Crime And Punishment

Crime and Punishment

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Fyodor Dostoevsky in his fictional novel Crime and Punishment, written in 1866, explores redemption through suffering and the inner thoughts of a "criminal" by providing insight into a young man named Raskolnikov's mind before and after the murder of a decrepit old pawnbroker. In Crime and Punishment, a young scholar named Raskolnikov murders a miserable old pawnbroker to prove a theory of his, which states that extraordinary people do not have to abide by laws, and descends into an altered state of mind that ultimately leads to his imprisonment. The story of Crime and Punishment takes place in the late 1800s in a filthy industrial Russia; however, Raskolnikov feels he is superior to his surroundings and peers and thus looks down on them with contempt. Three stylistic elements are prevalent in Crime and Punishment: religious imagery, motifs, and narrative voice, all of which play a major role in the development of the story. The meaning of Crime and Punishment is to prove that those who disregard human emotion and spiritual complexity and believe in rationalism are not only doomed to fail but represent a threat to society (Connolly).
The life of Fyodor Dostoevsky makes it easy to see how parts of his novels are so bleak. Born in Moscow in 1822, Fyodor grew up in a middle-class family that owned a small estate and actually had a few serfs working for them. Dostoevsky's mother was a religious woman who died before Fyodor was sixteen, leaving him with his tyrannous father. To escape the oppressive wrath of his father, young Fyodor began reading the works of Nikolai Gogol, T. A. Hoffman and Honore de Balzac (Frank). Fyodor left for college to train as an engineer in St. Petersburg, and while he was gone his ruthless father was murdered by his own serfs. Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov plot revolves around the murder of a tyrannous father by one of his sons, perhaps a reflection of Dostoevsky's...