​​​​​​​​Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866

I read Crime and Punishment in 2019, before I began my custom of writing book reviews such as this. It surprised me to rediscover this fact, but thereafter I recalled that, several times, I held off from retroactively writing a review with the reasoning that my recollection was insufficient. That’s probably still true, but this time I felt this review’s absence was too conspicuous not to jot down something. 

The novel follows its main character Rodion Raskolnikov, a very poor and resentful student. Near the beginning of the story, Raskolnikov is in acute need of money and is planning to visit a pawnbroker, an older woman. As the moment of his transaction draws near, he becomes obsessed with the woman and her wealth, which he views as ill-gotten. He contemplates what he could do with money - he was, after all, an intelligent student with (in his mind) a great understanding of the world and worthwhile ambitions who much more deserved the money. Therefore, Rodion kills the pawnbroker and takes some of the pawned items. The rest of the plot follows Rodion as he confronts his actions morally, psychologically, and practically. 

Raskolnikov experiments with what Dostoevsky calls nihilism, which is his hypothesis for the fate of morality after the disappearance of Christianity. This nihilism is self-centered and utilitarian, and according to its principles Raskolnikov’s actions were reasonable and justified. If it is the case that Raskolnikov could become a great man with that money, then the killing of the money-grubbing old woman is a means to that end. Other people have instrumental value to us rather than intrinsic value. This is reminiscent of Nietzche’s concerns in his later writings, and is a theme across Dostoevsky’s works. 

Has this nihilism come to pass? There are arguments on both sides of that issue. By many metrics, religiosity has gone down, but perhaps more slowly than Dostoevksy would have expected. The great evils of the 20th century, the ideological industrial regimes (e.g. Nazism, fascism, communism), are often cited as the immoral product of industrialization set free by the absence of religious morality. Others label such ideologies as religious movements themselves and point out that religious wars have ravaged the world forever - one interesting historiographic claim is that the period of 1914-1945 in Europe can be called the Second Thirty Years’ War, drawing parallels to the First conflict of that name which was largely driven by religious schism. On a societal basis, there has been greater heights of acute industrialized killing and violence in the style of Raskolnikov. On the other hand, generally violence and crime have gone down over the decades. At the level of the individual, I think people act generally morally. I would suggest that perhaps religious morality is sticking around longer than religious practice, and that there has been a collapse of religious institutions which has been confused with a total disappearance of religious feeling. Or we could argue that morality has been inaccurately conflated with religion.

The novel follows Raskolnikov as he interacts with friends, family, and society in St Petersburg. He develops intense feelings of guilt and a thirst for punishment which manifest in physical symptoms, but there are some funny moments when this punishment eludes him. A policeman eventually begins to suspect Raskolnikov, but his investigation seems to take longer than it should. However, punishment will not come for Raskolnikov until he confesses and repents. At the same time, Raskolnikov has a budding love with Sonya, a girl who has been forced into prostitution to support her family, especially due to her father’s drunkenness and waste of money. Both of them are committing sins or crimes, partly due to the social environment, partly due to their own inner moral and psychological conflicts. 

Crime and Punishment explores the Christian concept of sin, confession, and redemption. I think the word “crime” in the title really means “sin” and is measured according to morality and religion rather than by the eyes of the law. Dostoevsky explores how the human mind can achieve many different states, including evil rationalism, frenzied delirium, grief, guilt, and so on. He makes a claim through the characters that people know when they sin or commit crimes, that they then want to confess, want to be punished, all in order to be redeemed.

This is highly related to the fact that our souls are embedded in our bodies which must navigate the social and economic worlds, including pressures to make money and support ourselves. The characters that sin and do crimes are all doing so out of desperation and poverty. Perhaps Dostoevsky suggests that this is one of the great challenges of our lives - how we will act in the face of pressures and challenges. In the end, Raskolnikov does go back to the Christian path to redemption by confessing and serving his sentence. He is redeemed in the process and goes to live with Sonya.

In addition to the inner explorations, Dostoevky provides documentation of the social conditions of the people in the city at that time, especially the low depths of poverty that affect many. 

The overarching feeling I recall was Crime and Punishment’s surprising modernity in style, content, and structure. Since it was a translation, at first I thought that this might be due to the more recent translation by the acclaimed Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, but after later reading The Idiot, also translated by them and which was much more archaic, I appreciated that the modernity was intrinsic to the work. The book is an interesting inversion of contemporary murder mystery psychological thrillers, since the crime is known at the beginning and we deal with the aftermath instead. 

Another important part of Crime and Punishment is its treatment of a troubling circumstance that occurs in society, that of the resentful, isolated young man. This phenomenon is apparently an old one, although I have a sense that it is more acute today than the past (due to the facilitation of the internet, social media, and delivery services). Such men are in pain and need society’s compassion and assistance, but without that their response tends towards violence and hatred, seeming to fuel gun violence, serial killing, and the formation of groups and ideologies like the incel and red pill communities. I don’t know if the morality and God of Dostoevky’s writing live within one person’s head or rather in the connections between people - perhaps evils only grow when we are truly alone.

Another interesting observation I had while reading this novel was what I felt were the similarities between the main character Raskolnikov and Ted Bundy, about whom I watched a documentary around the same time. In some ways they each present as psychopaths who can carry on in society hiding their murders and tricking other people, but in other ways Raskolnikov is shown to be much more empathetic. However, Bundy seemed to invite his discovery and capture in the end by committing small crimes. Perhaps his evil was so overpowering that he was addicted to crime, or perhaps like Raskolnikov, he wanted to be captured, punished, and redeemed.