Comparing Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment

One of the greatest tests of mankind is the test of extraordinaire, to see whether one is extraordinary or simply the average man. Published in 1866, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, set in St. Petersburg, Russia, describes the story of the young Russian student Raskolnikov, who through the murder of the Ivanovna sisters, attempts to identify himself as either the common man or the so-called “extraordinary” man. The extraordinary man is characterized by his ability to transgress moral laws to support his idea and to be self-serving and detached from the rest of society. They are higher than the average man in thought and in ideas: all men strive to be extraordinary. Though not truly an extraordinary man, Raskolnikov embodies a “superior” man, one who is able to think higher than the common man but whose reasoning behind motives deem him not worthy of the title “extraordinary,” as demonstrated by his different rationalizations and theories for his crime.
Raskolnikov is not the average man. In fact, he has the potential to be the complete opposite, the esteemed “extraordinary” man, defined as one “who, above good and evil, may transgress any law that stands in
In analyzing his motives and various rationalizations of different theories, Raskolnikov uses his motives and rationalizations to become a means through which he can test whether or not he is an extraordinary man. In the end, he comes to terms with the fact that he is not an extraordinary man and cannot be because he “can only love the helpless and hopeless” (Marchant 12), which if he were an extraordinary man, he would only care about himself and his own needs. Like others, Raskolnikov wishes that he could have been that one genius, the one out of a million extraordinaire, yet that is not his fate. His fate is only to be superior to