Comparing Dostoyesky's Crime And Punishment

By the end of Dostoyesky's Crime and Punishment, the reader is no longer under the illusion of the possible existence of "extraordinary" men. For an open-minded reader, and even perhaps the closed-minded ones too, the book is a journey through Raskolnikov's proposed theory on crime. It is a theory based on the ideas that had "been printed and read a thousand times"(313) by both Hegel and Nietzsche. Hegel, a German philosopher, influenced Dostoyesky with his utilitarian emphasis on the ends rather than the means whereby a superman existed as one that stood above the ordinary man, but worked for the benefit of all mankind. Nietsche's more selfish philosophy focused on the rights to power which allowed one to act in a Hegelian manner. In committing his crime, Raskolnikov experienced the ultimate punishment as he realized that his existence was not that of the "extraordinary" man presented in his
Rather, Raskolnikov is forced to confess by several factors including the very fear of being discovered. This fear is emphasized to illustrate his displacement from the "extraordinary" man; an "extraordinary" man would not have possessed such fears since he would know that he had a right to execute such actions . When Raskolnikov eventually does confess, first to Sonia and then to Porfiry, the novel climaxes as the reader abandons all hope for the existence of any truth amidst the theory of the "extraordinary." After his confession, Raskolnikov experienced the physical punishments for his actions; however, far more painstaking was his previous punishment as he suffered the loss of a conscience battle upon the self realization that he was after all just an "ordinary man" or that, even worse so, if he was indeed an "extraordinary" one, that his theory had been an invalid waste of time. In a subconscious effort to protect his lifelong work, he confessed, thus admitting to ordinariness, yet preserving the credibility of his