Notes on Crime and Punishment

Detailing Chapters 1-5

Without a doubt, Dostoevsky is my favorite writer. I only began reading his work a few years ago, starting with Notes from the Underground, which I thought was fantastic. But it was after reading The Idiot that I felt I understand the full breadth of his genius. Myshkin’s final moments with Rogozhin may be the most effected I’ve ever been by a piece of art in my life.

I’ve been sort of taking my time going through the rest of his works, reading other books in between each one. But I must admit, I always look the most forward to eventually returning to his. And so now I’ve finally landed on his most famous work, Crime and Punishment.

As I go through it, I’ll mostly be using these posts as a way to remember important things throughout the novel. Because of that, these writings won’t have any inherent structure and will likely jump around between different ideas. Still, I thought they might be helpful to someone else reading through the novel who may happen to come across this post one day, so I figured it would be nice to document them here as a kind of public diary.

My impressions

From the first page I get why this book is Dostoevsky’s most popular. It’s fast paced and Raskolnikov is a fascinating character. Before I read the book, for some reason I had this impression that at least before he commits murder, he was a bit more like Stavrogin from Demons.1 That is, stoic, more sure of himself, and generally un-compassionate and disinterested.

There is some truth to this, as there is a section in Chapter 3 where Raskolnikov is described as distant from his peers at the university and perceived as carrying a sense of superiority over them. But I was actually taken more just by how compassionate, even if neurotically, Dostoevsky sets him up to be in these initial chapters.

In almost every chapter so far, Raskolnikov has shown real care and sympathy for those around him. He leaves money for Marmeladov’s destitute family, despite having very little himself (and immediately regrets it). He then saves an underage drunk girl from potentially being raped by confronting a man much bigger than him and giving a police officer money to get her home (which he also immediately regrets). Later, we see his anguish, mixed with pride, at the thought of his sister sacrificing herself by marrying a man she neither loves nor respects so that he might one day help Raskolnikov secure a job (which he sees through anyways).

Interestingly, Raskolnikov is compassionate by nature, something he seems to deeply despise about himself. And this makes a lot of sense given the context and setting of the narrative. The world Raskolnikov inhabits in Crime and Punishment is quite nightmarish. It is a world where compassion is swallowed by an endless abyss of degradation.

I think Dostoevsky gives us insight into this through Raskolnikov’s dream. In it, he is a small child walking with his father when they come across an obnoxious man with a group of people. The man leads the group to a carriage being pulled by a single horse. He beckons more and more people to get into the carriage and begins to whip his horse first out of seeming necessity and then with perverse pleasure. As an old man begins to question his motives, he begins to shout that because it is his horse he can do what he likes with it. Then he begins to beat the horse needlessly until finally he takes a crowbar to its back, killing it. Raskolnikov is deeply disturbed by the man’s actions and first reacts by running to the horse and kissing its face on its welts and then by attacking the man before his father finally intervenes.

It’s an interesting sequence that tells us many things about not just Raskolnikov, but also Marmeladov’s family, Roskolnikov’s mother and Dunya, the elderly pawnbroker he will soon murder, and as I stated above, the world in which these characters inhabit.

It gives us direct thematic entry into the central question Dostoevsky will ask us all throughout the rest of the novel (and has already asked in the preceding chapter).

A man needlessly tortures his horse, forces it to work when he knows the task he forcing it to do is impossible and then viciously beats it to death. It’s cruel and senseless.

I would imagine most people witnessing such an act would without question, condemn the man. I would condemn such a man had I witnessed it. But upon which grounds can we condemn him? It was his horse after all, and though I am not familiar with 19th century horse law in Russia, I will give the man the benefit of the doubt and say he was within his legal right to do exactly as he did. What right then do we have to judge him at all? Don’t we torture animals at a mass scale everyday for our own pleasure? To what extent can we justify this action as necessary?

These questions of guilt and innocence, then, may seem simple on the surface but quickly become impossible matrices upon any further serious examination. I’m sure it is this that will haunt Raskolnikov throughout the rest of the novel.

Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov offers another fascinating ‘game’ within Dostoevsky’s question. Introduced to us and Raskolnikov in chapter 2, Marmeladov is an absolute wretch. I think it is fair to say he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He is a poor drunkard, and worse he would rather spend his money on alcohol then care for his sick wife or hungry children. He even says as much.

His wife came from a respectable family which makes her current destitution all the more tragic (I believe Marmeladov also says this outright). What’s worse, Marmeladov had once managed to reform himself and, through an act of kindness, was given a respectable government job and regained his wife’s favor, only to relapse and lose everything again.

Marmeladov’s current degraded state can be seen as his own perverse desire to be punished for his actions. Perhaps his acknowledgement of his own degradation, then, is what allows him retain some form of hope within that? I don’t know if that’s the right word (maybe status is better), but something like that.

But it is interesting that in his monologue, even if its just a part of his drunken stupor, that he talks about Christian forgiveness. He claims that Sonya, his daughter, who has become a prostitute to support the family, will be forgiven for her degradation because she endured it for an honorable reason. But he then argues that he, too, will be forgiven because he recognizes his own degradation and is therefore meek within it.

From a rational viewpoint, again, it is quite easy to understand and forgive Sonya’s actions while simultaneously condemning Marmeladov’s. But Marmeladov seems to suggest that, in the eyes of God, why should the distinction between the reasons for their degradation even matter, so long as they repent?

And if we’re being rational, if we can understand and forgive Sonya, should we not also be able to understand and forgive Raskolnikov for his soon-to-be murder of the old pawnbroker? After all, she is old, horrible, and cruel, and many desperate people stand to benefit from her death. And remember, Raskolnikov’s world is an abyss where kindness is inert. It only allows horrible people to further flourish.

Although it can be a nice tale to tell, beyond a select few, we do not truly believe there is no good that can come from killing a person. It would only take a single picture of a certain many men throughout history for me to convince you we do not. So what then is the criteria upon which we decide who is innocent and who is guilty?

Good stuff so far.