Analysis Of Crime And Punishment By Fyodor Dostoevsky

In Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov finds himself torn between the forces of good and evil and becomes unsure of his footing on such unstable ground. He believes that he can put good into the world by killing his evil pawnbroker, but he ends up having his world go spiralling out of control due to unforeseen circumstances. Raskolnikov believes that extraordinary men should be exempt from commonly perceived “wrongdoing” because they are more intelligent than the common masses. However, extraordinary entails the fulfillment of prerequisites that Raskolnikov has neither the will or the wherewithal to complete. Raskolnikov sees himself as an extraordinary man because he is willing to go to brutal ends to justify virtuous
Furthermore, his thinking is constituted of poor explanations of why he is remorseful of his crimes, for he believes “Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart” (Dostoevsky 3.5.264) because he sees his feelings as pity that his victims were unfortunate enough to need to be killed, despite Alyona and Lizaveta’s perceived innocence. Raskolnikov is incapable of having the “broad consciousness” he so proudly boasted about due to him being an echochamber of his own radical nihilist ideals. If he were as aware as he believes himself to be, he would know that his murders were not justified. Alyona may not be a spotless victim, but her mentally challenged sister Lizaveta is. Lizaveta was caught in the crossfire of Raskolnikov’s dirty deed and thus her death should weigh on his conscious as a severe sin and not the compassion he wishes it represented. The collateral damage that Lizaveta’s death represents is reprehensible and should not be seen as a necessary casualty to protect the masses. If Raskolnikov was truly of high intellect, he would have never allowed such a casualty to happen in the first place. His work was hasty and sloppy, for “He was terribly hurried… It was not so much that his hands were trembling as that he
His sociopathic remark reflects a disconnect from reality in that he finds the only fault in his actions being his failure to send his mission to completion. Raskolnikov’s mind is tied retrospectively to what he wishes would have happened, and he is unable to see reality in an authentic light, for his fixation is that he nearly got away with murder because he is too prideful to admit Lizaveta did not deserve death. This blunder is due to his misappropriation of worth in that the wealth Alyona represents far outweighs the sanctity of Lizaveta’s innocent stature; Raskolnikov’s self interest plays far too large of a role in his decision making because he consistently chooses to passively ignore his self imposed values for cheap gratification of evil. Again, sin gets the best of Raskolnikov seeing that he is unable to overcome his