REVIEW
BY
Dan
Schneider
© Dan
Schneider 2005
Review
of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment
Introduction
Characterization Themes Syllabus Assessment
Introduction
There are perhaps no more valuable publishing houses on the planet
than Great Britain’s Wordsworth Editions and America’s
Dover Thrift Editions. In an era where literature is at a low
ebb, these two houses have released great works of public domain
classic literature at very affordable prices- usually at anywhere
from 10-50% off the prices that the same titles can be gotten
at larger publishing houses. Among the great titles that I was
to get from Dover was Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment,
the definitive 1914 Constance Garnett translation. So much has
been written about this book that I find it difficult to comprehend
how so much of it is wrong- and I’m not talking about whether
it’s a great piece of literature or not. I am talking about
the misperceptions of the religiosity in the tale’s morals
and the very nature of the lead character’s supposed ethical
reclamation.
The novel is a very good one, and compared to the crap that passes
as literature these days it is a classic, however, it is not a
great piece of literature. The book has too many manifest flaws,
such as being far too long, far too ‘talky’, and most
of all, aside from the belief that it’s a ‘Christian
tract’, the biggest misread of the book is that it is somehow
a work of ‘social realism’. Nothing could be less
true- it is primarily a work of symbolism. This is evident from
its title, as the very punishment referred to is not that of the
legal variety, but that of internal guilt. Yes, when it was first
published, in pre-Freudian 1866, it may have seemed a work of
psychological depth, but even compared to the fiction of Anton
Chekhov, just a few decades later, it is utterly Neolithic in
its approach to the human psyche.
Characterization
The best example of this is that its lead character, Rodion Romanovitch
Raskolnikov, is not a realistic villain, but an archetype- and
really a symbol. The sound of his name connotes his being a rascal
or rapscallion, and in Russian raskolnik even means to be divided,
or schismatic. His swings between guilt and mendacious evil are
better seen as devices serving the drama of the narrative than
as any true portrait of a sociopath- be it a modern serial killer,
a gangster, or any other form. Raskolnikov has many seeming virtues-
he loves his mother and sister, he has saved people from death,
he protects a young girl from a would-be john, and treats the
drunken Marmeladov and his clan with respect. Yet, he also views
himself as above the law of man, perhaps because of these virtues,
and his undoing and seeming acceptance of Christianity by tale’s
end has been seen as suggesting that he has submitted only to
the higher law of God, one which even Napoleonic supermen, as
he fancies himself to be, must give in to. This idea of the higher
man has also led to a Nietszchean interpretation of the book,
even though it preceded that philosophy. Critics who hold this
point of view will point to such passages as this, from Part Three,
Chapter Five:
‘That
wasn’t quite my contention,’ he began simply and
modestly. ‘Yet I admit that you have stated it almost
correctly; perhaps, if you like, perfectly so.’ (It almost
gave him pleasure to admit this.) ‘The only difference
is that I don’t contend that extraordinary people are
always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In
fact, I doubt whether such an argument could be published. I
simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the
right … that is not an official right, but an inner right
to decide in his own conscience to overstep … certain
obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical
fulfillment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the
whole of humanity). You say that my article isn’t definite;
I am ready to make it as clear as I can. Perhaps I am right
in thinking you want me to; very well. I maintain that if the
discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known
except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred,
or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have
been in duty bound … to eliminate the dozen or the hundred
men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole
of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had
a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day
in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my article that
all … well, legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus,
Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception
criminals….’
Raskolnikov has also been seen as something of a representative
of the wrongheadedness of atheistic socialism, for much of the
social utilitarianism that Raskolnikov tries to rationalize his
murders with are easily compared to modern Leftist intellectuals’
naïve and/or nihilistic dismissal of the horrors of Lenin,
Stalin, and Mao. By book’s end Raskolnikov still believes
his murder of the pawnbroker was justified, even after he seemingly
accepts Christianity. His perverse contempt for and admiration
of the pedophilic Svidrigaïlov also suggests that there are
levels to Raskolnikov that Dostoevsky either chose not to plumb,
or simply was incapable of realizing, either within his own art
or in the realities of his time, for much of the book reads as
a complex morality play, rather than the realistic unfolding of
a crime and its aftermath.
His love, Sonia, is the classic hooker with a heart of gold. Why
she feels anything positive for Raskolnikov is never made clear,
save the redemptive power of Christ, which she holds out to him,
in the form of her cross. Dostoevsky also makes an interesting
dramatic choice to portray her on a somewhat morally equivalent
level with a murderer. This may have seemed realistic in its Victorian
day, but now it can only be read symbolically, as her inhuman,
in the best sense, decency- from prostituting herself for her
family, to her boundless forgiveness- makes her a symbol, not
a character with any footing in reality. If she is a counterpart
to Raskolnikov, so is Dounia, his sister. Where he is self-centered,
cruel, and an intellectual boor, she is selfless, kind, and almost
as compassionate as Sonia. She is, in fact, the only realistic
major and female character in the novel. Only her brother’s
friend, Razumikhin, is nearly as realistically variegated- but
only in his displays of intellect, not in his actions, and her
marriage to him at the end of the book is therefore an appropriate
and realistic love, unlike Raskolnikov’s and Sonia’s.
If the two younger women are counterparts of a sort to Raskolnikov,
then Svidrigaïlov is both his doppelganger and mitigator.
He is clearly the representation of an evil that Dostoevsky sees
as even worse than his lead murderer’s, which makes his
eventual suicide the only way for his character to end, for even
in death he needs to ‘sin’. Yet, he is not as evil
as Raskolnikov, for after Svidrigaïlov foresees a descent
into irredeemable pedophilia, he does bring justice upon himself,
while even after being imprisoned Raskolnikov still clings to
his beliefs of his and others’ possible superiority to man’s
laws, even as he mouths Christian banalities to the world and
Sonia. We see this recapitulated even in their actions, as well.
Svidrigaïlov acknowledges he will never have Dounia, after
he gives up on raping her, while Raskolnikov clings to his belief
that Alyona Ivanovna’s murder is justifiable.
Themes
Many believe that the primary themes of Crime And Punishment are
either the redemptive power of Christianity, or, more generally,
faith in higher powers, while others contend that it is alienation.
While I believe Dostoevsky primarily was attempting to work those
themes within his allegory, clearly, since Raskolnikov is not
redeemed fundamentally, there needs to be a reassessment of these
two dominant claims. The very thinness of Raskolnikov’s
presumed prison conversion, in the epilogues, argues powerfully
against the pro-religion posit for the book, but the alienation
theme is harder to deny, so I shall not. I will only claim that
alienation is not the primary theme. I would argue that the main
theme of the book is the immutability of the fundaments of a human
being. In short, none of the characters undergoes any significant
growth in the novel. Raskolnikov seemingly becomes merely a more
devious manipulator. Sonia becomes even more selfless, giving
up her youth for her family, and the rest of her life to save
a man she may not even truly love. Raskolnikov’s mother
is a rather underdeveloped character, but all the rest of the
minor actors in the book are clearly either caricatures, or representative
of a fundamental stasis that Dostoevsky- or, rather this work
(as I would have to compare it to his other works)- subscribes
to. Marmeladov is a drunk, and that’s it. Alyona, despite
being murdered, is correctly diagnosed by Raskolnikov as a social
leech. Even Porfiry Petrovitch, the detective who hounds Raskolnikov,
shows no subtlety. Despite his failures, he continues to assail
Raskolnikov by appealing to guilt, whereas Raskolnikov is finally
undone by Sonia- but not for his guilt. Rather, he confesses to
manifestly gain something- that is her loyalty and companionship,
even though Lizaveta, the other murder victim, was a friend of
hers. The epilogues make it abundantly clear that Raskolnikov
is in the process of learning how to game the 19th Century Russian
legal system to his advantage, and the love of Bible thumping
woman, even an ex-prostitute, can do no harm. Only his sister,
Dounia, and her eventual husband, Razumihin, show even the barest
signs of personal growth- to borrow that modern buzz phrase. While
alienation is a theme, it is unresolved at the book’s end,
as Raskolnikov is still scheming, whereas, since that is clearly
his essential nature, the more powerful argument is that people
are fixed into their essences at a certain age, and very little
can be done to alter that state of being.
Psychology, especially in the almost proto-embryonic form that
it is portrayed in this novel, is also seen as a major theme,
given that, despite the title, the two titular nouns are separated
by hundreds of pages of Raskolnikov’s inner angst. The murders
and their effects and ramifications to anyone other than Raskolnikov
are of little concern to Dostoevsky. This is clear, as in this
scene where Raskolnikov rationalizes to Sonia in Part Five, Chapter
Four:
‘Whether
I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick
up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have
the right.…’
‘To kill? Have the right to kill?’ Sonia clasped
her hands.
‘Ach, Sonia!’ he cried irritably and seemed about
to make some retort, but was contemptuously silent. ‘Don’t
interrupt me, Sonia. I want to prove one thing only, that the
devil led me on then and he has shown me since that I had not
the right to take that path, because I am just such a louse
as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I’ve come
to you now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should
I have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman’s
I only went to try.…You may be sure of that!’
‘And you murdered her!’
‘But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders?
Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you
some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I murdered
myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever.…But
it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. Enough,
enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!’ he cried in a sudden
spasm of agony, ‘let me be!’
Having had intimate knowledge of the inner workings of many sorts
of criminal minds, however, I can clearly state, with no fear
of contradiction, that Raskolnikov is almost a laughably absurd
mélange of criminal aspects, and clearly not a realistic
character. More to the point he is a bunch of hypotheses tossed
into a stew of a character. Yes, he doubts himself, reinforces,
suffers fainting spells and deliria, and might be classed as a
manic depressive or schizophrenic, given his desire to best Petrovitch
and the others whom he feels are on to him, to prove his superiority,
alternating with his great despair. Yet, Dostoevsky clearly posits
the idea that Raskolnikov’s guilt is a far greater punishment
than that the legal system could dispense, for that is the raison
d’être of the tale, and here is where Raskolnikov’s
schism and unreality as a character comes into play. Dostoevsky
cannot seem to decide whether Raskolnikov is a good person with
a conscience, who was merely misguided, or an amoral sociopath,
and therefore ends up with a character who is convincingly neither.
By splitting the difference between the two possibilities he delivers
a flawed character (literarily), not merely a character with flaws.
This error in Dostoevsky’s construction of Raskolnikov is
manifested in the upsmanship games Petrovitch and Raskolnikov
play. A true sociopath would fly by the claims and not be bothered
in the least, yet a truly repentant individual would not have
taken hundreds of pages to crack- albeit it is arguable whether
that is the correct term, since he seems to be using both Sonia
and the legal system to his advantage. Whether Dostoevsky would
have conceived of and executed a more realistic protagonist/antihero
were Crime And Punishment written today I do not know, but that,
of course, has nothing to do with what must be dealt with in the
actual novel.
Syllabus
Let me now deal with the novel, itself. The book is broken up
into six parts, totaling thirty-nine chapters, and ends with two
epilogues. Here, I will attempt to give concise summaries of the
actions in each section and chapter, and an overview of the action,
which is confined to the day of the murder and short times before
and after it:
Part One
Chapter One:
We meet Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a handsome college student
in St. Petersburg, with a big ego, who is endebted to his landlady,
Praskovya Pavlovna, and selling to an old pawnmistress, named
Alyona Ivanovna. Much in the fashion of the later real life Leopold
and Loeb, he plans the pawnbroker’s murder, just to see
if he could do it. Yet, he is repulsed by himself and goes to
a bar.
Chapter Two:
Raskolnikov meets Semyon Zakharovitch Marmeladov, who tells him
he lost his job for drinking, but got it back. Marmeladov mentions
his wife’s beating a month ago by a man named Andrey Semyonovitch
Lebeziatnikov, and admits he is afraid to go home and face his
wife, Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov, for he drank all their money.
He says their oldest daughter, Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov (also
called Sonia), has been forced into prostitution. Raskolnikov
takes Marmeladov home and sees the family’s low state. He
leaves some money on their windowsill, despite his own debts.
Chapter Three:
Raskolnikov goes to his flat. A maid, Nastasya Petrovna, tells
him his landlady is filing a complaint because he owes rent. His
mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov, writes him of his
sister, Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikov (also called Dounia). She
worked as a tutor for the Svidrigaïlov clan. The father,
Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov, is an amoral cad, who tried
to seduce Dounia, but failed, and may have been behind some deaths.
Svdrigailov’s wife, Marfa Petrovna Svdrigailov, spread rumors
about Dounia about town, then recanted. Dounia will marry Pyotr
Petrovich Luzhin in St. Petersburg, and she and Dounia will visit
him soon. She wants Raskolnikov to work with Luzhin. Raskolnikov
is not pleased.
Chapter Four:
Raskolnikov decides he must stop Dounia’s wedding. He thinks
Dounia is prostituting herself to her future husband. He meets
a drunken underage girl, approached by a man. He gets a cop to
protect the girl, then decides to leave them be. Raskolnikov will
visit an old college chum, Dmitri Prokofitch Razumihin.
Chapter Five:
Raskolnikov delays his visit to Razumihin until after he murders
the pawnbroker. He dreams he is seven, visiting his mother’s
grave with his father. Drunken peasants attack a wagon and kill
a horse. Raskolnikov thinks this is about his murder plot. He
is not deterred, though, and finds out when Lizaveta Ivanovna,
Alyona’s retarded sister who lives with her, will be gone.
Chapter Six:
Raskolnikov rationalizes his coming crime by recalling a hypothetical
where students he knew discussed the ethics of killing Alyona,
to use her riches to do good. He reckons many good acts outweigh
one crime and she and her kind prey off the vulnerable. Her money
will aid him to become a man of consequence who will benefit humanity.
Raskolnikov believes criminals get caught because of a ‘disease
of will’ and he will not be weighed down by it. He gets
to Alyona’s apartment at 7:30 pm, later than planned. Despite
his rationales, he is panicky.
Chapter Seven:
Raskolnikov murders Alyona with an ax. He tries to find money,
to make it seem a robbery. But his lateness means Lizaveta returns
and sees him. He kills her, too. He panics and tries to clean
the scene. Two visitors ring the doorbell. The door is locked
from the inside, so they leave to get help, allowing Raskolnikov’s
escape. He gets home and falls asleep.
Summary:
Dramatically, we get a good portrait of a confused young man.
But, in terms of real world psychology the portrait is hopelessly
outdated and antiquated. Raskolnikov is clearly a psychopath,
or sociopath, by modern nomenclature, and the acts he commits,
yet his actions do not show this. Does he kill because he is amoral,
or because of a twisted sense of morals? It is always stated in
most criticism that he kills for a political or philosophical
reason, yet it is just as plausible to posit that he kills to
protect his sister. Later, in Part Five, Chapter Four, he tells
Sonia, ‘I will try to manage somehow to put it to my mother
and sister so that they won’t be frightened.…My sister’s
future is secure, however, now, I believe….and my mother’s
must be too.…Well, that’s all.’ He does not
want his sister to marry a man he disapproves of, and requires
money to forestall that outcome. Thus, another motive for his
killings, and one never touched upon in criticism. Yet, read this
section describing the murder of Alyona, from Part One, Chapter
Seven:
The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair,
streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited
in a rat’s tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which
stood out on the nape of her neck. As she was so short, the
blow fell on the very top of her skull. She cried out, but very
faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor, raising
her hands to her head. In one hand she still held ‘the
pledge.’ Then he dealt her another and another blow with
the blunt side and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from
an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let
it fall, and at once bent over her face; she was dead. Her eyes
seemed to be starting out of their sockets, the brow and the
whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively.
He laid the axe on the ground near the dead body and felt at
once in her pocket (trying to avoid the streaming body)—the
same right-hand pocket from which she had taken the key on his
last visit. He was in full possession of his faculties, free
from confusion or giddiness, but his hands were still trembling.
He remembered afterwards that he had been particularly collected
and careful, trying all the time not to get smeared with blood….
Not only is there a schism in the lead character, as represented
by his name, but there is a schism in Dostoevsky and his handling
of the scene. Is he a sociopath (He was in full possession of
his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness….) or is
he a bumbling man with misguided morals? He clearly is one or
the other, for they cannot be mutually coexistent, and a third
choice is simply not dictated by the descriptions of Raskolnikov,
nor modern criminal psychology. Here is also where some of the
confusion comes in regarding the supposed later intervention of
religion as an ameliorative. Clearly, although Crime And Punishment
was written to seem realistic, as a work of art in the 21st Century
we have to view it primarily on symbolic or mythic terms, for
Raskolnikov is clearly not acting in believable and known human
ways- normal nor aberrant. Another failure comes in Raskolnikov’s
conversation with Marmeladov- it is far too long, could have been
pared to its essence, to give the illusion of ‘reality’
while coring into the offhand poetry that all people stumble upon
on occasion. This tendency to go on and on occurs in almost all
the conversational scenes, and Dostoevsky’s desire to hammer
manifest points home to a reader is one of the great flaws of
this book, and all Russian literature- this over-didacticism,
and need to wallow in despair. Some say that Dostoevsky captures
everyday speech patterns, and he does, at times- but a work of
art is not reality, and he gives far too much of the banality
and irrelevancy of the colloquial, when well-chosen nuggets would
have sufficed. Yet, for every droning overly long unnecessary
conversation that is boringly ‘real’, there is another
that is almost Shakespearean in its soliloquizing. These are characters
of the lowest classes, who cannot even make the most basic decisions
for themselves, yet they are apt to spout apothegms clearly beyond
their intellectual ability to grasp. This is more evidence that
they are not meant to be ‘real’, merely act as symbols.
Yet, the first section is by far the best in the book.
Part Two:
Chapter One:
Raskolnikov wakes and is angry with himself for his blunders and
fears discovery. Nastasya comes into his room with a cop, and
a summons. He thinks the summons is a trick to get him to confess,
and mocks the interrogator at the station, who only wanted him
to sign an IOU for the money owed his landlady. As he leaves he
overhears a conversation about the murders and passes out. He
wakes and feels they suspect him.
Chapter Two:
Raskolnikov hides the stolen money under a large rock. He finally
visits Razumihin, who offers him a translating job he turns down.
Raskolnikov is in a daze and almost run down by a coach. An old
woman pities him and gives him money. He tosses it away. Once
home he thinks he hears Ilya Petrovich, a cop, beating his landlady.
Nastasya tells him he is sick and hallucinating.
Chapter Three:
Raskolnikov is febrile and forgets the murder. Razumihin is taking
care of him, and some money comes from a stranger. Raskolnikov
fears others know he is guilty, and considers leaving for America.
Chapter Four:
A doctor, Zossimov, and police investigator, Petrovich Petrovich,
talk of the murder with Razumihin and Raskolnikov. Some house
painters, Dimitri and Nikolai Dementiev, have been accused of
the murders.
Chapter Five:
Luzhin sees Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov dislikes him, but Luzhin
ignores it. Luzhin has made arrangements for Dounia’s and
Pulcheria’s visit. Raskolnikov hears all of Alyona’s
pawn customers are suspects. Razumihin claims the murderer was
a novice. Raskolnikov and Luzhin argue violently and Luzhin takes
offense.
Chapter Six:
Raskolnikov leaves his apartment despite illness. He reads newspapers
and meets Alexandr Grigorievitch Zametov, a cop and friend of
Razumihin, who agrees an amateur committed the murders. Raskolnikov
then talks of the perfect execution of the murder and theft, the
way he did it. He asks Zametov if he could be the murderer, but
Zametov does not believe it. Raskolnikov takes off and sees a
woman attempt to drown herself. He aims to confess and heads to
the police station.
Chapter Seven:
On his way to the police station, Raskolnikov finds Marmeladov
run over by a carriage. Raskolnikov brings him back to his apartment
and calls for a doctor. Sonia comes in dressed as a prostitute,
and Marmeladov dies in her arms. Raskolnikov gives Katerina twenty
rubles and asks Polenka Marmeladov, the youngest daughter, to
pray for him. The doctor, Zossimov, believes Raskolnikov might
be insane. Raskolnikov goes home, and his mother and sister are
waiting for him.
Summary:
This section documents Raskolnikov’s recovery from his depravity.
The cracks are already beginning to appear in his rationalizations,
and his actions are clearly that of a guilty person. There are
some nice touches within this section, but paring is needed.
Part Three:
Chapter One:
Raskolnikov says he won’t allow Dounia to marry Luzhin.
She’s grateful to Razumihin for helping Raskolnikov. Razumihin
and Zossimov find Dounia attractive.
Chapter Two:
Razumihin visits Dounia and Pulcheria. He tells them of Raskolnikov’s
life. They show him a letter from Luzhin requesting Raskolnikov
not be present at their first meeting.
Chapter Three:
Dounia and her mother visit Raskolnikov, and find him offputting.
Raskolnikov realizes he can’t speak freely without confessing
his crime. Raskolnikov believes Dounia is a prostitute and demands
she dump Luzhin.
Chapter Four:
Sonia asks Raskolnikov to come to Marmeladov’s funeral.
Dounia and Luzhin argue. She and her mother leave. Raskolnikov
tells Razumihin he wants to speak with Petrovich the detective.
Sonia leaves and a man follows her to her place.
Chapter Five:
Petrovich tells Raskolnikov he knows of his life and asks Raskolnikov
about an article he wrote about crime. Raskolnikov believes there
is a difference between ordinary men who must obey the law, and
extraordinary men who can break it under certain circumstances,
what he calls ‘bloodshed by conscience.’ Petrovich
tries to trick Raskolnikov into an admission.
Chapter Six:
Raskolnikov and Razumihin discuss Petrovich. A stranger tells
Raskolnikov he knows Raskolnikov is the murderer. Raskolnikov
rationalizes the murder, and dismisses the stranger’s claim.
He dreams he tries to kill Alyona but she does not die, and laughs
at him. He wakes, and Svidrigaïlov is standing in his doorway.
Summary:
The guilt starts to spread, and more of Raskolnikov’s past
comes to life. His claims of ‘bloodshed by conscience’
have led many to view the novel as a pre-Nietzschean document,
even though the claims of classist superiority long predated the
book. Too much backgrounding of minor characters occurs, and this
causes the novel to lose its focus at times, with no counterbalance
of enhanced realism, nor narrative depth.
Part Four:
Chapter One:
Svidrigaïlov appears to Raskolnikov to be that extraordinary
man he wants to be. Svidrigaïlov came to St. Petersburg because
of Dounia. He offers to pay her 10,000 rubles if she won’t
marry Luzhin.
Chapter Two:
Luzhin and Dounia break up. Razumihin defends Dounia.
Chapter Three:
Raskolnikov leaves responsibility for his family to Razumihin.
He has found the right man to take care of his family.
Chapter Four:
Raskolnikov goes to Sonia, and taunts her. Sonia’s faith
emerges in the narrative. She reads of Lazarus in a Bible Lizaveta
gave her. Raskolnikov tells her he knows who committed the murder.
Svidrigaïlov eavesdrops.
Chapter Five:
Raskolnikov and Petrovich again play a game of wits. Petrovich
almost gets a confession from Raskolnikov, but is interrupted.
Chapter Six:
Nikolay, a house painter at Lizaveta’s and Alyona’s
home, confesses to the murder, along with his partner Dimitri.
Raskolnikov learns the witness Petrovich had was the stranger
who accused him of the murders. Petrovich was bluffing.
Summary:
This section is the one, above all others, which has led to misinterpretations
of the novel. The long conversations with Svidrigaïlov, Sonia,
and Petrovich, have led to much of the imbuing of religion and
amorality into the work. Seen symbolically, though, the conversations
are little more than plot devices to move along what is, in essence,
not a whodunit, but a willhegetawaywithit. They could be trimmed
severely to benefit the novel’s power.
Part Five:
Chapter One:
Luzhin gives ten rubles to Marmeladov’s family. Lebeziatnikov
compliments Luzhin on his kindness.
Chapter Two:
Katerina has a funeral banquet and invites everyone she knows.
She feels insulted by who shows up and argues with her landlady.
Chapter Three:
Luzhin accuses Sonia of stealing a hundred rubles he plants on
her. Lebeziatnikov proves Sonia’s innocence. Luzhin leaves
in disgrace. Katerina is evicted after her landlady gets involved
in a melee.
Chapter Four:
Raskolnikov confesses his crime to Sonia. Sonya asks him to ask
for forgiveness but he refuses her cross and suggestion. She loves
him and promises to follow him to Siberia. Svidrigaïlov eavesdrops
again.
Chapter Five:
Lebeziatnikov tells Sonia Katerina and her children are on the
streets. Sonia finds them and Katerina collapses and dies. Svidrigaïlov
offers financial help. Raskolnikov is still haunted and learns
Svidrigaïlov knows his secret.
Summary:
This section strays too much from the main character, Raskolnikov,
as Dostoevsky attempts to widen his ‘realistic’ palette.
Unfortunately, given the symbolism throughout, this section really
adds little to the book, and a good editor would have excised
it, and scattered the few key moments through the preceding and
proceeding sections. Save for Raskolnikov’s confession,
and Svidrigaïlov’s manipulations, this section is a
totally needless digression.
Part Six:
Chapter One:
Raskolnikov again asks Razumihin to look after his family. Dounia
gets a letter from Svidrigaïlov and goes to meet him. Petrovich
confronts Raskolnikov, who remains calm.
Chapter Two:
Petrovich again tries to ensnare Raskolnikov by explaining why
Nikolay and Dimitri could not have committed the crime and offers
him a chance to confess.
Chapter Three:
Raskolnikov leaves Petrovich and sees Svidrigaïlov drinking
with a prostitute. He threatens Svidrigaïlov not to see Dounia.
Chapter Four:
Raskolnikov and Svidrigaïlov converse. Svidrigaïlov
tells Raskolnikov about his wife Marfa, his lustful obsession
with Dounia, possible pedophilia, and other crimes.
Chapter Five:
Svidrigaïlov tricks Dounia into going to his apartment. He
tells her Raskolnikov is the murderer and tries to blackmail her-
his silence for her body. Dounia is shocked, and tries to leave.
Svidrigaïlov has locked the door and threatens to rape her.
She takes a gun and shoots him twice, but misses. The third time,
at close range, she refuses to kill him. Svidrigaïlov realizes
she’ll never love him, and lets her go.
Chapter Six:
Svidrigaïlov gives money to Sonia for her trip to Siberia
with Raskolnikov, then has a perverse sexual dream about a five
year old girl. He decides to kill himself before his descent to
evil is complete.
Chapter Seven:
Raskolnikov confesses to Dounia. He goes to Sonia, then confesses
his crimes in public.
Chapter Eight:
Raskolnikov accepts Sonia’s cross. He asks forgiveness of
God and confesses his crimes to the police. Sonia sticks by him.
Summary:
This section is seen as a bolster to the idea that the book is
a paean to the redemptive power of religion- specifically Christianity,
but really this section serves as a sort of mitigation of Raskolnikov
vis-à-vis Svidrigaïlov, who even commits a sin, suicide,
to escape his evil. Yet the two epilogues, which are mostly unnecessary,
tying up ends of minor plot points, and very deleterious to the
overall work, make it clear that Raskolnikov is not saved, and
merely an actor, and a better one than even he might have suspected.
He still does not accept that his murder of the pawnbroker was
evil. He also is likely using Sonia, for he has already deemed
her a moral suicide for her prostitution, despite her faith, which
means using her is not a transgression. They also demean much
of the superior portions of the novel by trivializing it with
specious moralizing, as well the discussed flaws in its attempt
to delve into the mind of a murderer.
Assessment
If Dostoevsky’s novel can be considered great, by some,
it is not because of the things he intended within it that manifest
its greatness, but that which was unwitting, and beyond him at
the time, such as the real key to understanding the work, its
great insight, that people do not change at a fundamental level.
I was recently watching the Up documentary film series, by Michael
Apted, on DVD, and those films are premised on the very notion
that Crime And Punishment is, the Jesuit saying of ‘Give
me the child till he is seven, and I shall give you the man.’
We do not glimpse Raskolnikov at seven, but given what we know
becomes of him it is not difficult to extrapolate that he was
as amoral then as his twentysomething self appears in the book.
If Dostoevsky intended this work to be an allegory on Christianity’s
redemptive power he clearly failed, so I posit that that was not
his intent at all, and that the psychological and ethical stasis
of most human beings was his major theme.
Regardless, the book is not a great piece of art. It contains
great moments, some brilliant writing, and is a very good work
of art, however primitive, but it is certainly not great. A modern
reader can simply not ignore all its manifest flaws, such as the
awkward and heavy-handed symbolism, the stilted and unrealistic
dialogue, which reinforces the truth of the characters’
symbolism, as it veers between mawkishness during some of the
death scenes and Raskolnikov’s several confession scenes,
and preachiness in many of the philosophical engagements. Again,
these characters are uneducated plebes, for the most part, yet
they often speak like high philosophes. This undermines the claims
to realism in the novel. More problems arise with the over-usage
of ‘coincidence’ to propel the plot along, as if it
were a fifth rate soap opera. Just how many times do people overhear
things accidentally, or eavesdrop, or dramatically appear to someone
out of the dark? Here is the first such instance:
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from
the first moment, before a word is spoken. Such was the impression
made on Raskolnikov by the person sitting a little distance
from him, who looked like a retired clerk. The young man often
recalled this impression afterwards, and even ascribed it to
presentiment. He looked repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt
because the latter was staring persistently at him, obviously
anxious to enter into conversation.
This is rather well written, and a canny observation that holds
true. But, this is from Part One, Chapter Two. The dozen or more
times such encounters subsequently occur stretch the realistic
point past breaking. Such wanton over-usage of coincidence is
a sure sign that there is an over-reliance on plot over characterization.
Another problem is the typically Russian overuse of meditation
on a small or single event or thing. Like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky
tends to go far too deeply into minor things, while American writers,
even the past Masters, tend to skim surfaces- a happy medium is
needed in these classics. Of the major Russian Masters, only Chekhov
seemed to learn the value of concision. The book could easily
lose 150 of the 430 pages in my volume, and not lose a single
scene. In short, most of the writing has flab that is inessential.
Dostoevsky’s shifts between first person subjective and
third person omniscient narration also drag the plot down, and
reveal far too much extraneous information that a first person
subjective narrative could not have revealed, for the better.
On the minor side, Dostoevsky also makes a big error in his use
of character names. First, rather than merely using the characters’
first names he uses their first, middle, surnames, and familiar
names in different combinations, as well as multiple nicknames,
which often confuse readers into not knowing who is doing what,
since many of the names are similar, or exactly the same, even
if the characters are not related. Secondly, while the use of
symbolism for the main character is fine, Dostoevsky goes overboard
in the use of symbolism for minor characters. Among the many examples
are Razumihin (intellect or reason), Zametov (he who notices),
Marmeladov (which connotes a sort of candy or marmalade), and
Luzhin (from luzha, which means a puddle). Svidrigaïlov is
apparently the name of a wicked medieval prince from a Russian
fairy tale.
Another problem with the work, one not in the actual work, but
in its willful misinterpretation by critics with axes to grind,
is that, aside from the confusion over the literary value of the
work, all the poor theories regarding psychology and the fundaments
of criminality have somehow found their way into pop culture,
and done much to lead people astray in their ideas of true good
and evil. Yet, the many fundamental questions that Raskolnikov
deals with are never directly addressed, and are only used as
a flawed premise for the main action of the novel to go off on.
Raskolnikov ponders why those who have power or mass murder in
war are labeled heroes, gain fame and respect, have paeans and
monuments made for them while the low born, who have to struggle
with and against each other, are jailed if they kill. In Part
Five, Chapter Four, he rationalizes not confessing to the murders
by using this defense: ‘What wrong have I done them? Why
should I go to them? What should I say to them? That’s only
a phantom.…They destroy men by millions themselves and look
on it as a virtue. They are knaves and scoundrels, Sonia! I am
not going to them. And what should I say to them- that I murdered
her, but did not dare to take the money and hid it under a stone?’
he added with a bitter smile. ‘Why, they would laugh at
me, and would call me a fool for not getting it. A coward and
a fool! They wouldn’t understand and they don’t deserve
to understand. Why should I go to them?’ This is a philosophically
legitimate point, yet, instead of plumbing this, and applying
it to the social caste he exists within, Raskolnikov flies off
into mere pop sociological dementia with his ideas on supermen
and exceptionalism, never realizing that exceptionalism in one
or two fields, no matter how exceeding, brilliant, nor gifted,
does not imply any sort of reciprocal ethical exceptionalism.
Yet, throughout the book, despite moments of brilliance, whenever
Dostoevsky gets too close to the core, the nub of what the book
is really about, he backs away. Whether because he lacked the
answer or lacked the desire to deal with its clash with his own
belief systems I do not know. But it is a flaw, and one that results
in banal and bland sermonizing, such as that which ends the book
in a very trite Hollywood film fashion:
He did not know that the new life would not be given him for
nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would
cost him great striving, great suffering.
But that is the beginning of a new story- the story of the gradual
renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of
his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into
a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story,
but our present story is ended.
To end, Crime And Punishment is certainly a milestone work in
the development of both Dostoevsky and the art of the novel, but
a work’s cultural or artistic import is not equivalent to
its artistic excellence. Therefore, while it may be a great representation
of its time, artistically and culturally, it is not a great book-
neither as a social tract nor as a novel. The very fact that such
gross misreadings of it has taken root is a testament to the laziness
of most readers, and the unwillingness of most to think for themselves.
It is this problem with readers, their own anomic stasis, writ
into the larger society, that Dostoevsky actually deals with.
Raskolnikov, however, still smiles.
Dan
Schneider
© Dan
Schneider 2005
http://www.Cosmoetica.com
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