He was arrested, subjected to a terrifying mock execution, and sent off to Siberia, where he pored over the New Testament. By the time he returned to Petersburg, in , he believed in Mother Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, and hated both radicalism and bourgeois liberalism. He put his ideological shift to supreme advantage: he was now the master of both radical and reactionary temperaments. Dostoyevsky certainly knew what was simmering below the surface: in March, , a month after the novelist died, two bomb-throwers from a revolutionary group assassinated the reformist Tsar Alexander II in Petersburg.
Thirty-six years later, Lenin returned to the city from exile and led the Bolsheviks to power. Raskolnikov was a failed yet spiritually significant spectre haunting the ongoing disaster. The lively discussions around our seminar table earlier in the year were hard to sustain among so many screens; the students were often silent in their separate enclosures.
That some of us are rooting for Raskolnikov is a reflection of that question. Is someone really capable of rationalizing such a horrible action? After the twentieth century, this becomes a challenging question. What kind of person would you have to be to get away with it?
Antonio, from Sacramento, was slender, a runner, with large glasses and a radiant smile. He had had a good education in a Jesuit school, and, at nineteen, he was erudite and attentive, abundant in sentences that sounded as if they could have been written. Listening to him, you heard a flicker of identification with the theory-minded murderer. His family and friends adore him; even the insinuating and masterly investigator, Porfiry, believes that dear Rodya is worth fighting for.
The situation incenses Raskolnikov. In class, she hesitated for a second, but then, grinning in complicity with herself, moved swiftly through complicated feminist and social-justice ideas. Raskolnikov was a puzzle for her. Yet he wants to protect women, not just his sister but hapless young girls in the street.
The male characters, telling stories in jocular tones, assume their right to beat women. At that moment in April, our own city felt largely empty, but I often imagined American streets filled with jobless people, some clinging to hopes of returning to work, many without such hopes. Would we go the other half? The newspapers were reporting that domestic abuse had gone up among couples locked together. Women were now being punished, as the critic Jacqueline Rose would note, for the recent liberties they had achieved.
Looking for present-day resonances, I knew, was a grim and limited way of reading this work. Pritchett put it. I was now sequestered in a welter of betrayals and loyalties, gossip and opinion: the assorted virtuous and vicious people in the book believe in manners, but they never stop talking about one another.
How many millions were now locked in their rooms muttering vile thoughts to themselves, or wondering about the point of their existence? He wrote about the absolute rationality of evil and the absurd necessity of goodness. He taunted himself and his readers with alarming propositions: What happens to man without God and immortal life? Such contradictions notably exist within characters. The students had returned to familiar surroundings dogs barked in the background , but they had three or four other courses—not to mention all the anxieties of a precarious future—to contend with.
Their college careers were messed up, their friendships interrupted, their campus activities and summer internships wiped out. Across the city, hundreds of them were dying every day. So many elements of our civilization had shut down: churches, schools, and universities; libraries, bookstores, research institutes, and museums; opera companies, concert organizations, and movie houses; theatre and dance groups; galleries, studios, and local arts groups of all kinds not to mention local bars.
Who knew what would perish and what would come back? The students were discomfited, often quiet, almost abashed. In between classes, they sent Professor Dames their responses to the reading, and he used their notes to pull them into the conversation.
In class, the conversation turned toward questions of moral indifference and sympathy. Why he has developed this troubling mix of qualities remains an important question throughout the novel. A few clues are given at the outset: Raskolnikov is tall and handsome, which may foster his pride, while his squalid surroundings—the neighborhood in which Raskolnikov and the pawnbroker live is described in vivid terms that convey the chaos and filthiness of poor, urban neighborhoods—may have helped bring about his deteriorated mental condition.
Chapter I also explores the character of the pawnbroker. In some respects, Alyona Ivanovna is a foil to Raskolnikov—that is, her character contrasts with his and serves to emphasize his distinct characteristics. She is old and unattractive, while he is young and handsome; she is alert and concerned with practical business matters, while he is semidelirious and deeply in debt.
The only apparent similarity between the two is that they both wear worn and tattered clothes. But even this similarity, examined more closely, reveals the difference in wealth between the two, since Raskolnikov dresses in rags because of poverty whereas the pawnbroker does so out of miserliness. The conflict in this chapter is primarily internal, as it is throughout the novel.
Significantly, this inner conflict is not between his hatred of the pawnbroker and a moral objection to killing but rather between his desire to kill her and his disgust at the idea of the actual, physical performance of the deed. Morality seems to play little role in his decision and does not become a strong force in his life until the very end of the novel. Yet in the very midst of his careful preparation, he is alternately disturbed by the loathsomeness and ugliness of the crime and that his entire plan is atrocious and degrading.
But even with these repulsive thoughts, he continues to prepare for the murder. Furthermore, his plans have not yet been finalized. He knows of his crime only in theory, a fact that will later become central to his redemption when he attempts to explain his reasons to Sonya at the end of the novel.
Consequently, the reader must be prepared for opposite reactions occupying Raskolnikov's mind, and what would seem an inconsistency elsewhere is here used to explain his dual or split personality. His visit to Alyona Ivanovna's shows both his repulsion to his plan and his preparations for its execution. Previous Character List.
Next Chapter 2. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. Are you sure you want to remove bookConfirmation and any corresponding bookmarks? My Preferences My Reading List. Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky.
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