Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” is often praised for a comprehensive psychoanalysis into the complex of a murderer. With gruesome depictions of the streets of Russia, the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, travels through the darkest parts of human society, becoming the culmination of evil in Dostoevsky’s visualization. 

     Raskolnikov is a former student in St. Petersburg, Russia, where, after enduring the cruelty of poverty, drops out of school. He lives in a filthy apartment so cramped that even the reader has a hard time breathing. After pawning off the last of his valuables and heirlooms, he wanders the streets of the city with the little money he had gained and irrationally spends it or gives it away–he simply couldn't care less. Dostoevsky underscores the depressive nature of Russian society rubbing off on Raskolnikov, taking his purity and slowly transforming him into someone with nothing. All of it culminates into the double-murder he commits with the blunt end of an ax. From here, the reader is a passenger in Dostoevsky’s rollercoaster of writing as we travel into the mind of Raskolnikov, with his entire being withering away.

     I found it all hard to believe.

     That’s not to say that the book was not captivating. There is a reason that “Crime and Punishment” is often regarded as the apex of Russian literature; no other book has provided such a humane perspective on what is otherwise an inhumane deed. However, what fell short was the fact that Raskolnikov impulsively committed this horrific deed from childish urges. This single fallacy in an otherwise epic story, unfortunately, took away a lot of validity from the rest of the novel for me.

     Raskolnikov’s initial justification for his murder was that the person he killed was a scum of the Earth, unfit to live. While we learn later what the real reasoning is, even this is shallow–no person is allowed to make the final judgment, regardless of their thoughts. On top of that, the person he murdered was a pawnbroker who just happened to scam people out of their valuables. If Raskolnikov made this rash decision based solely upon this fact, then we have to ask the question: who’s really the worse person here?

     However, throughout all the justifications for his murder, the crux of it all seems to be that Raskolnikov wanted to establish his superiority over humanity. If that were true, then this man would have already been mentally deranged before the murder even occurred–no sane human would go about killing someone because of their lack of self-esteem. Because of this, the author’s main takeaway seems to be this: the prerequisite to madness is the most horrific of deeds (murder, in this case).

     He forgot to include that the prerequisite to murder is insanity as well.