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Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

St. Petersburg, 1866

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Literary Classic

Crime
Realism

What It’s About

The Agony of the Antihero

Could you commit the perfect crime? Is there such a thing as a “just murder” that costs the life of one person but benefits many others? Can rational considerations silence the human conscience? Fyodor Dostoevsky investigates these questions in his classic novel Crime and Punishment. The best-known work of this Russian author masterfully depicts the destitute student Raskolnikov’s murder of an old pawnbroker and his subsequent agony of conscience. Raskolnikov considers himself a kind of superman, compares himself with Napoleon and tries to justify his actions with rational arguments. But after the murder, he slides into a slow, gnawing despair. The virtuous prostitute Sonja finally persuades him to admit his guilt and start a new life. Dostoevsky, committed to Russian realism, describes the social misery on the streets of St. Petersburg. In easy to understand but gripping language, he succeeded in writing not only one of the greatest crime novels of all time as well as an intriguing psychoanalysis that illuminates the abysses of a murderer’s soul.

Summary

Down and Out in St. Petersburg

It’s July in St. Petersburg, and the crowded city is stiflingly hot. Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov came from the countryside to study law but can no longer afford his tuition fees. Handsome and intelligent, but neurotic and mercurial, Raskolnikov spends his days sleeping in run-down quarters and dodging his landlady, to whom he’s deeply in debt. He wears rags that would embarrass even the shabbiest of men. Raskolnikov is impoverished, isolated, and unable or unwilling to find work.

Raskolnikov visits the spinster pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, who lives with her sister, Lizaveta. Alyona is stingy, reviled and cruel. Raskolnikov believes her money could be put to better use. He pawns his father’s silver watch to Alyona and, while in her little apartment, he pays peculiar attention to the woman’s living quarters and notes in which pocket she keeps her keys and in which drawer she stores her money box.

Afterward, Raskolnikov visits a bar where he meets Marmeladov, a drunk. Marmeladov relates his life story: that he has a teenage...

About the Author

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on November 11, 1821. When he was seven years old, his father, a doctor who worked at a hospital for the indigent, was promoted to a low position in the tsarist government, entitling him to the rank of noble and allowing him to purchase a small estate with serfs. Both of Dostoevsky’s parents were devout. They introduced him to the Bible, as well as to classic and contemporary Russian and Western writers, poets, and thinkers. Dostoevsky attended boarding schools and a military engineering academy in St. Petersburg. He stood out from his aristocratic peers for his paleness, seriousness and relative poverty. He began gambling during this period, a habit that would later bring him financial woe. Upon graduation, Dostoevsky obtained a low military rank and lived comfortably. He also began to have epileptic episodes. In 1845, he published his first novel, Poor Folk. Soon after, he resigned from the military to pursue writing. He joined a circle of utopian socialists that helped support him financially. He later joined the progressive literary group, the Petrashevsky Circle, whose members were denounced for allegedly circulating banned materials – a serious crime, as Tsar Nicholas I feared that such activity could spark insurrection. Dostoevsky received the death sentence by firing squad, which was commuted shortly before the planned execution. He was then sent to a Siberian labor camp. He was released in 1854, married his first wife in 1857 and returned to St. Petersburg in 1859. In 1861, he published Notes from the House of the Dead, which documented his experience in prison. In 1864, his first wife died. In 1866, he published Crime and Punishment; that same year, he completed The Gambler. In 1867, he married his second wife, Anna. They traveled to Europe for years and had children. In 1868, The Idiot was published. In 1871, Dostoevsky and his family returned to St. Petersburg. In his later years, he received considerable acclaim. His last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, appeared in 1880. He died of pulmonary emphysema on February 9, 1881, at the age of 59.