Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866)

It was I who killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them

The above confession, made at a police station, by the lead character Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov towards the end of the novel (prior to the epilogue) is a cathartic moment for both the speaker and the reader. How one gets to this point is the plot of Crime and Punishment.

---

The plot

The first decile of the novel is mostly mental ruminations of Raskolnikov. Readers who have the patience to plod through the beginning will discover that the novel has a rich storyline with a plethora of characters. In fact, after a certain point, the book is unputdownable.

There are three subplots within this novel. The first is the central event in the book, which is the murder committed by Raskolnikov. The other two relate to two important women in Raskolnikov's life: his sister and a prostitute whose love ultimately leads to his redemption.

Subplot 1: the murder

Raskolnikov is a handsome but impoverished young man who has abandoned his studies and is consumed by obsessive thoughts. One of these thoughts is about murdering a pawnbroker named Alyona Ivanovna. Most readers are aware from the outset that the protagonist commits a homicide. However, for those fortunate enough to approach this book without prior knowledge, the author masterfully builds an element of suspense. We are told that Raskolnikov is planning something drastic but we don't know for a while, what it is.

As it so happens, Raskolnikov ends up committing two murders instead of the one he had planned. After he has just killed Alyona with an axe, the pawnbroker's sister Lizaveta Ivanovna stumbles onto the homicide scene and Raskolnikov kills this sole witness. Investigating the double murders is a magistrate called Porfiry Petrovich, whom Raskolnikov gets to know socially through his friend Dmitry Prokofych Razumikhin. Porfiry Petrovich, who has a shrewd understanding of human psychology, suspects Raskolnikov of committing the murders. Eventually, Porfiry Petrovich is so convinced that he encourages Raskolnikov to confess. Raskolnikov ultimately does so to the police official Ilya Petrovich.

Subplot 2: Dounia-the sister

Dounia is the nickname of Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikov, the sister of Raskolnikov. The second subplot relates to the romantic life of Dounia. Without this thread, Crime and Punishment would be a very dark and depressing read. In the novel, Dounia has three suitors.

The first suitor is her fiance'. The novel begins at a time when Dounia has just received a marriage proposal from a middle ranked but relatively affluent Russian official called Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin. Dounia used to work as a governess in the household of Marfa Petrovna and her husband Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov. The husband Svidrigailov was sexually harassing Dounia. Marfa Petrovna fires Dounia, suspecting her of seducing her husband. But later, when she finds out that Dounia was the victim, she apologizes in an exaggerated and comic manner. As part of her repentance, she convinces Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin to make a marriage proposal to Dounia. Luzhin does not need much convincing since Dounia is stunningly beautiful and it has been Luzhin's goal to marry a pretty but poor girl who will be subservient to him on account of her poverty. Raskolnikov suspects that Dounia has accepted Luzhin's proposal for economic reasons (to help her impoverished brother and their mother Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov). Initially, we think Raskolnikov is unfairly biased against Luzhin but over the course of the novel, Luzhin reveals himself to be stingy, selfish and cruel. Dounia, who is not only beautiful, but also, has strong sense of pride, ultimately tells Luzhin to get lost.

The second suitor is Svidrigailov, the sexual predator mentioned above. After his wife Marfa Petrovna dies, Svidrigailov pursues Dounia and even tries to rape her.

The third suitor is the most lovable character of the book, Dmitry Prokofych Razumikhin, who is Raskolnikov's friend. As Raskolnikov becomes increasingly withdrawn and erratic through the course of the novel, Razumikhin becomes the surrogate Raskolnikov for Dounya and her mother. Eventually Dounya marries Razumikhin.

Subplot 3: Sonia-the prostitute

Sonia is the nickname of Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov, the daughter of the drunkard Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, a man Raskolnikov meets at a tavern. Marmeladov knows that his alcoholism is destroying his family but is unable to stop, which keeps his family impoverished. Sonia is his daughter from his first wife who had died. He later married Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov, a widow with three children from a prior marriage. Katerina claims have been disinherited by her aristocratic family because of her bad first marriage. Sonia is forced to become a prostitute to support her father, stepmother and step-siblings. But this is not a Cinderella situation because there is genuine love between Sonia and her stepmother. A hard life of penury has made Katerina Ivanovna an emotionally unstable woman but she loves her step daughter and feels indebted to her for degrading herself for the family's survival. After Marmeladov dies, Raskolnikov helps the family with the meager resources he has and eventually, Sonia is the first person to whom he confesses.

---

Observations

The crime

The central question that the reader grapples with is why did Raskolnikov commit this terrible crime? A disturbing aspect of this novel is that it completely humanizes a murderer. While the narrator of the story is the author (instead of a first person narrator like Pip in Great Expectations or David Copperfield in the eponymous novel), nonetheless, we can deeply identify with Raskolnikov. Dostoevsky delves deep into the mental soliloquies of Raskolnikov, who comes across as annoying but likable. Hence, it is a shock that this man can kill two people brutally with an axe. As readers, we keep asking, why the hell did he do it! The complexity is that Raskolnikov himself cannot articulate his motivation clearly.

There are three strands of motivations that Raskolnikov offers. The first is a simplistic economic reason. His family is impoverished and hence, he robs the pawnbroker. But this logic is hard to believe given that after committing the murders, he barely takes anything. Even the few items he takes with himself, Raskolnikov buries them under a stone in a courtyard and never bothers to procure them afterwards. However, his knowledge of where the evidence is hidden, enables him to prove later that he is not simply a madman making a false confession.

The second reason for the murder Raskolnikov offers is that the pawnbroker Alyona Invanovna is a leech on human society, who exploits poor people and hence by killing her, he was doing a service to humanity. However, he feels great cognitive dissonance around this argument because the second murder (of the pawnbroker's sister) cannot be explained away by this theory. Prior to committing the murder, Raskolnikov had heard gossip to the effect that Lizaveta was a harmless creature who was treated abusively by her sister. Hence, when he killed Lizaveta, he knew he was killing a victim and not a perpetrator. The second murder was purely to protect himself.

The third reason Raskolnikov offers is that he committed the murder to prove to himself that he was a great man. In fact, he had published an essay in a journal, where he claimed that great men like Napoleon are allowed to do what they deem fit and cannot be judged by standards of everyday morality. The implication is that Raskolnikov views himself as a great man and the killing of a cruel pawnbroker was an act of greatness. When he eventually confesses to Sonia, he tells her that he was driven by the selfish motivation of becoming Napoleon.

The reader is, thus, left with the question why did he do it! Here is how I understand it. Raskolnikov was an intelligent and erudite young man. He felt humiliated by his poverty and his inability to support his family. This mental anguish drove him to obsessively embrace ideas that seemed to offer a way towards achieving self-respect. He started isolating himself from society, which led to further mental derangement. This echoes the trajectory of many mass shooters in America. Hence, in summary, he was just mentally deranged when he committed the homicides.

Dostoevsky reminds us that as human beings we contain multitudes and hence, even a person committing evil acts can also be capable of love and compassion. Even though Raskolnikov has committed a heinous act, he also displays great generosity towards the Marmeladov family, long before he felt any romantic interest in Sonia. The Nobel prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman describes of an incident, when as a young Jewish boy living in Nazi occupied France, an SS officer stops him, gives him a hug and some cash. The officer was probably reminded of his son and must have been a great father, even while killing innocents in concentration camps.

The punishment

The punishment begins as soon as the crime is committed though it is not punishment meted out by the state. Rather, it is in the form of intense emotional anguish and fear that Raskolnikov experiences. Raskolnikov's mind is caught between two conflicting impulses. One, he wants to end it all by confessing. But at the same time, he wishes to evade detection. His behavior is relatable. All of us have done things that we were subsequently ashamed of (hopefully, nothing as abhorrent as murder). While we wish to conceal our shame, a part of us wants to confess in a non-judgmental setting. This is why people confess to priests, bartenders and therapists.

Even though Raskolnikov ultimately confesses to the police, he never expresses remorse explicitly in the novel. The closest he comes to expressing remorse is to state very clinically in his trial that he repents his actions. In fact, his behavior seems to indicate the very opposite. For instance, he draws moral equivalence between his crime and Sonia's prostitution. But this is obviously wrong because Sonia's actions arise from sacrifice and love of her family. Even during his prison stint in Siberia, we are told that Raskolnikov thinks of his crime as an error- a misguided way to achieve greatness.

However, regardless of what Raskolnikov says, I do think that actions speak louder than words and he reveals his genuine repentance by confessing even when there was no evidence against him.

Redemption

The term redemption is defined in dictionaries as the act of being saved from the power of evil. The path of Raskolnikov's redemption begins with his act of confessing to Sonia. This is followed by a second confession at the police station. The third act propelling Raskolnikov on the path to redemption is his confession at the trial. But the moment of redemption finally comes when he allows his heart to feel love for Sonia.

Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is estranged from humanity. He distances himself from his adoring mother (Pulcheria Alexandrovna) and his devoted sister (Dounia), while rebuffing the selfless loving friendship of Razumikhin. As human beings, we are capable of both great selfishness and love. Redemption comes from the act of loving. There are two characters in the novel who display great capacity for selfless love. One is Sonia, who is willing to become a prostitute for the sake of her family. The second is Razumikhin, who displays great devotion towards Raskolnikov. This is before he meets and is instantly attracted to Dounia. Hence, it would be incorrect to say that Razumikhin's affectionate behavior towards Raskolnikov was simply to curry favor with Dounia.

Dostoevsky ends the novel by reconnecting Raskolnikov with humanity through the feelings that are awakened in him for Sonia. But this redemptive moment is not the end but the beginning of a new journey of renewal for Raskolnikov. Alas! Dostoevsky tells us that the process of renewal is a different tale and hence, must be the subject of a separate novel. In a way, we can think of Crime and Punishment as a prequel to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, in which the character of Jean Valjean experiences redemption through his encounter with Bishop Myriel and the bulk of the novel traces the story of his renewal.

The unspoken

There are three scenes in this book that deliver their dramatic punch from the power of the unsaid.

The first scene is when Sonia comes back home after selling her body for the first time and places thirty roubles at the table for her stepmother Katerina Ivanovna . Katerina, who had been harsh with Sonia earlier in the day, places herself at the feet of Sonia and the two women lie like that all night.

The second scene is when Raskolnikov asks Razumikhin to look after his mother and sister. At that moment Razumikhin knows that Raskolnikov had committed the murders and Raskolnikov knows that Razumikhin knows. But neither says anything explicitly to acknowledge what they both now knew.

The third scene is actually an episode instead of a single scene. Raskolnikov's mother Pulcheria Alexandrovna eventually figures out that something terrible is happening with her son. She becomes progressively sick and eventually dies while Raskolnikov is serving prison time in Siberia. His mother knows what actually happened but cannot acknowledge even to herself that her son had committed two heinous murders.

Everything happens for no reason

There are two coincidences that convinces Raskolnikov that he is meant to kill the pawnbroker. The first incident occurs when he stops by a tavern after pawning something for the first time to Alyona Invanovna. He overhears a couple of strangers talking about what a mean woman the pawnbroker is and the world would be better off if someone kills her. The second incident occurs the day before Raskolnikov commits the crime. He overhears a conversation that informs him that the pawnbroker will be alone at her home at a specified hour. Since there was no logical reason for him to walk by the area where the overheard conversation took place, Raskolnikov takes this as the universe signaling him to act.

But as readers, we know that the universe was not compelling Raskolnikov to commit a murder, let alone two murders. He exercised an act of will. While Raskolnikov was focusing his attention on those two overheard conversations, there may have been thousands of other conversations occurring around him that may be signaling him to love fellow human beings. In reality, a deranged Raskolnikov may have been fixated on killing the pawnbroker and these two so called signals were just confirmation bias.

Personally, I am skeptical of signals from the universe anecdotes that people tell. As human beings, we use our linguistic ability to ascribe patterns (example, good wins over evil, everything happens for a reason) as a coping mechanism to escape from the reality that there is no ground beneath our feet. However, I do believe that the stories we tell ourselves to interpret the reality around us are powerful levers of personal transformation. The universe does not send us signals. Rather, we interpret events around us as signals. Whether our interpretation is skillful or not is up to us. An athlete who interprets physical pain as a badge of honor is more likely to build greater physical endurance than someone who views it as an encumbrance.

---

The works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens etc. are referred to as classics because they are those rare works that transcend centuries and cultures. They remind us of the universality of the human condition. Crime and Punishment is a pantheon among the classics. Readers who expect this book to be dark and depressing would find that this is an uplifting book with a happy ending.