idea to all of humanity. He uses this theory as a justification or rationalization to commit murder.

Sonya Marmeladov (Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov) A quiet, modest, suffering prostitute who will become Raskolnikov's chief redemptive figure.

Porfiry Petrovitch An official of the investigating department who is in charge of the "crime."

Svidrigailov (Arkady Ivanovitch) A sensualist and vulgarian who asserts his own will in order to achieve his personal goals.

Dunya (Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikov) Raskolnikov's devoted sister who was ly Svidrigailov's employee and who was propositioned by him.

Razumihkin (Dmitri Prokofitch) One of Raskolnikov's student friends who will become enamored of his sister Dunya.

Semyon Zakharovitch Marmeladov A dismissed government clerk who is an alcoholic.

Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov Marmeladov's consumptive wife had been ly married to an army officer by whom she had three children.

Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov Raskolnikov's mother who is frightened of her moody and intellectual son.

Alyona Ivanovna The sadistic and nasty moneylender whom Raskolnikov murders.

Lizaveta Ivanovna The mild, likable half sister to Alyona who is brutalized by her.

Polenka, Lyona, Kolya (Kolka) Katerina Ivanovna's children by a marriage. Sonyas greatest fear is that Polenka might have to enter into prostitution — Raskolnikov plagues her with this thought.

Marfa Petrovna Svidrigailov's wife who once assumed Dunya had designs on her husband.

Luzhin (Pyotr Petrovitch) A petty and miserly clerk in government who wants a poor person for his bride so that she will be indebted to him.

Lebezyatnikov (Andrey Semyonovitch) Luzhin's roommate who calls himself an "advanced liberal."

Praskovya Pavlovna Raskolnikov's shy and plump landlady.

Nastasya Praskovya Pavlovna's maid who befriends Raskolnikov and looks after him when he is ill.

Amalia Fyodorovna The Marmeladov's landlady who is particularly disliked by Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov.

Kapernaumovs Sonya and Svidrigailov rent rooms from these rather depressed people.

Zossimov The doctor who cares for Raskolnikov during his illness.

Nikodim Fomitch A handsome police officer who was also at Marmeladov's death scene and reports this fact to Porfiry.

Zametov (Zamyotov), Alexander Gigorevitch The chief clerk at the police station.

Ilya Petrovitch A loud and somewhat overbearing police official to whom Raskolnikov makes his confession when there was no one else to confess to.

Nikolay (Milkolka) and Dmitri (Mitka) The painters who were working in the flat below the pawnbroker's flat at the time of the crime.

A Note on Pronunciation

If the reader will remember to give strong stress to the syllable marked with an accent in this list, to give the vowels their "continental" value, and pronounce the consonants as in English, a rough approximation to the Russian pronunciation will be obtained. The consonant "kh" sounds rather like the Scottish "ch" in "loch"; the "zh" represents a sound like "s" in "measure"; and the final "v" is pronounced "f."

`Rodion Ro`manovitch Ras`kolnikov: "raskol"=schism or split.

Svidri`gailov

Razu`mikhin: "razum"=reason or common sense.

Marme`ladov: "marmelad"= jam or jelly.

Al`yona I`vanovna

About Crime and Punishment

In the nineteenth century, the western world moved away from the romanticism found in the works of Pushkin in Russia, Goethe in Germany, Hawthorne and Poe in America, and Wordsworth in England and moved in toward a modern realistic approach to literature. While the world was still reading popular romantic novels and love poems, Russia was leading a movement into the new realistic approach to literature. Dostoevsky was one of the forerunners of this movement, along with Gustave Flaubert in France and Mark Twain in America.

This movement can be seen in many ways, some from a very philosophical way and some in the most simple way. For example, in the romantic writings, the writer was concerned with the mysterious, the strange, and the bizarre. Edgar Allan Poe's famous short stories, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher" could be located in New England, Scotland, or many other places, and the story would be the same. Romantic literature seldom had any distinct landmarks and no reference to any external matters. In contrast, Dostoevsky is very careful to ground his novels in actual places. In Crime and Punishment, he is very exact in identifying the names of the streets, the bridge where Raskolnikov sees a woman attempting suicide, and so on. Students and editors have measured the number of feet between Raskolnikov's tiny room and the old pawnbroker's apartment and have discovered that Raskolnikov had made an accurate account of the distance — that is, he walked 730 paces in order to reach the old pawnbroker's apartment to commit the murder.

Dostoevsky was not only a chronicler of the exact physical surrounding, he was also writing subjects of modern concern. During the time that Dostoevsky was writing and publishing, the American public was reading about the romantic adventures of Hiawatha and Evangeline by Longfellow, stories that were set in some unrealistic and romantic distant past, or else the bizarre stories of Edgar Allen Poe. Dostoevsky established one of the precepts of modern realism was to present life as it actually was lived. This is exactly what Dostoevsky did from his earliest novels to his final masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoevsky was a prodigious reader and was well informed about the newest ideas and the most recent philosophical concepts of his time. His characters are driven by inner emotions that were just being investigated towards the end of his life. Sigmund Freud's investigations of the psychological states of one's mind were being published only after Dostoevsky had written many of his studies of the mental forces that drive a person to commit certain acts. Porfiry's investigations into the motives behind a crime and of the mental state of the criminal would not become an acceptable manner of investigation until sometime in the twentieth century. As a psychologist, Dostoevsky was well ahead of Freud. His descriptions of the inner emotions are psychologically realistic and true. Some are based on fact: for example, due to his involvement with writing and printing censored material, and subsequently, being condemned to death, Dostoevsky would often write about man's absolute despair.

Just prior to the publication of Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky had published his short masterpieceNotes from Underground. A knowledge and understanding of this short novel is central to understanding most of Dostoevsky's novels. The Underground man (he is never named) begins his story by saying: "I am a sick man. . .I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man." This dirty, spiteful, human "louse" is still a human being, and it is Dostoevsky's first introduction to a human as a louse — such a one as Raskolnikov kills in Crime and Punishment.

The ideas expressed in Notes from Underground become central to all of Dostoevsky's later novels. As expressed in the Commentaries, Dostoevsky was writing partly about man's sense of freedom, the freedom to choose, to be able to have the right to step over obstacles. The right of man to have freedom and to be able to reject security in favor of the freedom to choose has its greatest expression in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. In the scene where the Grand inquisitor confronts Jesus and says to Jesus that man prefers security to the freedom to choose that Jesus offers man, we have the greatest culmination of Dostoevsky's ideas upon freedom versus security.

At one point the Underground Man says that twice two makes four, this is a scientific fact, but man does not always function merely by scientific fact. For Dostoevsky, the rational part of a man's being is only one part of his makeup. That is, man is composed both of the rational (two times two does make four) and the irrational — "it would be nice to think sometimes that twice two makes five." This would be, in Dostoevsky's words, "a very charming idea also." The point is that if man functions solely as a rational being, then man's actions are always predictable. Thus, Dostoevsky's point is that man's actions are NOTpredictable. Raskolnikov will rationally stop a young dandy from having his way with a young girl and then suddenly decide it is none of his business, or he will tell his sister that he forbids her marriage and then contradict himself by saying "Marry whom you please." Likewise, there are men who are only happy when they suffer; thus, the man who falsely confesses to the murder of the old pawnbroker wants to suffer, particularly to suffer at the hands of authority.

One of the great ideas throughout all of Dostoevsky's fiction is that through suffering man can expiate all his sins and become more closely attuned with the basic elements of humanity. Thus in Crime and Punishment, we have Dostoevsky bowing down to Sonya because she represents the sufferings of all humanity. Both Sonya and his sister Dunya feel that when Raskolnikov takes up his suffering, he will be purified. Also, a person of great conscience will suffer from his transgressions, and as soon as the crime is committed, Raskolnikov suffers so greatly that he does become physically ill and is in a semi-coma for days.

Raskolnikov, both in his published article about crime and in his own actions, was involved in determining the mental states that affect the criminal. The concepts of psychology and even some of its later terminology were used by Raskolnikov and Porfiry. Examples abound as to Dostoevsky's use of modern psychological concepts. Porfiry's entire investigative technique involves his use of psychology to trap his victim, and Raskolnikov recognizes this and refers to it as a cat and mouse game.

In terms of world literature, Dostoevsky stands out as the greatest master of the realistic psychological novel and has yet to be equaled by any modern masters.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1158