Crime and Punishment

I read Crime and Punishment, mostly because Andrew Klavan said that book helped him become a Christian. This is a famous book, and so I thought I might give it a shot, knowing it isn't short, but maybe along the way, I might become a little bit more cultured.

Early on in the book, the main character kills a pawnbroker with an axe and her sister, who happens to have walked in on the murder. The main character believed that it was fine for some people to commit crimes if there was a greater benefit. The pawnbroker was not a kind woman, so if she died, it might be possible for her money to be redistributed to better people, maybe those in need. He was a student or maybe a uni lecturer, and had even published an article on this topic. Here he seemed to live out his own theory. After all, if Napoleon could get away with his crimes, why can't other more intelligent or "extraordinary" individuals?

During the crime, two men knocked at the door and realised someone was in the room, as it was locked from the inside. During a very short timeframe when step away from the door, the main guy was able to escape. Only later do the men discover the two murdered inside. 

Through all his careful planning, he had not counted on the sister coming in (his planning thought she was going to be out) nor for the men to knock at the door. After he got away, he stashed what little valuable trinkets he had taken. He then became sick, maybe a bit delirious, due maybe from the guilt of what he had done.

Soon after, His mother and sister turn up to visit him with news that his sister is going to get married. He is not pleased with this, suspecting the fiancée of having selfish motives and so sets out to break that engagement. 

Along the way, he encounters a poor family whose father had died, and gives them money and gets involved with their lives, along with a prostitute who cares for him. He eventually confides in her the truth of his actions, only to realise that someone else had overheard his confession too.

Through all this, there was the police doing their investigations into the double murder. Some of his stuff he had pawned off to the old lady, so he was part of the normal questioning process. But it was big news in their town, so lots of people were talking and speculating about it. Throughout hearing how the case was progressing, the main character would put forward his own theories about what took place and why so-and-so isn't guilty, while also avoiding suspicion. 

There was one very good scene when he was being interviewed by the police man who seemed to be quite jovial and yet cunning. The policeman's casual manner hid the fact that he strongly suspected the main character, creating quite a clever, tense moment. That whole scene ended with an explosion of someone entering the room and confessing to the crime.

After confession, he realised the cat was out of the bag, and eventually turned himself in, after talking with someone who was also as depraved as him, but with no intellectual pretence. In the postscript, his prostitute friend moved closer to the prison he was in, to be near him, and her faith and kindness towards him eventually won him over, and he may have even turned to Christ. I thought that whole postscript could have been drawn out a little more and be a nice fitting story arc, but all that happened in a relatively quick summary at the end.

Now, the reason why this review has no names in it, was because in the book I found it very hard to remember the names of the character, so I had to keep working out who was the police man, who was the fiancée, who was the sister, or the main characters old work mate.. etc I just couldn't handle their long names that sort of looked the same: Porfiry Petrovich, Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova, Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova, and the main character was Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.

It also took me a little to get into the story in how it worked. Really, each chapter was some extended dialogue, mostly between two characters. There are detailed descriptions at times, but most of it was exposition, and analysing what each person is saying.

When Andrew Klavan was reading this, he was struck by the basic idea that no matter how you frame it, you can't justify killing someone with an axe. There is right and wrong in the world. The philosophy of the main character doesn't stand, no matter how you twist it. And I think that was Dostoevsky's point. This book feels like it is saying: Nietzsche was wrong. 

Along the way, there was a character who would put forward socialist ideas, but even the main character poked holes in their utopian thinking. There was also a nihilist/hedonist character who was fully aware of what they were and saw the bleak, hopeless ending of that way of life. 

In the end, it was through the kindness of a faithful prostitute who brought about real reform and change. Not through power or intellectual argument, but through love. Dostoevsky was probably saying something through this point too.