Crime and Punishment and the Way Out of Oppression
In my favorite book “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the main character Raskolnikov is a man who has been pushed to the lowest of the lows of human condition. An otherwise educated man, with a plethora of intellect and compassion, lives a very impoverished life as opposed to others around him who are objectively “worse” than him in the human aspect, BUT live a better life. One could even connect this character to the Prince Myshkin of Dostoyevsky’s Idiot, who is depicted as a pure being, almost like a Jesus figure, surrounded by filth. This pureness doesn’t last long, and Raskolnikov decides that he is done being a mere pawn in this world, and defies his humanity by doing the most inhumane thing possible, murder. He doesn’t just murder anyone, he murders a corrupt pawnbroker who is the polar opposite of Raskolnikov.
As Paulo Freire puts it, “…sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both”(44). Raskolnikov was made subhuman or dehumanized by the society that worshiped and idealized materialistic things over everything else. So Raskolnikov does exactly what is most logical to him, he becomes the “oppression of the oppressors” and takes the life of a representative of that social construct.
Spoiler alert, Raskolnikov doesn’t actually get away with this, and at the end of the story he turns himself in, as his dehumanized mind becomes a mental prison that he can not escape from, so to humanize himself, he confesses his sin. So how does one save themselves and also save the thing or person that oppressed them? In other words, how can someone overcome their dehumanization by becoming a salvation for the one who dehumanized them (making the dehumanizer dehumanized as well).
Much to unpack here, and Freire tells us that “Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society? Who suffers the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation? And this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressors violence, lovelessness even when clothed in false generosity”(45).
As we stated before, Raskolnikov confesses his sin which dehumanized him, in order to gain back his humanity. It is important to note, that not all sin dehumanizes a person, and the oppressed are sometimes forced to do objectively bad things because of the position they have been put in by their oppressors. In this same society, we meet the character of Sonya, who is a shy girl forced into prostitution as a result of the impoverished state of her family (caused by the same social construct that pushed Raskolnikov to dehumanize himself and become an oppressor of the oppressed).
Sonya, who has been dehumanized and demoralized by society, finds a way to gain back her humanity through a figure of an oppressor, that is Raskolnikov. When Raskolnikov is sent to Siberia to live out the rest of his life alone, Sonya sacrifices herself and moves there with him, becoming a beacon of hope for Raskolnikov, an image of love even when Raskolnikov denounces her as immoral for selling her body. Raskolnikov, who has gone and done a terrible thing in the name of justice, who is no better than any of the corrupt pawnbrokers of the world who do bad things for their own sake and justify it in their minds, is now saved by a woman who was in the same state as him, but instead of oppressing him, she chose to save the oppressor.
We have talked about oppression and the escape from oppression, but HOW, does one even start to escape oppression. In other words, what is the necessary mindset for being able to become this beacon of hope for the oppressed and not become the oppressor in your pursuit of liberation. Freier states that, “In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform”(50). What this means is that the oppressed must not view their situation as bitterness of reality, and they must not conform to whatever oppression they are subjected to. In the case of the book, both Raskolnikov and Sonya understand this point, they understand that their reality is not a result of their doing, but of their oppressors.
Both Sonya and Raskolnikov realize that the blame of their life is not on their shoulders. This might seem easy, but once you are subjected to a sort of oppression your whole life, and you see others living a better life, you do not see them as oppressors. They are simply people that you want to be, that you strive to be. Once you realize that those people have put a barrier between you and freedom, you view them as oppressors, and thus you wage struggle for your liberation by opposing your oppressors.
Now back to our point about how an oppressed person opposes the oppressor: in the case of Raskolnikov he simply becomes an oppressor and creates a cycle of oppression, while Sonya saves an oppressor from oppression and being oppressed, thus breaking that cycle. This is what’s most important, realizing the oppression, breaking the cycle of oppression and not perpetuating it. We learn about the oppressed waging a liberation struggle, but we never stop to think about the intricate details of what goes on behind the scenes, and the Pedagogy of The Oppressed coupled with the timeless classic of Dostoyevsky can serve as a wonderful tool to dive into the mind of people who are involved in this sort of struggle.
