Book Analysis : CRIME & PUNISHMENT

[Idolater]

It's like Dostoevsky took a murderer and showed how even "minor" sins led to the same end. It's difficult to say as well as convey.

It's like he put the man who would say "but I never killed anyone" into the shoes of a murderer.

Does that make sense?

Yes that does 'make sense'. I would describe it as, the murderer didn't find murder salient. It was just like another minor detail in the story, like, the walls were this color, there were these objects on the table, I murdered someone, etc. . . . .

 

[Tambora]

It's like Dostoevsky took a murderer and showed how even "minor" sins led to the same end. It's difficult to say as well as convey.

It's like he put the man who would say "but I never killed anyone" into the shoes of a murderer.

Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes sense to me.

The character was quick to see the flaws of others, and was not hesitant to point it out to them in a rather cruel mocking fashion as if to indicate that they deserved the bed they made for themself, but would always find justification in what he did.
Even close to the end of the book when he admits to his sister that he murdered the old woman pawnbroker, he worded it as "I didn't murder her, I murdered myself".

 

[Tambora]

Yes that does 'make sense'. I would describe it as, the murderer didn't find murder salient. It was just like another minor detail in the story, like, the walls were this color, there were these objects on the table, I murdered someone, etc. . . . .

That's a good way to put it.
His idealism of wanting to be like Napoleon clouded his judgement, casualties in the name of advancement were of little importance.

 

[annabenedetti]

I hope you do contribute some thoughts since you have read the book.

What I found fascinating about the characters in the book is that one could condemn or praise each of them depending on the perspective.
Each thing one might condemn them for was thought of (in the character's eyes) as something needful to be done to make things better for others.
And that it actually reflects the attitudes of our society has today (that behavior can be deemed bad or good depending on the perspective one chooses to view it from).
In other words, any of the character's judgements of others were probably our own judgement of someone else at some point in our life.

I didn't remember a whole lot of the book, it's been over 10 years now, but I intentionally didn't want to look up the plot on wiki to refresh my memory because it might tamper with the thoughts of the long-ago me who'd written them down so many years earlier, so just tried to reconstruct the plot from my study notes and research paper. I can't just pull a paragraph out of the paper like a jenga stick, so I'll try to figure a way to distill that down to something short that you might find interesting.

In the meantime, from my study notes, it seems that Dostoevsky invested a good part of himself in Rodya's character. The Orthodox Christian upbringing that was abandoned during university for utopian socialist ideals, nihilism and utilitarianism, the imprisonment in Siberia (for different reasons, Dostoevsky for reading banned books, Rodya for his crimes), the regeneration of faith in prison and return to Orthodoxy, and for the similar ills of body and mind.

Here are some of the concepts I took from the theme of redemption in the book. They are my words as I wrote them years ago, and I don't think I'd write them quite the same today, but anyway:

The human soul has within it the capacity for great good, great evil, and a lot in between. Our natures wage a constant battle between good and evil, and those who are the happiest are the ones in which the forces of good are winning. Even with the internal battle, it is quite possible and desirable that there can be a balance of faith and reason, and this balance will be evident in a rightly-ordered soul in which reason informs faith and faith confirms reason. Aristotle would say this rightly-ordered soul was “in the mean,” the only place a soul can be in order to become a “great-souled” man.​

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Concepts I will remember are the reality of universal evil in man; so fallen and so unredeemable, were it not for a Divine Redeemer who saves. My inability to understand how someone could embrace the black hopelessness of nihilism, and yet I could imagine how naturally it would be accepted by those in life situations which appear to have no chance of hope, since oftentimes they cannot understand a God who would allow that desperation of circumstance to exist. I will remember how Dostoevsky so vividly brought the three great theological virtues of faith, hope, and love to life in his characters, and the amazing insight found in the long dialogues between them. They deserve careful study. On a less abstract level, I was fascinated by the way he repeated phrases throughout the book, using different characters, and the recurring Lazarus theme.​

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I have absolutely no memory of the repeated phrases throughout the book, despite my fascination at the time. : )

 

[annabenedetti]

That's a good way to put it.
His idealism of wanting to be like Napoleon clouded his judgement, casualties in the name of advancement were of little importance.

Interesting that the Übermensch of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarustrutha wasn't published until 20 some odd years later than Crime and Punishment and yet it's that Napoleonic Overman that's so apparent in Rodya's sense of being the "extraordinary man."

(Okay I guess I could pull a jenga stick or two...)

 

[Idolater]

That's a good way to put it.
His idealism of wanting to be like Napoleon clouded his judgement, casualties in the name of advancement were of little importance.

Not bad. See below.

I really like @Stripe 's " the man who would say "but I never killed anyone"" contrasted against "a murderer" and then forcing me to mentally 'mash' them together, that evokes a very clear logical image in my head.

Murder is categorically unjustified killing with informed consent, basically (this is what I mean by informed consent; it means 'malice aforethought', 'premeditated', 'lying in wait', all of the terms that basically make murder a categorically unjustified killing, with 'justice' referring to both the personal absolute God given right to life, and to the commandment You shall not kill [a person, without justification]).

When I 'run' Stripe's 'simulation' in my mind, what I wind up with is a profound liar. It happens to in my head correspond to how I conceive of a child rapist. Murderers (and child rapists) are above all dishonest (even though they are objectively and observably above all, a murderer) because they will literally stop at no dishonesty, in order to be able to believe themselves when they say "But I never killed anyone". They will tell any lie so that they can tell this lie, and believe it.

That's what I thought about your term 'clouded judgment'. There was a way in which his judgment wasn't clouded at all. That's what I got from Stripe's 'thought experiment'. That would correspond with my description of Dostoevsky's story.

It's like the old story about the blind men encountering an elephant for the very first time, each one of them examining and describing just one part of the huge creature to the other men. None of them thinks, "Yeah, that sounds like what I've got here". Every single one of them thinks the other guys are looking at something else, but they are all literally talking about the same thing.