Contents
The novel Crime and Punishment is one of Dostoyevsky’s masterpieces and most important works of world classical literature. The book is based on the selfish character of Raskolnikov, who left his legal education unfinished due to financial difficulties. However, while you are reading the novel you will come across with his good heart and compassion towards people. While you are reading Crime and Punishment, you will also easily see the good and bad aspects of human nature. Then, you will realize the criticism of the concept of justice and analysis of the struggle between compassion and cruelty.
The coincidence of a murder, which forms the basis of the book and the murder of another person with no sin at the same time and same room, changes the course of events from top to bottom. The reader’s attention is distracted at the beginning of the novel due to some personality analyses. However with the murder and the events that take place after it increase the fluency of the novel. In this point, the reader will find himself in Raskolnikov’s struggle seeking salvation in his guilty conscience and sick mood. With the multitude of abstract concepts, different psychological situations that require deep thinking and the flow of events, the novel Crime and Punishment has taken its place at the top of world classics.
Summary of Crime and Punishment
Just as Tolstoy‘s War and Peace comes to mind as a novel that reflects the analysis of the relations between society and people together with the social structure, the novel Crime and Punishment comes to mind as the best novel written about the contradictions, emotions and struggles of the individual with himself and society. The main hero of the novel, Raskolnikov, sees the view that “bad people could be killed just like insects in order to serve good people and goodness” in his inner world and sense of justice. According to him, if he kills Alyona Ivanova, who is a moneylender and harms other people, he will not only save the world from a harmful creature like an insect, but also complete his legal education and provide useful services to people with the money he will get from him.
In the course of the events, he planned with this thought and killed the moneylender Alyona Ivanova with an axe, and when her innocent sister Alyona Livazeta came to the crime scene, Raskolnikov had to kill her, as he never expected. This second unplanned murder shook all Raskolnikov’s plans and the basis of his crime which he justified in his conscience. Actually, the real starting point of the novel is the moment when this second murder is committed. After the murders, Raskolnikov quickly concealed the stolen items. However, afterward, he constantly sees the face of innocent Lizaveta whenever he closes his eyes.
Characters of the Novel
Just at this time, Raskolnikov became the usual suspect because he fainted from the fear in the police station when he was called to the police station in same day with the murders due to his debts from the student years. Especially in this point, he was caught the attention of the Commissar Petrovich, who is a very smart man. Petrovich establishes the ties between the events very well and he thought that Raskolnikov was responsible for two murders even though he had no evidence and went on it. (Crime and Punishment Book Review is very important in this context.)
Other important characters of Crime and Punishment are as follows; Raskolnikov’s old friend Razumikhin, Sonya who is also became Raskolnikov’s girlfriend at the end of the novel and works as a sex worker to support her family, Dunya, who is Raskolnikov’s sister and draws attention with her beauty and pride. Innocent Sonya, one of the main characters of the novel, is an extremely faithful and pure person. Sonya tried to support her stepmother Katerina and siblings by being a sex worker. Raskolnikov deeply loved her, but despised her at the same time because of her work. However, towards the end of the novel, he could not stand it and confessed to Sonya about the murders he had committed and his love towards her. Sonya, stated that his soul would find peace only by going to the police and confessing his crime and paying the penalty for his crime.
Dunya is important
On the other hand, Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister, agreed to marry a wealthy man in order to save her family and to support his brother with his university education that her brother had left unfinished. His older brother Raskolnikov did not accept this situation and opposed this marriage. He insistently refused her to make such a sacrifice for himself. At the end of the novel, his sister Dunya married Razumikhin, who was his brother’s best friend and supported him.
One of the most important characters of the novel Crime and Punishment, which is one of the most important works of its period and classical literature and which attracts the reader with its descriptions, is the commissar Petrovich, who makes Raskolnikov confess his crime at the end. The commissar, who suspects Raskolnikov at the beginning of the novel and investigates his past and the depths of his character, intuitively knows that Raskolnikov is guilty despite the lack of evidence. Petrovich’s intuition and great analysis power eventually gave him the strength to make Raskolnikov confess his guilt. The reader will be amazed and excited as they read his analysis and mindset. (In order to buy the novel please click here.)
Message of Crime and Punishment
Raskolnikov, who is able to survive owing to Sonya’s beliefs, Dunya’s sacrifices and Razumikhin’s support, oscillates between the guilt he experiences and the urge for rightness that he tries to create in his mind set throughout the novel. Finally, Sonya will go with Raskolnikov, who has confessed to his crime and was sent to Siberia to pay the penalty for his crime, and will wait for Raskolnikov, who receives a reasonable sentence due to extenuating circumstances. The novel Crime and Punishment, in general terms, examines the concepts of justice, crime, punishment and the concepts of poverty and wealth in Russia of the period, with the concept of social justice, which highlights the contradictions within the human being.
The book is approximately 700 pages and for the reader who recognizes the characters in the first 100 pages of the book, the reading speed and fluency of the book will increase after these pages. This valuable work, in which we will find parts of ourselves while reading the novel, will enable the reader to make his own analysis and in a way make him ask himself the question of what I would do if I were in Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov’s situation.
