Choose a specific quote (use page numbers and reference to Part I-VI or Epilogue) from the novel and analyze it, using an idea from How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Your analysis should illustrate the way in which your quote conveys a central them from the novel. The paper should be approximately two pages (@500 words) typed and double-spaced. You need not include parenthetical citations or a bibliography but you do need to include page numbers of any quotes you incorporate.
If you have posted this assignment, you will receive significant advice and commentary from me if you have not already. If you do not post you are on your own. This paper is due Friday August 29.
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Dostoyevsky's famous Crime and Punishment reflects the life of a man who has committed murder and must cope with its psychological consequences. The author carries you through this man's journey to seek happiness, wealth, and ultimately redemption. The book reads like a biography yet includes Raskolnikov's intimate thoughts and emotions. As the reader, one is taken on an exciting and depressing quest through the character's past and present life.
"My dear sir, why, my dear sir, everyone needs a small such somewhere, where he knows he will be pitied!" (page 12, Part I), spoken by Marmeladov to Raskolnikov in a bar in St. Petersburg, Russia. The thought that everyone needs to be pitied, no matter how poor or rich or filthy in soul, is spoken by a man committed to his drink. This statement speaks truth to Raskolnikov, who must realize that no matter his past or his future, he must have compassion as a security blanket, to wrap himself in when the world's wrath takes too much of a toll on him.
Since the two men were in a bar, drinking together, this quote is tied to Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, in such a way that, by sharing this drink together and sharing a story, the characters somewhat bond, and Raskolnikov feels compelled to walk the drunken storyteller home. Marmeladov was seeking someone who would understand his story with intellect and sensitivity, therefore, he confided in Raskolnikov. The men seem to become a part of each other that so much that Raskolnikov is sometimes caught with a thought from the fired clerk's story that remains with him. He saw the life of a man that had destroyed his reputation and family with his mental addiction to alcohol. He feels compelled to drink, in order to escape his worries and problems, while his family is killing themselves to make ends meet. Marmeladov's own daughter is selling her honor in order to pursue life. Marmeladov realizes this, and sees through his dazed eyes, that even the men who have broken their families and steal form their daughter in order to seek temporary relief, deserve a place in which they can seek pity. This pity keeps them from suffering from their own guilt and from this pity they find love. As one sees the story unfold, one realizes the guilt that eats at Raskolnikov until he becomes ill. He is shaken with fever and he cannot sleep, his thoughts are devoured with rage and self-disgust. He begins to doubt his own judgement. Even a killer, such as him, needs a place to feel the warmth of compassion, in order to feel human, in order to feel pitied. People pity those who are hurt, whether physically or mentally. When they do this, they feel themselves being compassionate but they feel themselves emotionally superior, and that they must comfort someone.
As Raskolnikov walks Marmeladov home and sees the situation in which Marmeladov's wife is put in, he realizes that the pity every man seeks was needed. Raskolnikov saw the family's struggles, and the truth in Marmeladov's story, that he leaves the only change he has in his pocket on the windowsill for the family. He walks away and considers taking the money back but realizes, that what Marmeladov needed all along, through his stories, drunkenness, and family life, was pity. He did not want a friend, he just needed human compassion in order to feel love. With his family, constantly cursing him for what he has done, Marmeladov sought compassion else where, a greasy bar with an intellectual face. Everyone needs compassion, even the filthiest murderers. Thus, verifying the truth in Marmeladov's afore said statement. This drink that the two men shared was the pity that Marmeladov needed.
Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, is about a destitute and desperate man who goes by the name of Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov commits a murder at the beginning of the story and struggles with the effects of it for the rest of the novel. He believes himself to be a great man because he “has stepped over the line,” but Raskolnikov soon begins to question his greatness as reality sets in.
“Something was happening to him that was completely unfamiliar to him, something new, unannounced and unprecedented. Less did he understand than clearly sense with all the power of sensation that not only was it impossible for him to address these people in the superintendent’s bureau with the sentimental expansiveness he had lately employed- he could address them on no other terms, either, and even if they had all been his very own brothers and sisters, and not police lieutenants at all, even then he would have had absolutely no reason to address them about any circumstances of his life that he could possibly imagine; never until that moment had he experienced such a strange and terrible sensation.” Part II, Chapter I, Page 126.
This quote represents the moment when Raskolnikov realizes that by his crime he has truly separated himself from the rest of society. His crime ties him into one of Foster’s categories of violence. This category is “the specific injury that authors cause characters to visit on one another or on themselves.” His crime has clearly injured others, but it has clearly hurt him as well. By committing his crime, he has separated himself from society and from anyone who could help him. We can also start to understand that there are different conflicts evolving in the novel. Raskolnikov must resolve his conflict with the authorities as well as resolving the conflict with himself. He is beginning to suffer from a severe lack of emotion, and this is what allowed him to commit the crime and disconnect himself from society. Due to this lack of emotion, Raskolnikov has developed a sort of ego because he had “stepped across the line.” With this ego he has suddenly found himself without help and he must decide if he can go on like this or if his conscious will cause him to break down and try to reconnect with society.
Everyone can relate to the emotion in this quote. Everyone has at some point or another, found themselves in a situation where they don’t really have anyone to talk to and they have to struggle to decide if they can find someone that will love them anyways for their mistakes or if they are going to force themselves to keep something inside that will destroy them from the inside out. It’s all about knowing one’s limits and the fact that Raskolnikov has entered into a world where he is helpless, has scared him.
A major theme to the story must be separation from society and how it eats away at the individual. Raskolnikov used society as the tool to his murder and to his ego. For the majority of the novel he feels superior to society, but it is not until he has pushed society so far away that he decides he wants it back. It is more than wanting it, he needs it. Without it, Raskolnikov would self-destruct instead of just breaking down. It was just a matter of him breaking through his own wall of pride, in order to gain the goodness of the other side.
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