About:
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a psychological thriller about a murderer who finds his soul eaten from guilt after his crime. This book, published in 1866, is a classic Russian literature.
- 608 pages
- Publisher : Everyman’s Library
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 0679420290
My rating for Crime and Punishment – 5
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Thoughts:
I finally found time, or motivation to be honest, to read this book which I heard so much about since I was young. It did not disappoint, I found it to be interesting, and like one of my favorite books, Don Quixote, still relevant.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky touches several themes which people in this day and age also suffer from. Alienation, failure of critical thinking and rationalizing wrongdoings, as well as redemption which is something we all like in a story.
The murder committed by Raskolnikov mentally outcasts him from society. He pushes away his only support system, mother, sister, and best friend. Instead of feeling relieved, however, he finds it unbearable to be isolated.
A good life, Dostoevsky implies, cannot be lived using pure logic and mathematical formulas. A person’s consciousness can cause worst suffering than a jail sentence, or physical suffering. This is what I took to mean as the “Punishment” in the book’s title.,
Through Sonya Marmeladova, a young woman forced into prostitution, the story explores the idea of redemption. Through embracing not only love, but suffering, Sonya was, for me, the primary catalyst of showing the way for Raskolnikov’s path for redemption, and my favorite character in the story.
Dostoevsky’s thesis that the mind is the greatest prison of them all is something I can certainly agree with. With all its philosophical discussions about justifying the unjustifiable, it is, in the end, a powerful and hopeful book.
I think the procrastination of reading this book came from the reputation it has of being dense, too philosophical, and basically a slog. I found it to be the opposite, it is a clever and accurate story about guilt, well-paced, and tense in a modern sense of the word.
Synopsis:
Rodion Raskolnikov, a poor law school dropout in St. Petersburg, convinces himself that extraordinary men, like him and Napoleon, have the moral right to ignore laws, and even murder someone, if it servers a higher purpose.
To test his nihilistic philosophical theory, he murders an elderly pawnbroker, unfortunately he is also forced to kill a witness. Instead of feeling liberation, he is paralyzed by guilt, confusion, and agitation.
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More books by Fyodor Dostoevsky*
Zohar — Man of la Book
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