Dualism And The Double In Dostoevsky S

Crime And Punishment Essay, Research Paper

Crime and Punishment was the 2nd of Fyodor Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s most of import, mature fictional plants. It was foremost published in the conservative diary The Russian Messenger, looking in 12 monthly installments in 1866. Dostoevsky left three full notebooks of stuffs pertinent to Crime and Punishment. These have been published under the rubric The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment, edited and translated by Edward Wasiolek. Dostoevsky began work on this novel in the summer of 1865. He originally planned to title it The Drunkards, but in the concluding version, the subject of inebriation as a societal job, represented by the Marmeladov household, had shrunk to a minor function. In September of 1865 Dostoevsky wrote a missive to M. N. Katkov, the editor of The Russian Messenger, trying to carry Katkov to accept the novel and to print it in his diary. To demo Katkov that the new novel was suited for publication in a conservative diary, Dostoevsky outlined its content and thought as follows:

The thought of the novel can non, every bit far as I can see, belie the tenor of your diary ; in fact, the really opposite is true. The novel is a psycho- logical history of a offense. A immature adult male of middle-class beginning who is populating in desperate demand is expelled from the university. From superficial and weak thought, holding been influenced by certain & # 8220 ; unfinished & # 8221 ; thoughts in the air, he decides to acquire himself out of a hard state of affairs rapidly by killing an old adult female, a loan shark and widow of a authorities retainer. The old adult female is brainsick, deaf, ill, greedy, and immorality. She charges disgraceful rates of involvement, devours the wellbeing of others, and, holding reduced her younger sister to the province of a retainer, oppresses her with work. She is good for nil. & # 8220 ; Why does she populate? & # 8221 ; & # 8220 ; Is she utile to anyone at all? & # 8221 ; These and other inquiries carry the immature adult male & # 8217 ; s mind astray. He decides to kill and rob her so as to do his female parent, who is populating in the states, happy ; to salvage his sister from the lascivious urgencies of the caput of the estate where she is functioning as a lady & # 8217 ; s comrade ; and so to complete his surveies, go abroad and be for the remainder of his life honest, house, and unflinching in carry throughing his human-centered responsibility toward world. This would, harmonizing to him, & # 8220 ; do up for the offense, & # 8221 ; if one can name this act a offense, which is committed against an old, deaf, loony, immorality, ill adult female, who does non cognize why she is populating and who would possibly decease in a month anyhow. Despite the fact that such offenses are normally done with great trouble because felons ever leave instead obvious hints and leave much to opportunity, which about ever bewray them, he is able to perpetrate his offense, wholly by opportunity, rapidly and successfully. After this, a month passes before events come to a definite flood tide. There is non, nor can at that place be, any intuition of him. After the act the psycho- logical procedure of the offense unfolds. Questions which he can non decide good up in the liquidator ; feelings he had non foreseen or suspected torment his bosom. God & # 8217 ; s truth and earthly jurisprudence take their toll, and he feels forced at last to give himself up. He is forced even if it means deceasing in prison, so that he may one time once more be portion of the people. The feeling of separation and isolation from world, nature, and the jurisprudence of truth take their toll. The condemnable decides to accept enduring so as to deliver his title. But it is hard for me to explicate in full my thought.

Katkov accepted Crime and Punishment for publication in his diary.

It was good received by the populace and restored Dostoevsky to the place of a taking Russian author, despite a mostly unfavourable reaction from the broad imperativeness. The ground for its long standing entreaty is that instead than this being a mystery Crime and Punishment is more like a whydunnit. Through its geographic expedition of the head of a liquidator, the reader is drawn to the dualism and usage of doubles ( doppelgangers ) that Dostoevsky so like an expert calls upon to arouse understanding and apprehension for the liquidator, Raskolnikov.

Crime and Punishment is a fresh researching the dualism of the human head by researching the bipolarization of scruples and ground through the actions of its supporter, Rodia Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov, an expelled university pupil, feels compelled to perpetrate slaying. He rationalizes that he is superior and hence exempt from traditional Torahs. In this deformed belief Raskolnikov clearly embraces the theory of the nihilist. The Columbia Encyclopedia defines Nihilism as:

the theory of revolution popular among Russian extremists until the autumn of the tsarist authorities ( 1917 ) ; the theory was given its name by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons ( 1861 ) . Nihilism stressed the demand to destruct bing economic and societal establishments, whatever the jutting nature of the better order for which the devastation was to fix. Nihilists were non without constructive plans, but understanding on these was non indispensable to the immediate aim, devastation. Direct action, such as blackwash and incendiarism, was characteristic. Such Acts of the Apostless were non needfully directed by any cardinal authorization. Small groups and even persons were encouraged to be after and put to death terroristic Acts of the Apostless independently. The blackwash of Czar Alexander II was one consequence of such terrorist activities. The constructive plans published by nihilists include the establishing of a parliamentary authorities ; the plans were on the whole centrist in comparing with the radical steps of 1917. Nihilism was excessively diffuse and negative to prevail as a motion and bit by bit gave manner to other doctrines of rebellion ; it remained, nevertheless, an component in ulterior Russian idea.

Although Raskolnikov adopts nihilism as an facet of his belief system, he subsequently finds himself tormented by his scruples, which does non acknowledge Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s feelings of high quality. Webster s New World Dictionary defines scruples as: purposes, or character together with a feeling of duty to make right or be good ; while the definition of ground is: a sufficient land of account or of logical defence ; particularly: something that supports a decision or explains a fact. Conscience and ground differ because the actions of the person are based on two separate criterions. Conscience is dependent upon a moral criterion while ground is dependent upon a logical defence. Raskolnikov acted with blemished ground in a state of affairs that clearly called for scruples. Dostoevsky farther demonstrates the issue of dichotomy through the usage of Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s doubles or doppelgangers, chiefly Sonia Semenovna and Arcadius Ivanovitch Svidrigaylov. Sonia and Svidrigaylov represent the two opposing forces in Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s nature. By detecting Sonia & # 8217 ; s refusal to abandon her ethical motives and Svidrigaylov & # 8217 ; s continual prolongation of immorality, the reader sees that one & # 8217 ; s emotion is master over ground.

These techniques employed by Dostoevsky, the usage of the dual and dualism, brought to illume the sociological and psychological factors underpinning the supporter & # 8217 ; s descent into immorality. By utilizing these devices Dostoevsky gives the reader ground to hold sympathy for a character who would otherwise be an irreclaimable scoundrel. Crime and Punishment employed both methods in order for the character of Raskolnikov to have salvation and go a hero instead than a despicable liquidator. The first method, that of dualism, will be explored foremost. To decently explicate dualism in Crime and Punishment it is necessary to understand what dualism encompasses.

Dualism, in doctrine, the theory that the existence is explicable merely as a whole composed of two distinct and reciprocally irreducible elements. In Platonic doctrine the ultimate dualism is between & # 8220 ; being & # 8221 ; and & # 8220 ; nonbeing & # 8221 ; -that is, between thoughts and affair. In the seventeenth century, dualism took the signifier of belief in two cardinal substances: head and affair. Gallic philosopher Ren Descartes, whose reading of the universe exemplifies this belief, was the first to stress the unreconcilable difference between believing substance ( head ) and extended substance ( affair ) . The trouble created by this position was to explicate how head and affair interact, as they seemingly do in human experience. This perplexity caused some Cartesians to deny wholly any interaction between the two. They asserted that head and affair are inherently incapable of impacting each other, and that any mutual action between the two is caused by God, who, on the juncture of a alteration in one, produces a corresponding alteration in the other..

In the twentieth century, reaction against the monistic facets of the doctrine of idealism has to some grade revived dualism. One of the most interesting defences of dualism is that of Anglo-American psychologist William McDougall, who divided the existence into spirit and affair and maintained that good grounds, both psychological and biological, indicates the religious footing of physiological procedures. Gallic philosopher Henri Bergson in his great philosophic work Matter and Memory similarly took a Manichaean place, specifying affair as what we perceive with our senses and possessing in itself the qualities that we perceive in it, such as colour and opposition. Mind, on the other manus, reveals itself as memory, the module of hive awaying up the yesteryear and using it for modifying our present actions, which otherwise would be simply mechanical. Dualism in moralss describes the acknowledgment of the independent and opposing rules of good and evil. This dualism is exemplified in Zoroastrianism and in the Manichaean faith.

A combination of the Bergson and ethical attacks to dualism are evident in Crime and Punishment. The usage of dualism is a prevailing consideration to the critical attack to Dostoevsky. George Gibian writes:

The implicit in antithesis of Crime and Punishment, the struggle between the side of ground, selfishness, and pride, and that of credence of agony, intimacy to vital Earth, and love, sounds bland and bromidic when stated in such general manner as we have done here. Dostoevsky, nevertheless, does non show it in the signifier of abstract statement entirely. He conveys it with brilliant dialectical accomplishment, and when we do happen direct statements in the novel, they are deliberately made so unequal as to do us recognize all the more clearly their dissatisfactory irrelevance and to take us to seek a richer representation in other manners of discourse. ( 970-976 ) .

Further critical assessments of Crime and Punishment point to the true ground for its authorship as a piece of propaganda meant to project slurs on the pattern of nihilists.

Nihilism is possibly the most of import philosophical issue raised in the novel. It can be studied in connexion with Raskolnikov and his offense, but besides in connexion with Svidragailov, Lebezyatnikov and Luzhin. The nihilists believed that moralss should be based on scientific claims and that adult male could make a perfect society ( a rational Utopia ) if he lived harmonizing to the rule of enlightened opportunism. The deformation of this impression is seen in Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s justification of slaying, Luzhin & # 8217 ; s egoistic motivations as Dunia & # 8217 ; s helper, and Lebezyatnikov & # 8217 ; s vulgarisation of the thought of advancement. By rejecting moral absolutes and Christian belief, these nihilists were able to reason that values are comparative and that opportunism ( what they called & # 8220 ; rational egoism & # 8221 ; ) is the agencies to the terminal of honing societal jobs. With this plan they explained all irrational behaviours and psychological upsets & # 8211 ; and particularly offense & # 8211 ; as the consequence of societal forces and the environment ; further, their optimistic belief that moralss should be based on scientific rules led them to reject traditional spiritual values. ( Glicksberg 75-79 )

Much like the nucleus value of the nihilist Dostoyevsky & # 8217 ; s conflicted hero, the pupil Raskolnikov, is driven to prove the bounds of his freedom: If he is genuinely free, so & # 8220 ; everything is permitted & # 8221 ; and he should be able to step beyond the recognized bounds of right and incorrect. Chew overing ideas current in his clip, he convinces himself that true, rational morality means making the greatest good for the greatest figure of people. On that footing he tries to warrant intellectually his slaying of an old pawnbroker who accumulated money by working the bad lucks of others. But alternatively of perpetrating slaying nervelessly and utilizing the pawnbroker & # 8217 ; s money to make good, Raskolnikov is haunted by what he has done. He finally confesses his offense, influenced by the altruistic love of a cocotte, Sonia ; by the psychological probings of Porfiry, the detective look intoing the slaying ; and by his repulsive force at Svidrigailov, a character who flouts moral criterions. Merely at the terminal of the novel, in his Siberian prison, does Raskolnikov eventually get down to acknowledge that he has violated non merely a human jurisprudence but God & # 8217 ; s jurisprudence every bit good.

Crime and Punishment is the narrative of the conflict between Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s rational haughtiness and his scruples. He invariably attempts to run from his scruples but he can & # 8217 ; t get away it. Dry events force Raskolnikov to confront the struggle and finally make up one’s mind his fate. Dostoevsky uses this device to explicate the complex struggle ramping within Raskolnikov, and in bend to uncover his message about world: that anyone through the credence of guilt and agony can be reformed. Although Raskolnikov commits slaying, through his guilt and the love of others towards him, he is saved.

Dreams in literature are frequently used as a tool that enables the reader to derive penetration into the character s subconscious devils. This is evident in the ill-famed Equus caballus dream of Crime and Punishment. Critics, such as Rene Welleck aver that

[ T ] his dream is important in demoing the dualism of Raskolnikov. Through the analysis of this dream the reader can more to the full understand the nature of the internal split that plagues Raskolnikov. This dream, ordaining a tragic katharsis, is introduced with deliberate ambiguity. Is the dreamer really retrieving an episode of his childhood or is he conceive ofing the memory? In any instance, thought the dream is of the past its significance is all in the present. The pathetic small female horse, whipped across the eyes and butchered by Mikolka and a crowd of raucous provincials, bases for all such victims of life s insensate inhuman treatment, in peculiar such victims as Sonya and Lizaveta whose entreaty to Raskolnikov is that of hapless soft things. . whose eyes are soft and soft. Besides, the female horse stands above all for Raskolnikov himself, and in encompassing her shed blooding caput in a craze of compassion it is himself he is encompassing, bewailing, comforting. He is present in the dream non merely as the small male child witnessing an act of unbearable ferociousness but as at once its culprit and victim excessively. The dream s imagination is wholly prospective in that it points in front, expecting the slaying Raskolnikov is plotting even while exposing it as an act of self-murder. Its latent though-content is a warning that in killing the pawnbroker he would be killing himself took and it is so in this visible radiation that he understands his title afterwards when, in squealing to Sonya, he cries out: Did I murder the old adult female? I murdered myself, non her! I crushed myself one time and for all, everlastingly. The psychotherapeutic consequence of the dream is such that upon rousing he recovers the sense of his human world, feeling as though an abscess that had been organizing in his bosom had all of a sudden broken. . . he was free from that enchantment, that sorcery, that compulsion. But the katharsis is fleeting, and he no Oklahoman hears that the pawnbroker will be entirely in her level the following eventide than he is once more gripped by his compulsion. ( 18 )

Raskolnikov can merely purge himself of his guilt through agony. He deals with the mental and physical trial brought upon him by his offense. His problems are compounded by the conflicting personalities which he possesses. The reader is inclined to qualify him by his cold, rational side. Without the contrasting humanist side of his nature ; nevertheless, Raskolnikov ne’er realizes the mistakes in his theory and actions. Raskolnikov is defined by the Manichaean nature of his personality, with each aspect being merely every bit critical as the other.

Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s cold side leads him to develop his theory, and therefore to perpetrate slaying. This side of him bases all determinations on ground and rationalisation ( although it is sometimes wrong ) , instead than on feeling. It is strictly stoical, without emotion. The other side of his character is sort and compassionate. Without this side being presented the reader views him as an evil liquidator, and non a mislead victim, as Dostoevsky intends.

In the fresh Raskolnikov engages in sporadic Acts of the Apostless of kindness. He gives money to the Marmeladov household, he attempts to help Marmeladov when he dies, and he tries to acquire a bibulous miss place and off from her chaser. All of these workss were done without forethought. He merely feels that at the clip it is the right thing to make. After a short period of clip his mentality dramatically reverses. He starts to rationally analyse what he has done, and so feels that his actions were stupid. This passage marks the return of his cold side, and it occurs after every sort thing that Raskolnikov does.

These displacements between two distinguishable personalities give Raskolnikov two separate points of position. The novel is founded on the differentiations between the two points of position, and the reader gets both angles. Both Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s generous, and evil actions are indispensable to his character because they allow the reader to place with these two points of position and the two aspects of his personality.

Further unfavorable judgment downplays the importance of dualism as a subject to this novel and points out that it is secondary to the greater message of happening salvation through Chri

st. Although this does non contradict the usage of dualism and doubles, it gives these actions a different position understating them to the readers. A outline of Crime and Punishment as offered by The Columbia Encyclopedia promotes the psychological geographic expedition in relation to what this novel is genuinely about ; nevertheless, it makes clear the importance of the salvation through Christ s redemption.

In Prestuplenie I nakazanie ( Crime and Punishment ) Raskol & # 8217 ; nikov & # 8217 ; s bridal of a `rational & # 8217 ; superman morality consequences merely in the seamy slaying of a pawnbroker, followed by Raskol & # 8217 ; nikov & # 8217 ; s own self-torture which finally leads him to an flimsy `salvation & # 8217 ; . . . Dostoevskii & # 8217 ; s heroes are strong but divided personalities, engaged in confidant and often mortal argument with themselves, their `doubles & # 8217 ; , and the reader over the moral footing of their actions. His murder-centred secret plans are a airy, antic, and mythically structured re-working of the sensational and radical life observed in his news media. The polarized subjects of ground and irrationality, religion and unbelief, moral freedom and moral bondage, frame the tenseness of modern adult male, a tenseness which finds a unstable declaration in the vision of Christ, Dostoevsky s moral-aesthetic ideal.

It is non redemption ; nevertheless, which dominates this novel. Clearly doubles and dualism is of overriding importance. In taking Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s name, he has given one of import hint to his character. The word raskol, in Russian, means & # 8220 ; split & # 8221 ; or & # 8220 ; split. & # 8221 ; Dualism is the key to Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s character. He is torn between the desire to make evil and the desire to make good.

Raskolnikov is so lacerate apart by conflicting ideas and desires that he frequently seems to be two characters. Indeed, Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s technique is to environ Raskolnikov with complementary or opposing others that mirror his pent-up inner ego. The reader shortly notices that one side of his personality is aggressive and degage, like Svidrigailov, while the other is caring and compassionate, like Sonya. In a conventional sense, Sonia is a dual that represents his metaphysical, religious side, Svidragailov a dual that stands for his physical, nihilistic side.

Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov moves, alternately, from one to the other as he attempts to decide the load of a guilty scruples. Even the infinite in which he moves reflects the double nature of his personality. When he visits Svidragailov in the tap house, it is a descent into the darker ( or subterranean ) parts of his psyche ; conversely, when he follows Sonya to her flat, he ascends into a broad room with high ceilings, an acclivity, as it were, into the kingdom of the spirit. After the offense, these two alter self-importances compete for Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s attendings. However, because of his pride, he tries to conceal from any unfastened recognition of either 1. This mask of denial is the footing of Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s sarcasm in scenes where Raskolnikov is clearly drawn to the religious side of Sonya or the condemnable side of Svidrigailov. Raskolnikov particularly finds it difficult to acknowledge that he is drawn to a self-giving victim like Sonya because it violates his thought of the demigod. It is a bit easier to place with an aggressive victimiser like Svidrigailov. This is because he embodies the pitiless behaviour of a adult male who has overstepped the Torahs of society. But until the epilogue, Raskolnikov is attracted to these opposing doubles. As Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s notebooks suggest, it is a struggle between unconditioned feelings and political orientation. Sonya represents Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s innate morality and the goodness of his bosom, while Svidrigailov stands for the immorality of abstract theories. Not surprisingly, when Svidrigailov dies, the theoretical voice of Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s personality seems to melt out and the Sonya voice begins to talk with greater strong belief. Although this is non a entire expose of the prevarication of nihilism, it is an of import first measure towards confession.

Yet it is non merely the physical landscape that amplifies and reflects Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s interior status. Dostoyevsky & # 8217 ; s handling of other characters besides plays a cardinal function in the development and expounding of the cardinal figure. As Raskolnikov moves through the metropolis, he seems to travel through a charged ambiance in which every brush triggers a resonating response in his psyche. Therefore, his opportunity meeting with Marmeladov introduces the constructs of agony and selflessness, constructs that will go so of import to Raskolnikov subsequently in the novel. More significantly, the characters who surround Raskolnikov frequently seem to function as possible doubles or alter self-importances. That is, the traits that these characters embody represent possible waies for Raskolnikov himself. On one side stands the low Sonya. She is willing to give herself for her household, and she puts the ideals of love and service to one & # 8217 ; s fellow worlds above any impression of self-aggrandizement. On the other side stands the corrupt Svidrigailov. He indulges in utmost signifiers of orgy merely to alleviate his ennui. Svidrigailov tells Raskolnikov that he considers the immature adult male to be something of a akin spirit, and although Raskolnikov does non wish to acknowledge it, he senses that there may be some cogency to Svidrigailov & # 8217 ; s averments. When Svidrigailov informs Sonya that Raskolnikov merely has two waies to take from, either a slug in the encephalon or Siberia, he has efficaciously identified the picks that lie in forepart of the deplorable immature adult male. Merely Sonya & # 8217 ; s visual aspect outside the constabulary station at the terminal of the chief subdivision of the fresh prevents Raskolnikov from emulating Svidrigailov & # 8217 ; s illustration and perpetrating suicide. Alternatively, he follows her advice, confesses his offense, and with her love and support he finally finds salvation in Siberia.

Porfiry is the lone character who is Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s rational equal, and the lone 1 who understands the complex motivations for his offense. The dry, mocking tone he uses to speak to Raskolnikov reminds some readers of the haughtiness Raskolnikov himself shows other people. The research worker & # 8217 ; s accent on psychological analysis as a manner of observing felons is about every bit radical as Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s belief in offenses of rule. The major difference between them is that Porfiry & # 8217 ; s theory stresses the societal good, while Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s means societal lawlessness. Some critics suggest that Dostoevsky intends Porfiry to stand for Russian solutions to Russian jobs in contrast to the Western European beginnings of Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s misguided theories.

It is with Svidrigailov that the thought of the two-base hit is most to the full developed. Apparently he had a existent paradigm ; the notebooks call him Aristov, after a character in the prison memoirs. He is surrounded with inside informations connected with the Gothic tradition, underscoring the outgrowth of duplicating from the literature of the supernatural. The fact that we have heard many awful things about this major character before he really appears adds much to the suspense environing him. He appears at the terminal of a incubus, the dream reenactment is a continuance of that dream. Note that this is exactly the halfway point of the novel, adding to the character s centrality. Furthermore his visual aspect straddles a boundary, non merely between chapters, but between parts, intending that readers wait for the following monthly installment ( in this instance it was two months ) to happen out more. Making readers wait for the following move of a cryptic character is a authoritative device to rise suspense.

Raskolnikov himself is unable to understand his ain behaviour, and his agony is non merely rational and religious, but besides aesthetic, for he is offended by the ugliness of his offense ( vividly illustrated by his dream in which a Equus caballus is viciously beaten ) . Critic Philip Rahv noted that

Dostoevsky was the first novelist to dramatise the rule of uncertainness or indefiniteness in the presentation of character, and many other bookmans agree that this skilfully pictured uncertainness is a key to the novel & # 8217 ; s illustriousness. Raskolnikov resembles other Dostoyevskian characters in his double naturein fact, his name is derived from the Russian word for split. On one side is the cold, demanding mind, and on the other is the warm, imperfect humanity ; he is torn between the two sides. After a long period of agony and penalty both before and after squealing to the slayings, Raskolnikov eventually achieves salvation through the Christian religion. Yet many bookmans find this salvation unconvincing ; they claim that Raskolnikov ne’er genuinely repents his offense and remains proud and stray to the terminal. Nevertheless, the character Raskolnikov has generated much critical attending since the novel & # 8217 ; s publication, and the reliable impact he continues to do on readers attests to Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s composite, adept word picture. ( 27-30 ) .

Dostoevsky frequently uses secondary characters to mirror his supporter, and Svidrigailov is often seen as the incarnation of Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s destructiveness and longing for power. Critic R.P. Blackmur calls him Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s other ego, and most other bookmans concur. Raskolnikov senses his similarity to Svidrigailov even though he is repelled by the adult male, and Svidrigailov besides perceives their similitude. Svidrigailov & # 8217 ; s determination to kill himself attests to his profound boredom and desperation. Dostoevsky has frequently been praised for making in Svidrigailov a complex character whose evil is tempered with sparks of compassionhe gives both Dounia and the Marmeladovs money they urgently need, and he allows Dounia to get away even after she has tried to kill him. Svidrigailov resembles non so much a Gothic scoundrel with a wholly evil nature, but a human being whose behaviour has destroyed others and, finally, himself.

Sonia Marmeladov represents Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s capacity for good. Said to be based on Dostoevski & # 8217 ; s 2nd married woman, Anna Snitkina ( reportedly a stabilising influence in his life ) , Sonia is a blue-eyed, thin, pale eighteen-year-old whose gaudy vesture contrasts with her soft look and singular bluish eyes. Though her household & # 8217 ; s want has forced Sonia to go a cocotte, her true nature is pure and religious. Passive and self-denying, she submits volitionally to the humiliation of her business. Sonia is the fresh & # 8217 ; s representative of Christianity ; it is she who pleads with Raskolnikov to seek salvation through agony and religion, and her influence finally victory. Through Sonia, Dostoevsky voices several of the novel & # 8217 ; s concerns: when Raskolnikov inquiries the morality of her ain pick during their treatment of his guilt, for case, she asks, What, so, is to be done? The trouble of get the better ofing desperation is a subject often explored in Russian literature. She besides reads to Raskolnikov the scriptural narrative of Lazarus, therefore exemplifying both her religion in miracles and her desire to raise Raskolnikov from the dead, as it were. Sonia instantly forgives him when he confesses his offense and in general garbages to judge or reprobate other human existences. Some critics have found Sonia colorless and unrealistic, but most see her a compelling incarnation of religion.

Sonia & # 8217 ; s male parent, Marmeladov, is the cause of his household & # 8217 ; s want, taking to pass his clip imbibing instead than seeking to better their state of affairs. Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s word picture of the Marmeladovs & # 8217 ; poorness has been seen as by and large symbolic of enduring and hurting in the universe ; it illustrates specifically how a household may be destroyed through alcohol addiction, a topic that is known to hold interested and troubled Dostoevsky. Marmeladov & # 8217 ; s bloated face, wild eyes, mussy hair, and disorderly vesture mean his debasement. His wordy, self-berating plaint in the tap house about the class of his ruin and the hurting he has inflicted on his higher-born married woman and unfortunate kids is both amusing and hapless. Marmeladov has been interpreted as yet another two-base hit of Raskolnikov, reflecting the isolation, thwarted aspiration, and feeling of adulteration that typify Raskolnikov. Besides like Raskolnikov, Marmeladov has brought injury upon himself and others for no evident ground.

Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s close friend, Dmitri Razumihin, is much more sympathetically portrayed. His name derives from the Russian word for ground, and he serves as a charitable, hardworking foil to the anguished, self-absorbed Raskolnikov. He provides cordial reception to Raskolnikov & # 8217 ; s female parent and sister when Raskolnikov neglects them, and he finally falls in love with Dounia and founds a publication concern that will back up them after Raskolnikov is exiled to Siberia. Though Razumihin is fond of his friend and loyal to him, he has no semblances about Raskolnikov and perceives the double nature of his personality. ( Cox, 345-346 ) .

In what manner, so, does Svidrigailov duplicate Raskolnikov? Both are slayings in a sense, for Svidrigailov appears to be morally, if non lawfully, responsible for the deceases of two persons, or at rental we are led to believe this by several characters with the storyteller s complicity. And yet during their first conversation, Svidrigailov is incognizant of Raskolnikov s slaying. Even so, it is Svidrigailov who presses the issue of their secret similarity in a condemnable scruples. He seems to hold prescient, non to state supernatural, cognition of it. Well, didn T I say that there was some point in common between us? . . . It seems to me I did state it. Just a minute ago, after I came in and saw that you were lying at that place with your eyes closed, and you yourself were feigning right so I said to myself This is the really one! And subsequently he adds: Well, didn T I tell the truth when I said that we were similar two peas in a cod? ( literally, one field of berries ) . Raskolnikov is in a better place to appreciate their shared blood-guilt, but it is he who resists most strongly the thought that they are doubles. ( Another psychoanalytic critic provinces that Svidrigailov is Raskolnikov s Idaho ( Ono ) .

. . . certainly the most interesting subdivision of the epilogue from a literary and psychological point of position:

In his illness he dreamed that the whole universe was condemned to fall victim to some kind of atrocious unheard-of and ne’er earlier seen fatal pestilence, which was continuing out of the deepnesss of Asia into Europe. Everyone would die except certain people, a really few chosen 1s. Some kind of Trichinella spiralis appeared microscopic animals which would infect people s organic structures. But these animals were liquors, endowed with mind and will. Once they had taken these animals into their organic structures, people would go obsessed and insane right off. But ne’er, ne’er had people considered themselves so intelligent and so unshakeable in their cognition of the truth as did these infected people.

The dream goes on to depict at length the mass-scale aggression that this rational infection green goodss, eventually reasoning as follows: The plague grew and moved further and further. The lone people in the whole universe who could salvage themselves were a few people, pure and chosen 1s who had been predestined to establish a new race of people and a new life, to regenerate and sublimate the Earth, but no 1 had of all time seen these people anyplace ; no 1 had of all time heard their words and their voices.

It is a dream about aggression for the interest of thoughts, and as such it is a fitting epilogue to the novel and prologue to the 20th century. It takes some of the facets of Raskolnikov s single rational aggression and chalk out them out on a societal and international canvas, demoing how the same aggressive paradigms operate on the degree of inter-group dealingss.

The impact of this novel on modern psychological science is still discussed in unfavorable judgments today. The fresh and profound penetrations which Dostoevsky added to our cognition of the human psyche have been discussed exhaustively and laudably by many of his critics. All that needs to be done, hence, is to remind the reader summarily of so ; attempt can be more productively put into an analysis of the agencies through which these penetrations find look. Therefore, it is a platitude that Dostoevsky anticipated Freud ; that he was cognizant of the fact and understood the function of the unconscious ; that he had a limpid cognition of the dichotomy exhibited by the human mind and of its effects ; that he understood adequately the map of dreams ; that he cognize how shame leads a adult male to thwart the actions through which he attempts to pacify it, and how pride is the look of insecurity and shame ; how inhuman treatment constitutes self-castigation, and how injured amour propre takes revenge through love. In short, all the penetrations that have become platitudes since Freud were clearly his ain ; nor can I believe of any of import phenomenological data point furnished by the Viennese scientist which had escaped the observation of the Russian novelist. ( Wellek, 74 )

837

Charles Glicksberg, The Literature of Nihilism, 1975

Christopher R. Pike, & # 8220 ; Fedor Dostoevskii: Overview & # 8221 ; in Reference Guide to World

Literature, 2nd ed. , edited by Lesley Henderson, St. James Press, 1995.

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition Copyright 1993, Columbia University

Press. Licensed from Inso Corporation

Cox, Gary, Crime And Punishment: A Mind To Murder, Twayne

Publishers, 1990

& # 8220 ; Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich, & # 8221 ; Microsoft ( R ) Encarta ( R ) 98 Encyclopedia.

( degree Celsius ) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation.

& # 8220 ; Dualism, & # 8221 ; Microsoft ( R ) Encarta ( R ) 98 Encyclopedia. ( hundred ) 1993-1997 Microsoft

Corporation.

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, in Fictional characters in

Nineteenth-Century Literature, Gale Research, 1993.

Gibian, George, PMLA, Vol. LXX, No. 5, December, 1955, pp. 970 96

Julian Connolly, An overview of Crime and Punishment, in Exploring Novels, Gale, 1998

Wellek, Rene, Dostoevsky ; A Collection Of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1962