One of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky’s most famous novels is enjoyable as a compulsively readable thriller, a challenging philosophical battleground, or as a moving story of spiritual transformation touching on the deepest questions of our existence.
“It is a psychological account of a crime. A young man expelled from the university ... unstable in his ideas, has surrendered to several strange, ‘unfinished’ ideas which are in the air. He decided to get out of his bad position at one stroke. He decided to kill an old woman ... who lent money on interest. The old woman is stupid, deaf, sick, greedy, takes usurious interest rates, is mean, and oppresses the life of another person. ... He spends almost a month after that until the final catastrophe... There, too, the psychological process of the crime develops. Insoluble problems arise for the murderer; unsuspected and unexpected feelings torment his heart. The truth of God and the law of the earth take their toll.”
This was how Dostoevsky described “Crime and Punishment” in a draft of a letter to a magazine where he sought publication. It is a psychological and spiritual drama, love story, prophecy, and detective novel rolled into one. In short, it is a masterpiece.
Literary Device: The ‘Double’
Dostoevsky makes use of various characters as “foils” or “doubles” to mirror and contrast aspects of Raskolnikov’s character. These show what he is and what he could become, as they represent the psychological and moral paths open to him. Some lead to destruction and some to redemption.Literary critics have long recognized Dostoevsky’s penchant in his novels for “split characters”: people who manifest seemingly contradictory character traits over the course of the story. This may actually be one reason why his characters are so realistic, dynamic, and psychologically intriguing, as people are often contradictory.
Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment” is no exception. In fact, his name is derived from a Russian word meaning “split” or “schism.” He possesses contradictory tendencies within his soul: On one hand, he is a murderer, capable of extraordinary coldness, callousness, arrogance, narcissism, and megalomania. He consistently rejects the love of his mother and sister and the anxious assistance of his loyal friend Dmitri Prokofich Razumikhin, to the point of cruelty. He believes the common rules of morality don’t apply to him.
On the other hand, a corner of his soul is given up to exquisite sensitivity, a hatred of hypocrisy and ignoble behavior, an awareness of the sufferings of others, remarkable compassion, the capacity for self-sacrifice, and the desire to be loved and to love. We see this side of his character manifest when he gives money to the family of a poor drunkard, Marmeladov, even though he’s destitute himself, when he tries to protect an innocent girl from the molestations of another man, when he seeks to prevent his sister’s marriage to a self-satisfied buffoon, and when he is more repulsed than fascinated by the sly, hardened hedonism of the womanizer Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.
Raskolnikov’s dualism manifests externally through characters who reflect him in important ways: his sister Dunya, his friend Razumikhin, his romantic interest Sophia (Sonya) Ivanovna, and, of course, the dastardly Svidrigailov. These characters embody and externalize the internal conflict occurring within the murderer’s soul.
The Twin Poles: Despair and Hope
When Svidrigailov appears, he fascinates and repulses Raskolnikov. As Mombrol puts it, “Time and again, Raskolnikov confronts [Svidrigailov] in attempts to develop a psychological affinity with him.” In their first meeting, Svidrigailov tells Raskolnikov in his slyly affable yet sardonic way, “Now didn’t I tell you there was a common point between us, eh?” And indeed, as much as Raskolnikov is puzzled and troubled by the oily Svidrigailov, real resemblances exist. Both are proud loners. Both are killers. And both have adopted philosophies that place them “above” moral laws. Both have overstepped moral boundaries.Suddenly, the full consequences of Raskolnikov’s nihilistic philosophy reveal themselves to him in living form: the cruel, smiling face of Svidrigailov, for whom there is no limit to wickedness and spiritual emptiness. Raskolnikov sees this disorder of moral depravity for what it is, calling his foil “disgusting.” But Svidrigailov is simply the logical conclusion of Raskolnikov’s own life philosophy. This is what Raskolnikov will become if he stays on his current path. Dostoevsky rightly identifies such a fate with pure “despair.” Svidrigailov’s evil is a product of a cosmic ennui, a disillusionment with existence, drowning itself in increasingly meaningless pleasures.
On the other extreme is Sonya Ivanovna, daughter of a drunkard, driven to prostitution out of desperation. Yet Raskolnikov discovers that she is profoundly pious and religious in spite of her sinful way of life. He is drawn to her suffering, aware of the goodness in her soul, and confused and challenged by her religiosity. Almost against his will, she draws out his the compassionate, gentle side. They are both outcasts—a prostitute and a murderer—both suffering internal anguish for their sins, both blessed (or cursed) by a deeply sensitivity to the sufferings of others, and both passionately committed to their principles. Raskolnikov says to her, “We’re cursed together.”
Through their fraught, nervous, hushed conversations in Sonya or Raskolnikov’s little attic apartments, Sonya’s message becomes clear, though she never states it outright: If he ever wants to be free or whole again, Raskolnikov must repent of the murder and embrace the path of suffering for sin. That path is one of humility, degradation, dust. At one point Sonya humbly tells Raskolnikov, “I cannot know divine Providence. ... And who put me here to judge who is to live and who is not to live?”
Sonya’s humility is the answer to Raskolnikov’s pride, the pride that drove him to call another human a “louse” and condemn her to death by his own hand. In the novel’s final sections, Raskolnikov makes a gesture of humility by kissing the earth, showing that his towering amoral theories and nihilistic fantasies have been reduced to dust, and he reduced to dust with them. He was not, after all, a “superman” above the laws of morality. It was not his place to issue sentences of life and death upon others.
Sonya is hope, the embodiment of the path of redemption, not only because she echoes the part of Raskolnikov’s soul that encompasses high ideals, self-sacrifice, and love, but also because she proves through her own life that even a great sinner may not surrender completely to evil, may maintain hope of forgiveness. In one pivotal scene, she reads to Raskolnikov the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. The import is clear. Even a soul dead to sin can be raised again to life.
But the soul must desire life and the self-abnegation that accompanies a confession of wrongdoing. Svidrigailov can’t accept this, and in the end, kills himself—the ultimate act of despair. But more than this, symbolically, his destruction represents Raskolnikov’s rejection of the path of moral anarchy that he began to tread earlier in the novel. That part of his psyche is purged. He turns to Sonya and her path. At the novel’s most crucial moment, it is her quiet presence that strengthens Raskolnikov to make the right decision.
During one of their exchanges, Raskolnikov asks Sonya a question that seems to sum up one essential issue of the novel: “But tell me, finally, how such shame and baseness can be combined in you beside other opposite and holy feelings?” Indeed, that’s one of the mysteries of the human heart. How can it contain such a mixture of good and evil impulses? Peace for Raskolnikov can come only if he heals the schism within himself between “baseness” and “holy feelings,” a lifelong struggle for most people.
