This was a very long book (656 pages in the Penguin Classics edition)! I started reading it a couple of years ago, up until the point when the main character was about to commit a crime.
As I anticipated, I lost a lot of respect and empathy for the main character once he committed the crime. I like heroes to realize their wrongdoing and change. Unfortunately, you have to wade through many hundreds of pages for him to get there. Even then, he only confesses to the crime after being found out. I was satisfied there was some redemption in the epilogue (finally!).
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian novelist who wrote Crime and Punishment in 1866, was highly influential in the development of modern literature. He brought many unique political, psychological, and philosophical ideas to his works, and Crime and Punishment embodies them all.
Dostoyevsky was very politically active. He hung around intellectual, utopian socialists and was arrested for it. He spent eight months in prison before being marched out to an execution with the other members of the group. They were a trigger-pull away from their end when they were informed that the tsar had mercifully decided to spare them. Dostoyevsky’s experience later inspired the novel Crime and Punishment.
Dostoyevsky was familiar with pain, suffering, social problems, and death. After his life was spared, he spent four years in a Siberian prison before being forced into service as a soldier. He had a bad case of epilepsy and was known to have seizures. He later married a widow who died of consumption.
Though most of his life reads like a tragedy, Dostoyevsky eventually started to see the goodness of people in his later years. He grew less cynical and turned more towards faith, as he was influenced by Russian Orthodoxy.1
The Crime
Dostoyevsky used his life experiences to write Crime and Punishment. The difference is, the main character Raskolnikov commits a far more hideous crime than simply belonging to a group of intellectual revolutionaries.
Raskolnikov thinks of himself as a brave Napoleon, overcoming an obstacle to right a wrong in society. His way of thinking leading up to and following the crime could be termed consequentialist, as he believes the ends justify the means.
The crime he commits (spoiler alert!) is the horrific and graphic murder of two older women. Raskolnikov hides behind strategy and rationalizations in the time leading up to, during, and after the crime, believing that society would be wrong to consider what he did to be a crime.
Dostoyevsky delves into the complexities of a criminal’s psychology, and explores some of the external factors that sometimes drive people to commit crimes, such as oppression and poverty.
Raskolnikov has many different motivations for killing one of the women: she exploits poor people (including himself), he wants to save his sister from a bad marriage, and he desperately needs money.
The Guilt
Throughout the story, guilt eats away at Raskolnikov. This book serves as a study in the psychological effect of believing one can take justice into one’s own hands…only to find out that one is a poor judge.
When Raskolnikov discovers that he is not above the moral law which governs ordinary people, he begins to realize his guilt. It starts to drive him insane, until he is certain that he has no other choice but to confess.
The Punishment
This book explores different types of punishment. One of these is how we punish ourselves. Raskolnikov punishes himself psychologically long before he is arrested.
He puts himself in danger of being found out and starts dropping hints to others that he committed the murders everyone is talking about. He is in a nervous condition and constantly collapses from the mental strain.
On top of that, he goes through additional psychological torture when he is followed and continually interrogated, especially by a detective who implies but does not outright state what he knows.
Raskolnikov is eventually imprisoned in Siberia (like Dostoyevsky was), and forced into penal servitude. He works himself to the bone, and into a state of illness. Finally, a sense of shame and despondency set in. He is only rescued from these by the love of Sonya, a young girl who has loyally followed him after he showed kindness to her family.
Raskolnikov knows Sonya’s religious convictions, and realizes she has something he needs. He begins to read the New Testament, and the final seven years of his sentence don’t look so gloomy anymore.
I came away from this book thinking it is like a very dark and depressing murder mystery. Unlike other murder mysteries, the question is not whodunnit but, will the murderer be found out?
This was not the most pleasant read during a stressful pandemic and winter storm season, but I am happy to have finished it! If you’ve read this book I’d love to hear your thoughts 🙂
Sources:
1https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky/Crime-and-Punishment
Classic Reads 
Crime and Punishment is in a perpetual three-way tie as my favourite book ever. Was it the David MacDuff translation your read, that’s the version by Penguin that I have.
There have been a few reading experiences that have made me feel positively feverish. One of those was the first time I read Raskolnikov’s nightmare, about the horse. Hell if I know why but that scene was so visceral.
On my last reread, a different scene produced a similar reaction. I’ll confess that I was stoned while reading, so that somewhat intensified my feelings. But it was when Svidrigalov (sorry spelling, can’t be bothered checking) confesses his past to Raskol. More than ever before the man seemed utterly reprehensible to me. When the scene was finished I had to take a break.
Based on my own experience, C&P is a book that you will never read the same way twice. Each time is like the first time.
I will eventually stop reading it. But only because I will have died.
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Yes, it was the David McDuff translation. Dostoyevsky seems to have a penchant for writing those feverish scenes. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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Great review! I read this book both in the original (my native) and in the English translation, and like you, I found it hard to sympathise with Raskolnikov despite all the attempts of the author to make us do so (even if “nuanced” attempts). I recognise that this is an outstanding book in many respects, a literary masterpiece in many ways, and that is the only criticism I can level towards it. I simply found it impossible to see him as a person seeking final forgiveness given the horrendous nature of his crime – murdering two defenceless women. Nor do I think in retrospect it is realistic. One really has to have from the beginning a certain psychopathic and totally indifferent-to-humanity psychological make-up to commit a crime of this nature so coolly (it is because of this, brutal and cold-blooded murders are generally rare).
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Thanks! I would love to one day read it in Russian, but that would be a long time in the future if ever. Russian is a cool but complicated language and I’ve only learned the alphabet and a small list of words. Thanks for sharing your thoughts- I agree!
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Hi Melissa. I haven’t read it, but I did attempt it once and didn’t get very far, I don’t recall why. From your review I feel I have a good overview of the key themes, and it does sound very interesting. I’m not very patient these days when it comes to reading long books, unless they genuinely interest me and hold my attention. In any case, I enjoyed your review.
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Thanks!
It can be difficult to trudge through at times it is a slow-moving plot with long speeches. You definitely need patience and time on your hands to read this one!
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