“Crime and Punishment” and the Consequences of the Need to Be Great

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was one of the most prominent Russian novelists of all time. His novels are often surrounded by a gloomy, violent aura and deep, complex characters. Dostoevsky never fails to make the reader ponder and introduce philosophical themes in a subtle, but convincing way. His novel “Notes from the underground” is one of the most distinguished existential fictions in the world.

However, undoubtedly Dostoevsky’s most famous work is “Crime and punishment”, an infamous voyage into the deepest parts of human psychology. The novel is about an abjectly poor university student, Raskolnikov, who at the beginning of the novel doesn’t have enough money to continue his studies nor to pay his rent. He decides to sell his last valuables to an elderly pawnbroker and devises a plan to rob and murder her. He carries on with his plan and kills her in cold blood. He also murders the old woman’s half-sister who happened to stumble upon the crime scene.

The murder happens to be too much for Raskolnikov to take and he becomes sick, both physically and mentally. He is faced with moral dilemmas, as he tries to justify the killing to himself and others:

Crime? What crime? … My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman who brought no good to anyone, to murder whom would pardon forty sins, who sucked the lifeblood of the poor, and you call that a crime ?

Raskolnikov believes that what he did was not a sin, but a cleansing of the world of a greedy, useless old woman with a lot of money.

Later we found out that Raskolnikov has written an article where puts forward a theory of “extraordinary man”. Below is the excerpt from the discussion of the article, by Raskolnikov and his friend Porfiry Petrovich.

“You maintained that the perpetration of a crime is always accompanied by illness … [In this article] all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in submission and have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary” — Porfiry Petrovich

“I simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right…an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep…certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfillment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity).” — Raskolnikov

Notice how Raskolnikov emphasizes that the right, given to extraordinary men, is not an official right, given by government, but an inner right. This inner law is in a way divine and more important than the government’s law.

Raskolnikov then goes on to bring an example of some great people, such as Napoleon, to show how they made new laws, that transgressed the ancient and sacred laws of their own time. He also mentions how remarkable it is that “these benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage”.

Profiry asks Raskolnikov if he considers himself to be an extraordinary man, and obvious Raskolnikov says no. But as we know, that is a complete lie.

In fact, the sole reason why Raskolnikov chose to murder the pawnbroker is to test his theory and to see if he himself is indeed extraordinary. The woman was rich and old, and after her death, her money would be wasted on her requiem services. Raskolnikov however, being of an extraordinary type, could kill her and use her money to complete his education and use his great intelligence for the sake of the whole world.

Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right

However, unfortunately for Raskolnikov, he failed his own test. Throughout the novel, he goes back and forth between guilt and pride. He goes back to his theory several times, further developing it, and sometimes even contradicting himself. This shows how even Raskolnikov wasn’t sure if his theory is actually true.

The old woman was nearly a sickness… I was in a hurry to step over… it wasn’t a human being I killed, it was a principal! So I killed the principle, but I didn’t step over, I stayed on this side… All I managed to do was kill. And I didn’t even manage that, as it turns out…

The repetition of ellipses proves my point of the main character’s confused state and damage state of mind. He tries to justify the murder as hard as he can by claiming that it wasn’t even a murder since he didn’t kill a person — he killed a principle. Here we see another evidence of him contradicting himself. Before he stated that extraordinary men, do not have to abide the moral laws and he claimed himself to be of those extraordinary men. However, in the quote above we see how he “didn’t step over” the moral boundaries, even though they shouldn’t exist for him.

So what does this mental anguish, incomplete and contradictory theory, and periodic eruptions of guilt tell us about the main character?

Firstly, I believe that even though Raskolnikov really wanted, or maybe even needed, to believe his theory, deep inside he knew that it was a mere excuse for the murder. We have to remember that Raskolnikov is just a poor teenager, living in the gloomy city of Saint-Peterburg, surrounded by corruption and constant arguments about socialism.

In addition to these external factors, Raskolnikov’s internal world is also dreary. We can see this in the very first chapter of the book, where Dostoevsky introduces us to the main character:

for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie — no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.

We see how Raskolnikov has moved beyond simple introversion to isolating himself from everyone. He also gets annoyed when people bother him with petty topics, which means that he is mostly wandering around in his mind, engaging in solitary thought about his theory or how extraordinary he is, or some other non-trivial concepts.

But Raskolnikov is not the only one in the book who has a miserable life. Sonya Marmeladova, for example, was forced into prostitution in her teens because of her alcoholic father couldn’t provide for her younger siblings. So why didn’t turn into a murderer?

The reason for that lies in Raskolnikov’s need to be great. This is not an uncommon obsession since greatness is immortality. Of course, all people die eventually, but when you have achieved something paramount in this life, your name will live on for a long time. This idea possessed Raskolnikov, as we can see throughout the story:

Yes, that’s what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her…. Do you understand now?

After failing in every aspect of life — falling out with friends and family, dropping out of college and not being able to find a job — the protagonist is desperate to prove to himself that he is not a mere failure. If he achieves his goal, he will be considered extraordinary, or at least he thinks so. If he fails, what does he have to lose?

With this new information, we can look at Raskolnikov as a desperate teenager who thinks the whole universe is against him, rather than a cold-blooded murderer. His failure to become like one of the extraordinary men, that he admires so much, could have further crash him and lead him into worse paths. But luckily, his theory’s failure, help him get back on the path of redemption, and he tries to be a better man for himself and the people around him. As Dostoevsky himself puts it:

But that is the beginning of a new story — the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.