Book Review: Crime & Punishment

 “…for everything is already known to everyone, and everything hidden will be made manifest.”

My friend and I definitely took our time reading Crime and Punishment by, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Not gonna lie, after reading The Brothers Karamazov earlier this year, I’m experiencing a bit of Dostoyevsky burnout. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed this novel, but I personally need to take a break from this dude and let these two pieces of great fiction marinate for a while. 

Crime and Punishment centers around Raskolnikov, a young man who commits a murder and the effects this murder has on Raskolnikov. The reader spends quite a bit of time zoned in on his point of view and the reader experiences Raskolnikov’s psychological state before, during and after the murder. However, this novel doesn’t just focus on Raskolnikov’s crime, it also explores the various crimes and “sins” of some of the other characters. The overarching theme and question Rebekah and I discussed is, “how does society determine the moral weight of crime and are all crimes ultimately the same? 

Raskolnikov truly feels that his murder is justified because the person he kills is causing harm to multiple people.

“Hundreds, maybe thousands of lives put right; dozens of families saved from destitution, from decay, from ruin, from depravity…”

Is there ever a time in which one has a moral obligation to commit a crime for the “greater good?” If there ever a time in which lying is justified?

“…lying can always be forgiven; lying is a fine thing, because it leads to the truth. No, what irks me is that they lie and then worship their own lies.”

“They may all be drunk at my place, but they’re all honest, and though we do lie - because I lie, too - in the end we’ll lie our way to the truth, because we’re on a noble path…”

These are questions that I remember having long debates and discussions about in my sociology classes, especially my Sociology of Law and Conflict classes. We specifically discussed why murder is considered to be the worst crime and my professor argued that the outcome of a court case can often be predicted based on the parties involved and their demographics. For example, when a person of high social standing commits a crime against a lower person of social standing, the outcomes favor those with higher social status. Murder is considered particularly egregious because the person committing the murder is acting in a God-like way - who are we to judge when a person’s life should end? However, there are nuances to murder. I wrote a paper arguing that children who commits parricide (murdering a parent) statistically receive harsher sentences than parents who commit farricide (parents who murder their children) because the child is committing a murder/crime that goes against the heirarchy; the crime is committed “upwards.” All of this to say, Raskolnikov’s crime is committed towards someone who already isn’t well liked, in s sense “downwards”. Do we tend to apply more nuances and even sympathy when a crime is committed towards someone or something that is already distasteful?

One cannot discuss Crime and Punishment without talking about “madness.” Rebekah and I joked that everyone in this novel at some point gets a fever. Are we all on a spectrum of madness? Do the right circumstances have to be in place to develop madness? 

“His basic idea is that there’s no specific disorder in a mad person’s organism, but that madness is, so to speak, a logical error, and error of judgment, a mistaken view of things.”

“He was even beginning to rave. Something happened to him suddenly, as if it all suddenly went to his head.”

Raskolnikov in particular seems more predisposed to madness than the other characters.  He seems to lack impulse control and even though he is able to rationalize his decisions, he doesn’t seem to be able to comprehend their consequences until after the fact. Thus, he spends much of his time delirious, feverish and extremely moody in the aftermath of his crime. Rebekah and I were especially intrigued by Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister because she’s rational, calculated and controlled where her brother isn’t. So is Sonya, a young prostitute, who is a true victim go her circumstances, yet has this uncanny ability to remain sensible in extreme circumstances. Dostoyevsky writes such fascinating, strong and compelling female characters. Perhaps this is his homage to the Russian woman. 

Dostoyevsky likes to write characters that are nuanced; he plays Devil’s advocate on many topics and he also likes to reveal both the dark and the light in his characters.

“And how is it, how is it that you could give away your last penny, and yet kill in order to rob!” 

There’s Sonya, the prostitute, who is actually the most moral of them and religious, Svidrigailkov who is SLIMY and yet serves as a benefactor, and even though Raskolnikov commits a murder, he also helps a woman and her family after her husband suddenly dies. 

What’s also intriguing about Raskolnikov is that he never quite regrets his crime; he is always able to rationalize it. What he does end up coming to terms with is the morality of it, or rather, immoralily of it. 

“It wasn’t a human being I killed, it was a principle! So I killed a principle…”

However, he is able to eventually understand the immorality of his crime through Sonya, who consistently remains concerned over the state of his soul. Through her, he realized that spiritual redemption is possible. Dostoyevsky loves to weave in themes of religion and spirituality into his works, which he believes are the backbone of society - take faith out of society and it crumbles and man becomes depraved. Dostoyevsky also likes to use this theme to speak against socialism. Dostoyevsky personally believed that socialism is inherently evil and atheist (Specifically Marx. Marx was an atheist and some scholars claim that he was actually a satanist. His poetry makes a heavy metal goth band’s lyrics look like child’s play). 

“It started with the views of the socialists. Their views are well known: crime is a protest against the abnormality of the social set up … I’m not lying! … I’ll show you their books: with them one is always a ‘victim of the environment’ - and nothing else! Their favorite phrase! … That’s why they have such an instinctive dislike of history … That’s why they so dislike the living process of life: there’s no need for a living soul! The living soul will demand life, the living soul won’t listen to mechanics, the living soul is suspicious, the living soul is retrograde!” 

When I read this passage (condensed here for the sake of space) it made me think of some of the rhetoric we are hearing today about victimhood. I’m just going to leave this here for people to marinate on…

I just really enjoy Dostoyevsky’s storytelling and I really enjoyed Crime & Punishment. The Brothers Karamazov still takes the cake for me, but this is still a spectacular piece of fiction that deals with the complex issues of morality, spirituality, psychology and redemption. I look forward to reading more of his works.

Rating: 4/5 

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