Novel: Crime and Punishment

Overview
Set in the oppressive heat and squalor of 1860s St. Petersburg, Crime and Punishment follows Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a destitute ex-student who conceives a theory that extraordinary individuals may transgress moral law for a higher good. Convinced that killing a parasitic pawnbroker could liberate him and benefit others, he commits a brutal double murder, also killing the innocent Lizaveta who stumbles upon the scene. The act does not free him; it plunges him into fever, paranoia, and a relentless inner trial. Dostoevsky fuses a crime story with an inquiry into conscience, pride, and the possibility of redemption through suffering and love.

Plot Summary
After the murders, Raskolnikov steals little and hides the loot beneath a stone, more consumed by nausea and terror than gain. Ill and delirious, he is tended by his loyal friend Dmitri Razumikhin and his landlady’s servant, Nastasya. He navigates a gallery of the desperate: the drunken clerk Marmeladov, whom he aids after a fatal accident; Marmeladov’s consumptive widow, Katerina Ivanovna; and, most crucially, Sonya, Marmeladov’s meek, devout daughter forced into prostitution to feed her family. A letter from his mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, announces that his beloved sister, Avdotya Romanovna (Dunya), intends to marry the calculating lawyer Peter Petrovich Luzhin to save the family from ruin, a plan that deepens Raskolnikov’s agitation.

The investigation, led by the shrewd examining magistrate Porfiry Petrovich, becomes a psychological duel. Porfiry has read Raskolnikov’s youthful article asserting that great men may step over moral boundaries; he lures him into philosophical debates that unsettle more than accuse. A house painter, Nikolai, falsely confesses under pressure, exposing how guilt and fear warp truth. Parallel to this cat-and-mouse is the looming presence of Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, Dunya’s predatory former employer, whose wealth, sensuality, and moral emptiness mirror Raskolnikov’s theory without its ethical scruples. Raskolnikov vacillates between defiance and confession, oscillating wildly after dreams, most notably of a mare beaten to death, that expose the cruelty at the heart of his idea.

Raskolnikov finally confides in Sonya, who responds with compassion, gives him a cross, and reads him the raising of Lazarus, urging him to accept suffering and seek rebirth. Svidrigailov overhears and later attempts to use the knowledge to entrap Dunya; when she rejects him, he wanders the city and ends his life with a pistol shot, a nihilistic counterpoint to redemption. Porfiry, convinced of Raskolnikov’s guilt, counsels confession as the only path to peace. After a fraught inner struggle, Raskolnikov kneels at a crossroads, kisses the earth, and turns himself in. Sentenced to eight years of penal servitude in Siberia, he is followed by Sonya, whose quiet fidelity nurtures the first stirrings of faith. The epilogue hints at a true resurrection beginning not with acquittal, but with acceptance of moral law and love.

Themes
The novel probes the collision between moral absolutism and utilitarian rationalization, dramatizing how abstract ideas can license violence when severed from empathy. Raskolnikov’s pride isolates him, and the city’s poverty intensifies his feverish consciousness, blurring boundaries between thought and deed. Confession and punishment emerge not as legal endpoints but as spiritual thresholds; suffering is framed as a crucible for self-knowledge. Doppelgängers embody choices: Razumikhin’s warmth and reason, Sonya’s self-sacrificial faith, and Svidrigailov’s hedonistic amorality reflect paths Raskolnikov might take. Dreams and delirium externalize guilt, while the Lazarus episode offers a vision of renewal through love.

Style and Structure
Dostoevsky blends psychological realism with a quasi-detective framework, using tight urban spaces, oppressive heat, and interior monologue to create claustrophobic intensity. The narrative’s pulse comes less from forensics than from moral suspense, as dialogues with Porfiry, Sonya, and Svidrigailov turn inquiry into spiritual cross-examination. Shifts in perspective and fevered free indirect discourse immerse the reader in Raskolnikov’s divided mind, culminating in an epilogue that reframes punishment as the beginning of a hard-won, tentative redemption.