as if in two minds

a slurry of thoughts on Crime and Punishment

I finally got around to re-reading Crime and Punishment after about 6 years— think I liked it much better this time around and ended up binging it in 2 days. I distinctly remember that I far preferred Anna Karenina at the time, and looking back I suppose at that time in high school I was more predisposed towards liking books that took place “in society” and felt a bit lighter (not to say that Anna Karenina was light given the gravity of her descent in society and eventual fate) compared to the often squalid, dark conditions Dostoevsky’s characters lived and interacted in. The translation I read and re-read was the Penguin Classics deluxe edition from Oliver Ready.

I’m writing this as a way to jot down some thoughts on various themes I found in the book—not as a deep piece of analysis or even something in proper essay form, but some scratchwork to consolidate my thoughts.

a ready-made plot

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (C&P), considered one of the more straightforward of his mature works, tells an unsurprising story. A man will commit a crime and he will be punished. Far from a “whodunnit” novel, C&P makes little secret of our to-be killer Raskolnikov’s intentions and actions until he murders the moneylender Alyona Ivanovna in the first part of the novel.

The crime takes up only a fraction of the novel. What about the persecution and punishment? The “usual” punishment we might expect, hard labor in Siberia, is only described in the Epilogue—just 15 pages at the end of the novel.

The brunt of the novel, then, describes the aftermath of Raskolnikov’s crime—we see his psychological evolution, interactions with other characters, word games with Porfiry Petrovich, and so on until he finally turns himself in at the end of the novel. There’s an interesting contrast between Raskolnikov, who feels remorse and struggles with his actions, and Stavrogin from Demons who feels remorseless and beyond the reach of God. I did feel there’s a bit less philosophizing about religion here than in Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, where in the former Stavrogin feels overwhelmed upon being offered Tikhon’s forgiveness and starting to believe in a God he cannot accept (the chapter, “At Tikhon’s,” concludes with the fun quotation “Damned psychologist!”). Towards the end of C&P, Raskolnikov goes to the devout Sonya in order to retrieve a cross from her which he will wear thereafter.

the two Raskolnikovs

An interesting feature of C&P is the manifest tension that occurs throughout the novel. We see contradictions in conditions and characters from the outset: Raskolnikov approaches the street by his house “as if in two minds.” His appearance, too, demonstrates conflict: he is strikingly handsome, yet thin. His hat sticks out and his clothes are raggedy, but on the street where he lives one should not be surprised to see such a “surprising figure.” Raskolnikov seems to keep to himself, and early on enters a drinking den in want of a cool beer despite not being a drinker.

Raskolnikov’s character will maintain this tension throughout the entirety of the novel. Indeed, it feels as though there are two distinct characters inhabiting Rodion Romanovich. He is at once excessively calculating and thoughtless, determined and indifferent. Early on, he simultaneously maintains a decisiveness about the murder and a lack of care about his living conditions and the bare basics (28).

But it is the murder itself that presents one of the prime studies of Raskolnikov’s character contradictions in the novel. The murder, planned to the point where Raskolnikov knows the precise number of steps to his destination, actually occurs with Raskolnikov behaving as an automaton, barely processing what is happening, and, though he has his wits about him, carrying out the deed as if driven on by inevitability and natural law as opposed to a power to act within himself. Of course, Dostoevsky sets up the plot just so that Raskolnikov discovers the vital information he needs before the murder and is able to carry it out with few external difficulties (leading up to the murder, at least). The way the plot creates an almost unrealistic level of ease for Raskolnikov is interesting because it allows a much greater focus on the internal difficulty he faces—his psychological struggle in committing and dealing with the aftermath of his crime—which also bears some on his “extraordinary man” theory and how Raskolnikov’s external circumstances permitted his crime, but his internal psychology will not allow it to go unpunished.

Even the decision to murder the shopkeeper enters Raskolnikov’s mind as if by chance when he overhears a conversation between a student and an officer: “why had it fallen to him, precisely then, to here precisely this conversation and precisely these thoughts… at a time when those very same thoughts had just been conceived in his own mind?” (62) Raskolnikov’s intentions are, to him, at once definitive and absurd—“never, for a single moment, could he make himself believe in the prospect of his plans being carried out” (65).

mind games

Of course, the true punishment Raskolnikov faces is a psychological one. It will be his internal dialogue and that with Porfiry Petrovich that evolve his internal psychological state. Already in the first pages of Part 2 of the novel, Raskolnikov is struggling with scraps of evidence: ‘What, is this it already, my punishment?’ (86) The terror approaches slowly: after Raskolnikov imagines his landlady being beaten Nastasya’s comment ‘That’s blood’ (110) refers to his apparent hallucination, makes a biblical allusion, and makes Raskolnikov think of the blood on his hands. Later on, Raskolnikov kicks everyone out from his crowded room—’Can’t you just leave me alone and stop tormenting me!’ (143)—ensconcing himself in the confines of his room before he later goes out and decides to get drunk, perhaps to escape from his self-torment.

Raskolnikov is to endure a literal and mental sickness that carries him to the end of the novel, perhaps meant to parallel the recurring motif of the biblical Lazarus who dies of sickness before being resurrected by Jesus (Raskolnikov apparently believes, literally, in the raising of Lazarus)—the novel ends by announcing the new story of Raskolnikov’s gradual renewal and rebirth.

Raskolnikov’s exchanges—which feel more like mind games—with the police station’s chief investigator Porfiry Petrovich drive Raskolnikov’s mania further. As with the story more broadly, there is little to nothing hidden between the criminal and the investigator. There is clear reason for Porfiry’s suspicion from their first meeting, and while Raskolnikov never explicitly confesses, his responses to Porfiry make his guilt more than clear to both Porfiry and the observer.

The exchanges with Porfiry are so interesting and reflect the book’s broader lack of intent to “surprise” precisely because throughout them, Porfiry lays nearly all his cards on the table. His earlier ramblings seem almost mocking as he probes into Raskolnikov’s thoughts in “On Crime” and considers that perhaps the author of these thoughts considers himself a Napoleon, capable of uttering a new word and committing crime without remorse. His later dialogues, in which he explains his case against Raskolnikov, are eerie not in that the punishment seems inevitable, but in that they inspire a continued psychological torment in Raskolnikov.

It is almost fitting that some time after a particular meeting with Porfiry, Raskolnikov spends a significant amount of time cooped up in his room. The confinement of this space is a physical manifestation of the confines of his psyche.

immediacy and logic

One of the primary contradictions that produces Raskolnikov’s internal strife is the contradiction between the rightness and wrongness of his deed. By his utilitarian calculus (and that of the student he overhears early in the book), his action is completely justified. Alyona Ivanovna’s existence appears to have no positive impact on the world—if anything it is negative, and using her money for positive or charitable means could “make up” for the crime of her murder.

But in another sense, and not just a religious one, the killing is wrong because it is the taking of another human life. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it: the removal of another person from this world is a heinous act. This wrongness is not (and perhaps cannot be) arrived at through logic, but is a sort of immediate knowledge (the same way some might say we have immediate access to the knowledge of our own free will). Sonya’s plight is somewhat similar: logically, her work selling her body is a good thing because it is the only way she can support her family; but there is an immediate knowledge of its wrongness. As Raskolnikov points out, together they are damned (307), condemned to the consequences of actions that are immediately, unshakably wrong despite their apparent logical rightness.

theory and reality

Raskolnikov’s decision to murder is driven not just by a utilitarian calculus, it seems, but by a theory of human nature developed in his article “On Crime.” In this article, Raskolnikov presents a theory of human nature whereby certain individuals are “superior” to others in the sense that they are endowed with the ability to bring something new to the world, to “utter a new word.” These individuals might be figures like Napoleon, and on first read they might bear resemblance (with subtle differences) to Nietzsche’s Übermensch, who are “willing to risk all for the sake of the enhancement of humanity” and live their lives with the goals of humanity in mind. Raskolnikov’s ideas and mental anguish seem to be Dostoevsky’s commentary on the danger of these atheist ideas: Raskolnikov can materialize the results of his superhuman theory by committing a crime, but is ultimately unable to cope with his own actions and fails to achieve the superhuman ideal he presented. That superhuman ideal, to Dostoevsky, would put man at the level of something like a god—but the tale, as Dostoevsky tells it, might indicate that God is and always will be above man.