Crime and Punishment

Book, 1866

Premise - A young man decides to murder and rob a pawn broker woman whom he believes has no worth in society. After murdering her and her sister with an axe, he has to struggle with his tainted conscience as the police try to solve the mystery of the double homicide. As the investigation continues, his mental state deteriorates as he swirls in his own guilt.

Review - There's an episode of one of my favorite television shows, How to Get Away With Murder, called "Hello Raskolnikov," and I never understood the reference. This was recently added to my reading list just because it's on several lists of important classics. But as soon as I read the description, that it was about a young man named Raskolnikov, the How to Get Away with Murder fangirl in me instantly perked up. FINALLY I would understand that reference, from a novel that I think heavily influenced the show as well.

Raskolnikov is an example of a man who only got caught because he couldn't keep a straight face. The crime itself was imperfect, but solid. There was no concrete evidence against him. The only reason people started to suspect him was because he would literally faint every time someone brought up the murders, and yeah, that's a bit suspicious... So that was a similar theme in How to Get Away with Murder, that each of the characters stressing out and folding under the pressure is what threatens their safety more than the actual evidence of the crime.

I liked this book. For some reason, I was expecting something a bit more like The Stranger, where a man commits a crime and then has to live for a period of time in prison and think about his wrongdoings. I believe in Dostoyevsky himself was imprisoned, or sentenced to death for some crime (but I don't recall him being actually guilty of anything menacing, so I suppose it's the exact reverse of Raskolnikov's situation). Quite the opposite, Raskolnikov spends the majority of the book as a free man. He commits the crime, and the rest of the plot is about him being the only one who knows it. It's an intriguing concept.

I found the themes of the novel to be quite powerful. I always take the stance that anyone can be redeemed from their mistakes and crimes, so long as they feel a level of remorse equivalent to that of the pain they caused from their crime. With murder, that's a hell of a lot of remorse to go through. The thing is, remorse is not the same as suffering. Raskolnikov suffers a lot after he murders the two women, which evokes a lot of sympathy from readers. We still want to like our protagonist. But honestly, I don't think he ever truly feels remorseful. He says multiple times his only crime wasn't the murder itself, but that nothing good came of the murder. He intended to rob the woman, but ended up taking very little and hiding it away, too scared to be found with the evidence. But, if he had taken the money and used it to save himself and his family from poverty, then he would have found the murder justifiable. He did not ever care that he ended two women's lives. He felt more shame around the concept of being a "murderer" and having broken the law, than he did about the actual murders themselves.

That brings up another very important question, of whether or not Raskolnikov was sociopathic - did he have some sort of antisocial personality disorder? When I think of antisocial personality disorder, I don't always think of those without any conscience - I first think of those who have a conscience, but it is so overwhelmingly overridden by impulse to commit terrible acts. There is good evidence for this in the quote I have listed below.

Raskolnikov writes an essay that certainly feels like it's written by a psychopath. He writes about how certain men have the permission to commit whatever terrible acts they want because they are of increased intelligence. He wanted to believe he was one of these special men himself, but he spends most of the novel reconciling with the fact that he isn't (which is evidence to say, he was NOT a psychopath). But this old-school reverence for pure rational thinking is something I find very frightening. His essay reminded me of those classic ethics questions - like if you could save a group of people from being hit by a train by throwing another person in front of it, would you do it? This guy writes about how the smartest of men have no problem with this - no emotions that would get in the way. They have the right to kill because they know how to do it for the greater good. How freakin' terrifying is that conceptualization of intelligence.

This "for the greater good" emotionally distant thinking also fits into the political culture of the novel. This is a book about deep, DEEP poverty, and a wish for a more equal society. Raskolnikov desperately needs the money. When he first decides to kill the woman, it's because he overheard a conversation about how this old woman has no use for the money, and theoretically, someone could steal from her and give it to poorer people who need it.

Speaking of poverty, everybody is so FREAKIN' FRAGILE in this book. I think it's because all they eat is cabbage... but seriously, they all faint and tremble so easily, especially the women. And they turn pale, to the point where their lips turn pale too, at the slightest moment of distress. I know these are probably just expressions, but sheesh. These poor people.

My main issue with this novel was that it was too long. I think I spent months getting through all of it. And I don't necessary have a problem with long books - I love long books, if they have reason to be long. I loved the parts of the book where there was heavy plot. The murder itself and the immediate aftermath were by far the highlights of the novel. But those happen very early on. This book could have gotten the exact same points across through much less text. After the murders, not much happens within it. The only other story I can think of that gave me this same feeling of being dragged through mud was the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Each scene in that film was twice as long as it should have been. There was also a lot of repetitiveness in the way things were phrased. The same sentences seemed to be said over and over again. I was dealing with an English translation of a Russian text as well, so I don't know if any of that can be attributed to translation, but believe me, it felt too long.

Speaking of Russian translations, the only other major complaint I have is how hard it was to keep track of everyone's names. Every character had not one, not two, but three names they seemed to be addressed by. And they all sound the same to me - lots of v's, y's, and n's. Even our main character, you had to remember that his full name was Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, and he could have gone by any of those names. It was very confusing and honestly I don't know who was who. I figured out all of the names for Raskolnikov, as well as his sister, mother, best friend, and lover, but everyone else I got mixed up all the time. (68/100)

Quote - “Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.”

What to look out for - I mean, the first parts of the novel when he's thinking about doing the killing, then does the killing, and then freaks out afterwards... that's the good stuff.

If you liked this book, then of course I'd recommend How to Get Away with Murder the TV show! But the other book that came to mind for me was The Stranger.

Written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Published by The Russian Messenger