Why you should read long books
A short essay on Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Watching a movie you’ve never heard of can be a great experience, but starting on a hefty tome such as Crime & Punishment without an inkling of whether it’s for you, seems like a potential waste of time. I read it because I reckoned it’s probably a classic for a reason.
It was an easy read, as far as classics go, but it wasn’t exciting. It’s not a page turner. And I wasn’t floored by it. But it was interesting, in retrospect.
Perhaps the reason why it’s a classic is because through its exploration of an intellectual’s post-murder “guilt”, one can find parallels to one’s own thoughts and existential grapples.
Of the many themes and topics the book covers, is a contemplation of ‘free men’ vs. the rest, a division similar to the Nietzschean concept of ubermensch (although written before Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). On the surface, our hero Raskolnikov sets out to prove himself an “ubermensch” by killing an old pawnbroker. He’s rather shocked when this act violently disturbs his psyche and proves he doesn’t belong among those free from the shackles of society.
What follows (near the end) is insight and personal growth, in a way. Interestingly, it’s this transformation that makes our hero Raskolnikov into an ubermensch closer to…
