Dostoevsky’s -Crime And Punishment
I finished reading of Dostoevsky’s Magnum Opus ‘Crime And Punishment’, last evening. I was reading it for the second time. Last time I had read this book when I was a young college student. I must candidly accept that the book was a challenging read as it had been last time. Good that age hasn’t made me any wiser. It may seem bizarre to you that I felt characters in the book have aged since I knew them last. They also seemed to me now more distinct and revealing. It is not some weirdness from Raskolnikov- the protagonist in the novel- has gone into my head. I am honestly telling what I have felt.
Crime and Punishment is a story of poor psychologically unhinged former student Rodion Raskolnikov, living in St. Petersburg. He authors an article that theorises extraordinary man has a moral right to commit any crime if essential for practical fulfilment of his idea that benefits whole humanity, and laws are not for him. Laws are for ordinary men. He commits double murder of unscrupulous old pawnbroker, and her sister to establish that he is extraordinary and has a moral right to transgress the law. He also wanted 3000 Roubles which he believed would pull him and his family permanently out of poverty. But after committing the double murder, he struggles to overcome the pangs of his guilty conscience. In the end, he confesses to his crime and is awarded punishment of jail term for eight years in Siberia.
The novel deals with multiple themes – poverty, utilitarianism, nihilism, the psychology of crime and punishment. As an idealistic young student, I was sympathetic to Raskolnikov. I felt poverty was the cause of his mental derangement, and he was driven to commit crime primarily to escape from destitution. I then believed in utilitarianism so ignored that his way of achieving it was wrong. I also pitied him for becoming a mental and physical wreck and wished he was pardoned. I, however, disliked him for his vanity and nihilism. As an older man now, I didn’t feel any sympathy for Raskolnikov, notwithstanding his penury and suffering. He experimenting his vain theory on two old ladies to prove himself as extraordinary having moral right to commit a crime and transgress the law, was an atrocious act. He was vain and wrongly held a belief that he was superior in intellect than all others in the society. He kept himself alienated from all who loved and cared for him. He deserved the punishment he underwent by dealing with tormenting guilt. This time, I liked police investigator Porfiry Petrovich’s astute character and mind games he played with Raskolnikov unravelling the psychology of a criminal to readers.
My beliefs and world view have changed, perhaps for better.
