Review by Edward Tanguay February 23, 1997

"All I can say is, it nearly finished me. It was like having an illness."
-- Robert Louis Stevenson on reading Crime and Punishment

Reading this book makes you ill because from the beginning to the end you watch as psychological forces eat away at the thoughts and actions of their victim causing him to finally confess to the hideous crime he has committed. The story is basically the struggle between Raskolnikov's Napoleon-übermensch theory and his conscience which make him confess to his crime. Dostoevsky's genius is in describing how Raskolnikov struggles in his thoughts and actions. His thoughts become increasingly disjointed and desperate and his actions show that he has an increasing need to escape the uncertainty of being convicted, to talk about the crime, to confess, and to suffer for his crime. It is even at times humorous the extent to which Raskolnikov at times becomes confused in his bungled yet undiscovered crime. Here after the police call about a routine visit:

'But this is unheard of! I have never had anything to do with the police! And why should it happen just to-day?' he thought, tormented with indecision. 'Oh, Lord, at least let it be over soon!' He could almost have knelt down and prayed, but he laughed at his own impulse; he must put his trust in himself, not in prayer. He began to dress hurriedly. 'If I'm done for, I'm done for! It's all one . . .I'll put the sock on!' he thought suddenly, 'it will get more dirt rubbed into it and all the stains will disappear.' But no sooner had he put it on than he dragged it off with horror and loathing.

Porfiry is a master of the psychological forces which he knows will run Raskolnikov down slowly and steadily. He trusts in the fact that laws aren't just handed down to us but that they mark out human nature and must be followed. He seems to be the master mind behind all of this. He understands the affect that breaking the law has on the human mind. Breaking the law means putting yourself apart from your fellow human beings. He lets the criminal incriminate himself. It's uncanny how Profiry manages to keep Raskolnikov hovering around him until he finally confesses--it's also uncanny to realize how natural it is for Raskolnikov to come under Porfiry's psychological spell. This leads to a central question of the book: are laws just abitrary human constructs or are there psychological laws which govern our behavior in societies. Raskolnikov believes (as he wrote in his article) that people can rise above human laws as Napoleon did, but Profiry (and Dostoevsky) believe otherwise:

What is running away?--it's merely formal; the point isn't that he won't run away because he has nowhere to run to, but that psychologically he won't escape, he, he! What an expression! By a law of his nature he wouldn't escape, even if he had somewhere to escape to. Have you ever seen a moth with a candle? Well, he'll be just like that, he'll circle round me as if I were a candle: Freedom will no longer be a boon to him; he will begin to brood, he will get himself into a muddle, entangle his own feet in a net, and worry himself to death! . . . More than that, he himself will provide me with a mathematical proof, of the nature of two and two make four--if only I allow a long enough interval between the acts of the drama . . . And he'll keep on, keep on circling round me, closer and closer, and then, plop! he'll fly straight into my mouth and I'll swallow him, and that will be very satisfactory, he, he, he! Don't you believe me?

In fact, Profiry explains to Raskolnikov that the reason the criminal will turn himself in is that the criminal "can't get on without us . . . because suffering, Rodion Romanovich, is a great thing . . ." Profiry means that the criminal needs the police and the suffering. It is all part of society, i.e. an individual is not morally free to do anything he wants, but that psychology sets limits.

Dostoyevsky places a high importance on dreams and feelings instead of logic and theories. The dream at the beginning of the book of the men beating the horse to death and the dream at the end of the book about the breakout of a Europe-wide disease have their likenesses in feelings throughout the book. Dreams seem to be for Dostoyevsky imprints with which to understand aspects of life:

A sick man's dreams are often extraordinarily distinct and vivid and extremely life-like. A scene may be composed of the most unnatural and incongruous elements, but the setting and presentation are so plausible, the details so subtle, so unexpected, so artistically in harmony with the whole picture, that the dreamer could not invent them for himself in his waking state even if he were an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev. Such morbid dreams always make a strong impression on the dreamer's already disturbed and excited nerves, and are remembered for a long time.

Svidrigaylov was an example of the type of man who has no moral limits and does not seek suffering for his sins. He is a man without eternal beliefs and hence suffers a type of eternal boredom. Sonya eventually led Raskolnikov to redemption because he had a sense of the need for suffering and punishment. But Svidrigaylov, devoid of any such eternal sentiment, ended his life in suicide. Svidrigaylov's life fits to Raskolnikov's dream of the European plague--everyone living for himself, joining armies and then fighting among themselves for their own pleasures and purposes.

I liked how the ending was in a separate epilogue. It had a mystic tone, far-removed from the rest of book's action (from St. Petersburg to Siberia) and for these reasons seemed to give a sobering morning-after feel in which Dostoevsky was able to show the psychological changes that come about through suffering for a crime. Sonya (or "Sofya", Greek for "wisdom") plays an angelic role here adding to the heavenly, redeeming atmosphere. I liked this mystical type of ending because the book was not about the character Raskolnikov himself (we don't really care what happens to him in Siberia) but about the issue of psychological redemption and the possibility of redemption itself in our scientific age. With this epilogue, Dostoevsky's answer is clear: human beings are not just selfish unitary creatures with no moral fiber, but rather, there is substance in the eternal and through it there is hope for redemption.

Dostoevsky's skill in description makes his writing full of symbols. I liked the effect of Raskolnikov standing at Alyona's door waiting to get in before he murdered her:

Someone was standing silently just inside the door listening, just as he was doing outside it, holding her breath and probably also with her ear to the door.

. . . then after the murder, it happens again, this time with Raskolnikov on the inside!

The unknown visitor was also at the door. They were standing now, opposite one another, as he and the old woman had stood with the door dividing them, when he had listened there a short time before.

This switcheroo is symbolic in that the roles of monster and victim reversed: Raskolnikov becomes the victim of his crime and the unknown is standing outside the door waiting for him. Nice effect.

I also liked the description of the disolution of ideas in Raskolnikov's head and his increasingly desperate actions. Dostoevsky can describe a madman well:

He did not sleep, but lay there in a stupor. If anybody had entered the room he would have sprung up at once with a cry. Disjointed scraps and fragments of ideas floated through his mind, but he could not seize one of them, or dwell upon any, in spite of all his efforts . . .

. . . a strange idea seemed to be pecking away in his head, like a chicken emerging from the shell, and all his attention was fixed on it.

He thought that if anybody were to speak to him, he would spit and snarl at them like an animal . . .

This book may make you feel ill in that it puts you into the mind of a madman who is battling his thoughts and conscience after committing a horrendous double murder. But in a wider sense the book contains the hopeful viewpoint that the world is not just an existential battle ground for individual desires and interests to fight themselves out without any real underlying moral structure but that there is hope for a social, moral fiber and a belief in eternal things. It is a 20th-century-like book with a positive twist--still pertinent today.

This book was also Russian through and through. You get a good piece of an interesting time in Russian history (after the freeing of the serfs) and the philosophy and thought that was going on at the time. St. Petersburg is quite a unique city and the Russian a unique culture. This book captures a piece of both.

Edward Tanguay

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