As she waits for him in a nearby village, he falls ill and has that feverish dream. For us, the dream poses a teasing question: Is it just a morbidly eccentric summation of the novel, or is it also an unwitting prediction of where we are going?
Dostoyevsky was a genius obsessed with social disintegration in his own time. I took the course again in , writing a long report on the experience. In the fall of , at the border of old age—I was seventy-six—I began taking it for the third time, and for entirely selfish reasons.
The students had arrived in New York the previous fall from a wide range of places and backgrounds, and now they had returned to them, scattering across the country, and the globe—to the Bronx, to Charlottesville, to southern Florida, to Sacramento, to Shanghai.
My wife and I stayed where we were, in our apartment, a couple of subway stops south of the university, sequestered, empty of purpose, waiting for something to happen.
I loitered in the kitchen in front of a small TV screen, like a supplicant awaiting favor from his sovereign. Ritual, the religious say, expresses spiritual necessity. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, instead of making my way across College Walk and up the stairs to a seminar room in Hamilton Hall, I logged on to our class from home.
The greetings at the beginning of each class were like sighs—not defeated, exactly, but wan. Professor Dames is a compact man in his late forties, with dark, deep-set eyes and a touch of dark mustache and dark beard around the edge of his jaw.
He has been teaching Lit Hum, on and off, for two decades. At the beginning of the class, his face shadowed by two glaring windows on either side of him, he would struggle for a moment with Zoom. But his voice broke through the murk. Nick Dames led the students through close readings of individual passages, linking them back, by the end of class, to the structure of the entire book. He is also a historicist, and has done extensive work on the social background of literature.
He wanted us to know that nineteenth-century Petersburg—which Dostoyevsky miraculously rendered both as a real city and as a malevolent fantasy—was an impressive disaster. After , when Alexander II abolished serfdom, Professor Dames said, peasants came pouring in, looking for work. The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.
And dreams become very important. Dostoyevsky ignores the magnificent imperial buildings, the huge public squares. He writes about street life—the voluble drunks, the lost girls, and the hungry children entertaining for kopecks. His Petersburg comes off as a carnival world without gaiety, a society that is neither capitalist nor communist but stuck in some inchoate transitional situation—an imperial city without much of a middle class.
It seems to be missing the one aspect of life that insures survival: work. He and a few of the other characters are barely clinging to remnants of status or wealth: a dubious connection with a provincial nobleman; a tenuous prospect of a meaningless job; or a semi-valuable possession, like an old watch.
The city that Dostoyevsky experienced and Raskolnikov inhabited had long been a hothouse of reformist and radical ideas. In , Petersburg was the center of the Decembrist Revolt, in which a group of officers led three thousand men against Nicholas I, who had just assumed the throne.
The Tsar broke the revolt with artillery fire. Rebecca West. The Heart of the Matter. Graham Greene. A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens. Joseph Conrad. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. Hard Times. Show Boat. Edna Ferber and Foster Hirsch. Vanity Fair. William Makepeace Thackeray. The Sun Also Rises. Ernest Hemingway. Our Mutual Friend. Felix Holt, the Radical.
George Eliot. In the Wilderness. The inner world of Raskolnikov, with all of its doubts, deliria, second-guessing, fear, and despair, is the heart of the story. Dostoevsky concerns himself not with the actual repercussions of the murder but with the way the murder forces Raskolnikov to deal with tormenting guilt. Because he understands that a guilt-ridden criminal must necessarily experience mental torture, he is certain that Raskolnikov will eventually confess or go mad.
His vaunted estimation of himself compels him to separate himself from society. His murder of the pawnbroker is, in part, a consequence of his belief that he is above the law and an attempt to establish the truth of his superiority. He continues to resist the idea that he is as mediocre as the rest of humanity by maintaining to himself that the murder was justified.
It is only in his final surrender to his love for Sonya, and his realization of the joys in such surrender, that he can finally escape his conception of himself as a superman and the terrible isolation such a belief brought upon him.
This happened to me in English class. I'd sit back, take good notes, and bluff my way through various tests this was back in the day before Google, when my family only had an AOL dial-up connection and all the answers, right and wrong, were on the internet. For these sins, I am now fated to read the classics long after I was supposed to read them.
On the plus side, coming to the classics on my own volition has given me a better appreciation than having to read them with a figurative gun to the head. This has allowed me to enjoy certain works to a higher degree. However, I don't think any number of years will allow me to appreciate or enjoy or even suffer Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. First published in , Crime and Punishment is the excruciatingly-detailed psycho-epic about the murder of a pawn shop owner and her sister.
The murderer is named Raskolnikov. He is a former student living in a wretched little closet apartment. He is utterly unlikable: smug, arrogant, temperamental, condescending and self-delusional. Today, we would recognize this person as having a serious mental illness and the book would be called Inability To Form Criminal Intent and Involuntary Commitment instead of Crime and Punishment.
Dostoevsky, though, presents Raskolnikov's malady as spiritual, rather than mental. In a way, he is just like every grad student you've ever met: shiftless; over-educated and under-employed; haughty, yet prone to bouts of self-loathing. I imagine if this book was written in the next century, Raskolnikov would have shaggy sideburns, wear a t-shirt emblazoned with Che's image, and have a well-hidden addiction to prescription pain pills.
Raskolnikov has some interesting theories. He's a Nietzsche-inspired proto-Nazi who believes that the world can be divided into two classes: an elite, Napoleonic class, free to do what they wish; and a second class comprised of everyone else. This former class, because of their elevated standing, don't have to follow the rules. Armed with this self-serving worldview, Raskolnikov, in need of money, determines that the pawn broker Alyona Ivanovna is a louse who deserves to die.
So he takes his axe and a fake pledge to her apartment and bashes her head in. The crime is suitably graphic: He took the axe all the way out, swung it with both hands, scarcely aware of himself, and almost without effort Because she was short, the blow happened to land right on the crown of her head. She cried out, but very faintly, and her whole body suddenly sank to the floor, though she still managed to raise both hands to her head Then he struck her again and yet again with all his strength Blood poured out as from an overturned glass Once the murder is complete, very early in the novel, the long, slow, excruciating psychological unraveling begins.
Some of Raskolnikov's madness is displayed through seemingly-endless internal monologues. Is this what it's like to be a crazy person? Maybe, maybe not. But it's effective in its way, because it drove me insane reading it. Raskolnikov's deterioration is also presented via his relationships. Despite being an utter jackass, he has a lot of friends and family who care for him. He looks after Raskolnikov, tries to get him a job, and suffers all Raskolnikov's verbal abuse with unflagging patience.
I couldn't decide what annoyed me more: Raskolnikov's monomania or Razumikhin's spinelessness. Complicating this picture are several uninteresting plot threads that eventually, finally, after hundreds of pages, merge.
One thread deals with Marmeladov, a wrecked old drunk whose daughter, Sonia, is a prostitute with a heart of gold! Raskolnikov is eventually redeemed by Sonia and Sonia's faith.
A second thread has to do with Raskolnikov's mother and sister. His sister, Dunya, has come to St. Petersburg under a cloud, though things are looking brighter for her and the family, as she is engaged to Luzhin. Luzhin has money, and a keen eye for beautiful, vulnerable women. Raskolnikov rightly senses Luzhin's ill intent, and the animosity between the two men does not help Raskolnikov's troubled mind. On top of all this, there is a clever, Dickensian police inspector named Porfiry Petrovich.
He knows immediately that Raskolnikov is the murderer, yet insists on playing a lame game of cat-and-mouse. One of the few enjoyments I got from this novel was the cold irony of a Russian police officer patiently waiting for his suspect to confess. In Dostoevsky's Russia, the law is clever, intelligent, and implacable. Of course, just a few decades later, the NKVD and KGB would be breaking down doors in the middle of the night and hustling people off to Siberia for no reason at all.
To Dostoevsky's credit, all these characters intertwine, and all the stories pay off, such as it is. In order to do so, however, there are plot contrivances piled atop plot contrivances. Dostoevsky relies heavily on characters overhearing important bits of information. The only Russian novels I've read have been by Tolstoy, so I don't have much to compare this to.
I'm not fit to analyze Crime and Punishment against other works of Russian literature, or even against Dostoevsky's other books. All I know was that this was a drag to read. There are paragraphs that go on for pages, and the density — unleavened by any action — is numbing. One of the most common complaints when reading Russian literature is the names. Well, in this case, it's true.
At least — for the benefit of English speakers — Tolstoy gave his characters American nicknames. Here, you have to deal with both the patronymics and identical-sounding or near-identically-named characters. The easiest task you have is not mixing up Raskolnikov with Razumikhin. It gets a little harder trying to keep Alyona Ivanovna the pawnbroker , Katerina Ivanovna Sonia's mother and Amalia Ivanovna Sonia's mother's landlord straight.
These complaints are childish, I know, and I have no excuse. Yet I feel the need to unburden myself now, as I missed my chance in high school many, many many, many years ago. More confusing than the names is the culture shock.
When I first tried to read Crime and Punishment as a teenager, I chalked my confusion up to a poor translation. Well, this time around, the translation is in the incredibly capable hands of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They managed, in Anna Karenina and War and Peace to be both faithful and readable.
They are recognized, by people far smarter than me, as the best Russian-to-English translators around. Here, again, I have no complaints with the translation; but I also had a revelation: I don't get Russians. I don't fully grasp their social hierarchy; I don't get why they like mustaches on women; and I certainly don't understand their interactions.
They get mad for reasons I can't comprehend; they are insulted for reasons I do not fathom. In Dostoevsky's hands, Russians are hopelessly operatic, incapable of having a subtle or nuanced reaction to anything. Every emotion has an exclamation mark. You get Dunya trying to shoot Svidrigailov one second, and then tearfully embracing him the next. Characters fall on their knees before each other, and laugh at inappropriate times, and have opaque motivations.
I am not trying to be culturally insensitive when I say I am confounded by the Russians in Crime and Punishment. Of course, there are enjoyable moments, including a classic set-piece following Marmeladov's funeral imagine a Russian version of Clue , in which accusations are followed by counter-accusations, and everyone is shouting and fainting.
Surprisingly, there is also a good bit of humor, such as this interaction between Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov regarding the morality of eavesdropping: In that case, go and tell the authorities; say thus and so, I've had this mishap: there was a little mistake in my theory.
But if you're convinced that one cannot eavesdrop at doors, but can go around whacking old crones with whatever comes to hand, to your heart's content, then leave quickly for America somewhere! When I was young, I often gave up on challenging books like Crime and Punishment. Sometimes, I found myself revising old opinions. The Scarlet Letter , for instance, worked for me as an adult in a way it never had when I barely skimmed it in my youth. Yet, in the perverse way of classics, it is utterly memorable, if only because I struggled so hard to get through it.
Believing this a worthwhile hill to climb, I did not give up, even though I could have finished three others books in the time it took me to slog through this one. Heck, despite not liking this the first time, I even gave it an entire second reading. View all 23 comments. I've come to the conclusion that Russian door-stoppers might just be where it's at. Up until this point, Tolstoy had basically taught me everything I knew about nineteenth century Russian society and its people. By that, I mean that everything I knew was about the drama and scandals of the Russian aristocracy.
The difference here is that Dostoyevsky I've come to the conclusion that Russian door-stoppers might just be where it's at. The difference here is that Dostoyevsky took me on an educational - but also gripping - journey around the backstreets and drinking dens of St Petersburg. He showed me the nitty gritty details of life in Russia for those less fortunate - drunks, prostitutes, the poor - and he painted a very vivid portrait of this time and culture.
Raskolnikov is a great protagonist; he really is. His head is one messed-up place and he constantly struggles with what he believes in, his conscience, and his desire to get what he wants. The reader is pulled so deep inside the dark depths of his mind that it's hard to avoid becoming completely absorbed in the story. He is at times nasty, at others funny, and at others pitiful. Dostoyevsky has created one extremely well-rounded and complex character.
Crime and Punishment shows the human capacity for evil, but also for shame and remorse. And this latter is the real "punishment" for Raskolnikov when he is driven near to insanity by his guilt. I don't really know how best to fully articulate my feelings for Crime and Punishment. I don't give many five star ratings and I rarely feel this strongly about what I've read.
I actually had a dream about it! Speaking of dreams, I want to use this one example of Dostoyevsky's ability to engage the reader so thoroughly: I read one particular scene in the book that made me seriously distressed. I was furious, on the verge of tears, and like a child who wants to jump inside the TV to make everything better I swear that my sigh of relief fully eclipsed his!
But that's how far I was drawn into this world, how much I really cared about it. That doesn't happen often. Blog Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube View all 43 comments. Aug 20, Stephen rated it it was amazing Shelves: easton-press , audiobook , 6-star-books , all-time-favorites , literature , s , classics , classics-asian.
One of my All Time Favorite novels. So often we are forced to read the great works of literature for school or at times not of our choosing and I think it tends to lead to a lifelong aversion to the 6.
So often we are forced to read the great works of literature for school or at times not of our choosing and I think it tends to lead to a lifelong aversion to them I was fortunate enough to come back to these stories on my own terms while I was in College.
So I took a weekend off from getting drunk and running naked through Downtown San Diego and decided instead to get drunk in my apartment and read Crime and Punishment…. I loved this book from the opening scene in which Raskolnikov is convincing himself about the rightness of committing the murder of the money-lending pawn-broker all the way through the bittersweet end and the beginning of his redemption.
Powerful, brilliant, insightful and surprisingly engaging despite the fact that it is far from being a "light" read in either prose or content. The central theme of this story is not really the crime i. Murder or punishment i. Likewise, the punishment is the deeply felt, and unexpected from his standpoint, guilt over what he has done.
His mind, his body, his very essence rails against his actions and leads him down the path that will eventually lead to the possibility of redemption. It is such a deeply personal, emotionally evocative journey that it was impossible for me not to become intensely invested in the story. That is part of being human. It is our ability to feel genuine remorse over our bad actions and voluntarily take steps to rectify those mistakes that leads to growth and character.
I think this is why I have always loved stories of redemption because it is such a classic theme of being human. On the other hand, I also realized why I get so bat shit crazy with anger when I hear of certain kinds of what people terms "non violent" crime. Rapists and murderers when they get caught are punished and sent to places I have nightmares about. Whether or not it is enough, we can debate, but it is defintely not a fun place.
I see these "crimes" as bad as most violent crimes because they lead to real severe pain and devastation for many of the victims and yet the punishment never seems commensurate. It lead me to do a little justice fantasizing and I came up with this that I thought I would share Sorry for the less smooth segue, but it was something that came to me while I was reading the book.
I think his narration is superb and truly enhanced the experience of the story. M Vorshynsky: Ahh FD : All other novelists, they only go up to But I go up to M Vorshynsky:: Does that mean you have more emotion in your books?
FD: Well, it's one whole notch more, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most I get my characters all the way to ten with their emotional situations, and then M Vorshynsky: Put it up to eleven. FD: Eleven. One louder. If they are not about to jump into a river, they are going to fall in love with a prostitute, or they are going to get roaring drunk because they have fallen in love with a prostitute and will later jump into a river.
It was like a Dardenne Brothers movie with the camera tight up to Raskolnikov nearly the whole time, and the action shown in detail almost hour by hour over a couple of weeks. And bash in the brains of her sister who unfortunately comes in the door at the wrong moment. Bad timing. An antidote to Jane Austen, indeed. And it was about how the arrogant twerp murderer can also be a guy who perceives this injustice and wants to revolutionise society. And to do that he starts by bashing in the brains of two women.
So you see this is a psychological minefield we are in. Like Macbeth and An American Tragedy by Dreiser the murder is contemplated beforehand, then committed, then acts like acid on the mind of its perpetrator, and the reader is along for the excruciating ride. Conclusion : excellent pandemic reading View all 52 comments.
Oct 13, Fergus rated it it was amazing. It happened to Raskolnikov, and it happened to me. Each one of us is a Raskolnikov, you know. But we all share his nature. There are no easy answers in Dostoevsky! I remember so well the time I finally quit smoking - cold turkey, 22 years ago. I was lucky I did it, I guess; but to face the indefinitely long rest of my life - stretching out before me like a vast restless desert - without smokes, seemed unbearable back then!
In empty air. Panic City! The flames of utter hopeless anxiety threatened to engulf me entirely. So I started to pray. Like a dog chewing a meatless bone! It must have worked And I escaped from that Inferno by the very Skin of my Teeth. Trying to make the best of a mess!
Lewis is right, and there remain plenty of challenges in Heaven. So, there is no finality in this life, Dostoevsky is saying. Or our guilt, either, for that matter! The best way I can sum up my thoughts on this Everest of a novel is by quoting W. But we must never give up the trying, just like Raskolnikov And for us, too, in time there may come Redemption.
View all 78 comments. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during It is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia.
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former law student, lives in extreme poverty in a tiny, rented room in Saint Petersburg. Isolated and antisocial, he has abandoned all attempts to support himself, and is brooding obsessively on a scheme he has devised to murder and rob an elderly pawn-broker.
On the pretext of pawning a watch, he visits her apartment, but remains unable to commit himself. Later in a tavern he makes the acquaintance of Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, a drunkard who recently squandered his family's little wealth.
Marmeladov tells him about his teenage daughter, Sonya, who has chosen to become a prostitute in order to support the family. The next day Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother in which she describes the problems of his sister Dunya, who has been working as a governess, with her ill-intentioned employer, Svidrigailov.
To escape her vulnerable position, and with hopes of helping her brother, Dunya has chosen to marry a wealthy suitor, Luzhin, whom they are coming to meet in Petersburg. Details in the letter suggest that Luzhin is a conceited opportunist who is seeking to take advantage of Dunya's situation. Raskolnikov is enraged at his sister's sacrifice, feeling it is the same as what Sonya felt compelled to do.
Painfully aware of his own poverty and impotence, his thoughts return to his idea. A further series of internal and external events seem to conspire to compel him toward the resolution to enact it. View all 7 comments.
What a sensational reading experience, what an unconditional surrender to an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and confusion - and to an epic battle of wills! Rarely these days do I read with that kind of hopeless, helpless feeling of being completely, utterly lost in the imaginary world.
From the first moment, when Raskolnikov steps out on the street and begins wandering around in Petersburg, to the very last pages, I live with the characters, I am part of the story, I have my own opinions, and argu What a sensational reading experience, what an unconditional surrender to an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and confusion - and to an epic battle of wills!
From the first moment, when Raskolnikov steps out on the street and begins wandering around in Petersburg, to the very last pages, I live with the characters, I am part of the story, I have my own opinions, and argue against their actions, in my head, while reading on in a frenzy. What can I say? Even if the pawnbroker is not a sympathetic character, she is an independent woman, who provides for herself, without having to sell her body to a husband or a pimp. A great man should be better able to take responsibility for his own actions.
It is Raskolnikov himself who knowingly, condescendingly, makes the calculation that an ugly, businesslike old woman does not have any value in herself. Of course not, Raskolnikov! It takes a Shakespeare or a Dostoyevsky to point that out without sounding preachy and moralist, and without siding with one character against another. In a world in which women are property, the unattractive pawnbroker is meaningless, unless you turn her riches into your property. As for the brutal killing, with an axe?
A mere trifle in the context! But as Dostoyevsky might well be one of the most brilliant authors ever describing an evil character, I commiserate with the scoundrel, with the egomaniac, charismatic murderer.
I feel for him, with him, in his dramatic stand offs with Pyotr Petrovich, his intellectual counterpart. I suffer with the psychopath, and take his side, even when I disagree with him. He creates characters with major flaws, and very different positions, and he gives all of them their space, their say, their moment on stage.
He lets a drunkard, the comical character of Marmeladov, who pushes his wife to insanity and his daughter to prostitution, revel in the pleasure of suffering, sounding almost like a philosopher when he cherishes his idea that god will honour the self-sacrifice of the women he has destroyed, and that the same god will indiscriminately have mercy on himself as well, for being so willing to suffer especially the pulling of hair does a great deal of good, according to Marmeladov, comical effect included!
Dostoyevsky lets women sacrifice themselves in the name of charity and religion. Needless to say, I have strong opinions about that, and apart from the unspeakable suffering imposed on them in their lifetime, I do not approve of any religious dogma that justifies self-sacrifice as a virtue - in our time of terrorist violence, it seems an almost obscene attitude.
And he does it so convincingly that the reader feels the urge to argue with the characters. And as an anachronistic side note, in these times of newspeakish, American-style greatness, we need to ask ourselves if that is anything to strive for at all. The hypnotic power that a charismatic personality exerts over other people.
The physical power that men exert over women and children. The mental power that educated people exert over simple minds. The financial power that wealthy people exert over hungry, poor, miserable people.
The religious power that dogma exerts over people to accept injustice in the hope of scoring high with god in the afterlife. The linguistic power that eloquence exerts to dominate an entire environment with propaganda. The individual power to say no. Two characters, both women, refuse to play the cards they are dealt. Dounia Romanovna and Katerina Ivanovna - you are my true heroes in this endlessly deep masterpiece of a novel!
Dounia - holding the revolver, ready to kill the man who has lured her into a corner and tries to blackmail her into a sexual relationship!
The most powerful scene of all. I shiver while reading. I have goosebumps! As will power goes, hers is brilliant. No man owns that woman. Thank you for that scene, Dostoyevsky! And she manages NOT to kill, thus showing her spoiled, attention-seeking, impulsive and arrogant brother who is mentally superior despite physical weakness.
Katerina - committing an act of insanity while slowly dying of consumption, and leaving her three children orphans! Instead of hiding herself and suffering in secret, she takes to the streets, forces her misery upon the world, and makes it official.
She has all the right in the world to dance, sing and make noise to point to the insanity of society, which creates a platform for a life like hers. I could go on in infinity, but I will break off here, just like Dostoyevsky breaks off in medias res, hinting at the untold sequel - the marriage between Raskolnikov and Sonia! Oh, dear, what an emotional roller coaster that must be - it is quite enough to allude to it in an epilogue to make me smile.
The brooding murderer and the saintly whore, joined together in holy suffering. Brilliant, even as a vague idea. Standing, shaking, roaring ovations!
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