IMPORTANT CONCEPTS IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
1. cite incidents from the novel to illustrate Raskolnikov’s dual nature.
2. identify doubles or pairs of characters who share similar or contradictory traits and discuss how these doubles add believability and suspense to the novel.
3. discuss the extent to which Raskolnikov believes that his decision to commit the crime, and the resulting consequences of that crime, are the result of predetermination or fate.
4. cite incidents from the novel illustrating the following theme: A man can be rehabilitated through the power of reconciliation, repentance, and love.
represent in Crime and Punishment.
5. point out and explain religious symbols in the novel including:
• the number 3
• the story of Lazarus
• Sonia’s cross
6. point out the significance of the color yellow discuss what it may represent in Crime and Punishment.
7. recognize and point out instances of irony in Crime and Punishment.
8. discuss the importance of dreams in the novel to foreshadow future actions and to give insight into the minds of the characters.
9. relate incidents from the lives of the female characters in the novel that illustrate the Following. Be sure to address the SIGNIFICANCE of this element
• hardships the women must face in this era and the strength required to endure them.
• the willingness of the female characters to sacrifi ce themselves for others and to forgive the sins of others.
10. discuss the extent to which Raskolnikov’s relationship with the female characters aids his rehabilitation. Discuss what symbolism/ allusion is apparent in these relationships.
11. Discuss the theme of rebirth/ regeneration in the novel. Consider how each of the following contributes to the development of this theme:
• love
• prayer
• repentance
• punishment
• forgiveness
12. The apparent connection between imprisonment and a kind of spiritual freedom.
14. point out the ways Dostoevsky uses Svidrigailov’s nihilistic lifestyle and Lebeziatnikov’s nihilistic views to express his dislike of nihilism.
15. discuss the ways in which Raskolnikov and Dounia are alike and why only one of them is able to kill.
KOHLBERG'S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
An outstanding example of research in the Piagetian tradition is the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg has focused on moral development and has proposed a stage theory of moral thinking which goes well beyond Piaget's initial formulations.
Kohlberg, who was born in 1927, grew up in Bronxville, New York, and attended the Andover Academy in Massachusetts, a private high school for bright and usually wealthy students. He did not go immediately to college, but instead went to help the Israeli cause, in which he was made the Second Engineer on an old freighter carrying refugees from parts of Europe to Israel. After this, in 1948, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he scored so high on admission tests that he had to take only a few courses to earn his bachelor's degree. This he did in one year. He stayed on at Chicago for graduate work in psychology, at first thinking he would become a clinical psychologist. However, he soon became interested in Piaget and began interviewing children and adolescents on moral issues. The result was his doctoral dissertation (1958a), the first rendition of his new stage theory.
Kohlberg is an informal, unassuming man who also is a true scholar; he has thought long and deeply about a wide range of issues in both psychology and philosophy and has done much to help others appreciate the wisdom of many of the "old psychologists," such as Rousseau, John Dewey, and James Mark Baldwin. Kohlberg has taught at the University of Chicago (1962-1968) and, since 1968, has been at Harvard University.
PIAGET'S STAGES OF MORAL JUDGMENT
Piaget studied many aspects of moral judgment, but most of his findings fit into a two-stage theory. Children younger than 10 or 11 years think about moral dilemmas one way; older children consider them differently. As we have seen, younger children regard rules as fixed and absolute. They believe that rules are handed down by adults or by God and that one cannot change them. The older child's view is more relativistic. He or she understands that it is permissible to change rules if everyone agrees. Rules are not sacred and absolute but are devices which humans use to get along cooperatively.
At approximately the same time--10 or 11 years--children's moral thinking undergoes other shifts. In particular, younger children base their moral judgments more on consequences, whereas older children base their judgments on intentions. When, for example, the young child hears about one boy who broke 15 cups trying to help his mother and another boy who broke only one cup trying to steal cookies, the young child thinks that the first boy did worse. The child primarily considers the amount of damage--the consequences--whereas the older child is more likely to judge wrongness in terms of the motives underlying the act (Piaget, 1932, p. 137).
There are many more details to Piaget's work on moral judgment, but he essentially found a series of changes that occur between the ages of 10 and 12, just when the child begins to enter the general stage of formal operations.
Intellectual development, however, does not stop at this point. This is just the beginning of formal operations, which continue to develop at least until age 16. Accordingly, one might expect thinking about moral issues to continue to develop throughout adolescence. Kohlberg therefore interviewed both children and adolescents about moral dilemmas, and he did find stages that go well beyond Piaget's. He uncovered six stages, only the first three of which share many features with Piaget's stages.
KOHLBERG'S METHOD
Kohlberg's (1958a) core sample was comprised of 72 boys, from both middle- and lower-class families in Chicago. They were ages 10, 13, and 16. He later added to his sample younger children, delinquents, and boys and girls from other American cities and from other countries (1963, 1970).
The basic interview consists of a series of dilemmas such as the following:
Heinz Steals the Drug
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1963, p. 19)
Kohlberg is not really interested in whether the subject says "yes" or "no" to this dilemma but in the reasoning behind the answer. The interviewer wants to know why the subject thinks Heinz should or should not have stolen the drug. The interview schedule then asks new questions which help one understand the child's reasoning. For example, children are asked if Heinz had a right to steal the drug, if he was violating the druggist's rights, and what sentence the judge should give him once he was caught. Once again, the main concern is with the reasoning behind the answers. The interview then goes on to give more dilemmas in order to get a good sampling of a subject's moral thinking.
Once Kohlberg had classified the various responses into stages, he wanted to know whether his classification was reliable. In particular, he. wanted to know if others would score the protocols in the same way. Other judges independently scored a sample of responses, and he calculated the degree to which all raters agreed. This procedure is called interrater reliability. Kohlberg found these agreements to be high, as he has in his subsequent work, but whenever investigators use Kohlberg's interview, they also should check for interrater reliability before scoring the entire sample.
KOHLBERG'S SIX STAGES
Level 1. Preconventional Morality
Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment Orientation. Kohlberg's stage 1 is similar to Piaget's first stage of moral thought. The child assumes that powerful authorities hand down a fixed set of rules which he or she must unquestioningly obey. To the Heinz dilemma, the child typically says that Heinz was wrong to steal the drug because "It's against the law," or "It's bad to steal," as if this were all there were to it. When asked to elaborate, the child usually responds in terms of the consequences involved, explaining that stealing is bad "because you'll get punished" (Kohlberg, 1958b).
Although the vast majority of children at stage 1 oppose Heinz’s theft, it is still possible for a child to support the action and still employ stage 1 reasoning. For example, a child might say, "Heinz can steal it because he asked first and it's not like he stole something big; he won't get punished" (see Rest, 1973). Even though the child agrees with Heinz’s action, the reasoning is still stage 1; the concern is with what authorities permit and punish.
Kohlberg calls stage 1 thinking "preconventional" because children do not yet speak as members of society. Instead, they see morality as something external to themselves, as that which the big people say they must do.
Stage 2. Individualism and Exchange. At this stage children recognize that there is not just one right view that is handed down by the authorities. Different individuals have different viewpoints. "Heinz," they might point out, "might think it's right to take the drug, the druggist would not." Since everything is relative, each person is free to pursue his or her individual interests. One boy said that Heinz might steal the drug if he wanted his wife to live, but that he doesn't have to if he wants to marry someone younger and better-looking (Kohlberg, 1963, p. 24). Another boy said Heinz might steal it because
maybe they had children and he might need someone at home to look after them. But maybe he shouldn't steal it because they might put him in prison for more years than he could stand. (Colby and Kauffman. 1983, p. 300)
What is right for Heinz, then, is what meets his own self-interests.
You might have noticed that children at both stages 1 and 2 talk about punishment. However, they perceive it differently. At stage 1 punishment is tied up in the child's mind with wrongness; punishment "proves" that disobedience is wrong. At stage 2, in contrast, punishment is simply a risk that one naturally wants to avoid.
Although stage 2 respondents sometimes sound amoral, they do have some sense of right action. This is a notion of fair exchange or fair deals. The philosophy is one of returning favors--"If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." To the Heinz story, subjects often say that Heinz was right to steal the drug because the druggist was unwilling to make a fair deal; he was "trying to rip Heinz off," Or they might say that he should steal for his wife "because she might return the favor some day" (Gibbs et al., 1983, p. 19).
Respondents at stage 2 are still said to reason at the preconventional level because they speak as isolated individuals rather than as members of society. They see individuals exchanging favors, but there is still no identification with the values of the family or community.
Level II. Conventional Morality
Stage 3. Good Interpersonal Relationships. At this stage children--who are by now usually entering their teens--see morality as more than simple deals. They believe that people should live up to the expectations of the family and community and behave in "good" ways. Good behavior means having good motives and interpersonal feelings such as love, empathy, trust, and concern for others. Heinz, they typically argue, was right to steal the drug because "He was a good man for wanting to save her," and "His intentions were good, that of saving the life of someone he loves." Even if Heinz doesn't love his wife, these subjects often say, he should steal the drug because "I don't think any husband should sit back and watch his wife die" (Gibbs et al., 1983, pp. 36-42; Kohlberg, 1958b).
If Heinz’s motives were good, the druggist's were bad. The druggist, stage 3 subjects emphasize, was "selfish," "greedy," and "only interested in himself, not another life." Sometimes the respondents become so angry with the druggist that they say that he ought to be put in jail (Gibbs et al., 1983, pp. 26-29, 40-42). A typical stage 3 response is that of Don, age 13:
It was really the druggist's fault, he was unfair, trying to overcharge and letting someone die. Heinz loved his wife and wanted to save her. I think anyone would. I don't think they would put him in jail. The judge would look at all sides, and see that the druggist was charging too much. (Kohlberg, 1963, p. 25)
We see that Don defines the issue in terms of the actors' character traits and motives. He talks about the loving husband, the unfair druggist, and the understanding judge. His answer deserves the label "conventional "morality" because it assumes that the attitude expressed would be shared by the entire community—"anyone" would be right to do what Heinz did (Kohlberg, 1963, p. 25).
As mentioned earlier, there are similarities between Kohlberg's first three stages and Piaget's two stages. In both sequences there is a shift from unquestioning obedience to a relativistic outlook and to a concern for good motives. For Kohlberg, however, these shifts occur in three stages rather than two.
Stage 4. Maintaining the Social Order. Stage 3 reasoning works best in two-person relationships with family members or close friends, where one can make a real effort to get to know the other's feelings and needs and try to help. At stage 4, in contrast, the respondent becomes more broadly concerned with society as a whole. Now the emphasis is on obeying laws, respecting authority, and performing one's duties so that the social order is maintained. In response to the Heinz story, many subjects say they understand that Heinz's motives were good, but they cannot condone the theft. What would happen if we all started breaking the laws whenever we felt we had a good reason? The result would be chaos; society couldn't function. As one subject explained,
I don't want to sound like Spiro Agnew, law and order and wave the flag, but if everybody did as he wanted to do, set up his own beliefs as to right and wrong, then I think you would have chaos. The only thing I think we have in civilization nowadays is some sort of legal structure which people are sort of bound to follow. [Society needs] a centralizing framework. (Gibbs et al., 1983, pp. 140-41)
Because stage 4, subjects make moral decisions from the perspective of society as a whole, they think from a full-fledged member-of-society perspective (Colby and Kohlberg, 1983, p. 27).
You will recall that stage 1 children also generally oppose stealing because it breaks the law. Superficially, stage 1 and stage 4 subjects are giving the same response, so we see here why Kohlberg insists that we must probe into the reasoning behind the overt response. Stage 1 children say, "It's wrong to steal" and "It's against the law," but they cannot elaborate any further, except to say that stealing can get a person jailed. Stage 4 respondents, in contrast, have a conception of the function of laws for society as a whole--a conception which far exceeds the grasp of the younger child.
Level III. Postconventional Morality
Stage 5. Social Contract and Individual Rights. At stage 4, people want to keep society functioning. However, a smoothly functioning society is not necessarily a good one. A totalitarian society might be well-organized, but it is hardly the moral ideal. At stage 5, people begin to ask, "What makes for a good society?" They begin to think about society in a very theoretical way, stepping back from their own society and considering the rights and values that a society ought to uphold. They then evaluate existing societies in terms of these prior considerations. They are said to take a "prior-to-society" perspective (Colby and Kohlberg, 1983, p. 22).
Stage 5 respondents basically believe that a good society is best conceived as a social contract into which people freely enter to work toward the benefit of all They recognize that different social groups within a society will have different values, but they believe that all rational people would agree on two points. First they would all want certain basic rights, such as liberty and life, to be protected Second, they would want some democratic procedures for changing unfair law and for improving society.
In response to the Heinz dilemma, stage 5 respondents make it clear that they do not generally favor breaking laws; laws are social contracts that we agree to uphold until we can change them by democratic means. Nevertheless, the wife’s right to live is a moral right that must be protected. Thus, stage 5 respondent sometimes defend Heinz’s theft in strong language:
It is the husband's duty to save his wife. The fact that her life is in danger transcends every other standard you might use to judge his action. Life is more important than property.
This young man went on to say that "from a moral standpoint" Heinz should save the life of even a stranger, since to be consistent, the value of a life means any life. When asked if the judge should punish Heinz, he replied:
Usually the moral and legal standpoints coincide. Here they conflict. The judge should weight the moral standpoint more heavily but preserve the legal law in punishing Heinz lightly. (Kohlberg, 1976, p. 38)
Stage 5 subjects,- then, talk about "morality" and "rights" that take some priority over particular laws. Kohlberg insists, however, that we do not judge people to be at stage 5 merely from their verbal labels. We need to look at their social perspective and mode of reasoning. At stage 4, too, subjects frequently talk about the "right to life," but for them this right is legitimized by the authority of their social or religious group (e.g., by the Bible). Presumably, if their group valued property over life, they would too. At stage 5, in contrast, people are making more of an independent effort to think out what any society ought to value. They often reason, for example, that property has little meaning without life. They are trying to determine logically what a society ought to be like (Kohlberg, 1981, pp. 21-22; Gibbs et al., 1983, p. 83).
Stage 6: Universal Principles. Stage 5 respondents are working toward a conception of the good society. They suggest that we need to (a) protect certain individual rights and (b) settle disputes through democratic processes. However, democratic processes alone do not always result in outcomes that we intuitively sense are just. A majority, for example, may vote for a law that hinders a minority. Thus, Kohlberg believes that there must be a higher stage--stage 6--which defines the principles by which we achieve justice.
Kohlberg's conception of justice follows that of the philosophers Kant and Rawls, as well as great moral leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King. According to these people, the principles of justice require us to treat the claims of all parties in an impartial manner, respecting the basic dignity, of all people as individuals. The principles of justice are therefore universal; they apply to all. Thus, for example, we would not vote for a law that aids some people but hurts others. The principles of justice guide us toward decisions based on an equal respect for all.
In actual practice, Kohlberg says, we can reach just decisions by looking at a situation through one another's eyes. In the Heinz dilemma, this would mean that all parties--the druggist, Heinz, and his wife--take the roles of the others. To do this in an impartial manner, people can assume a "veil of ignorance" (Rawls, 1971), acting as if they do not know which role they will eventually occupy. If the druggist did this, even he would recognize that life must take priority over property; for he wouldn't want to risk finding himself in the wife's shoes with property valued over life. Thus, they would all agree that the wife must be saved--this would be the fair solution. Such a solution, we must note, requires not only impartiality, but the principle that everyone is given full and equal respect. If the wife were considered of less value than the others, a just solution could not be reached.
Until recently, Kohlberg had been scoring some of his subjects at stage 6, but he has temporarily stopped doing so, For one thing, he and other researchers had not been finding subjects who consistently reasoned at this stage. Also, Kohlberg has concluded that his interview dilemmas are not useful for distinguishing between stage 5 and stage 6 thinking. He believes that stage 6 has a clearer and broader conception of universal principles (which include justice as well as individual rights), but feels that his interview fails to draw out this broader understanding. Consequently, he has temporarily dropped stage 6 from his scoring manual, calling it a "theoretical stage" and scoring all postconventional responses as stage 5 (Colby and Kohlberg, 1983, p. 28).
Theoretically, one issue that distinguishes stage 5 from stage 6 is civil disobedience. Stage 5 would be more hesitant to endorse civil disobedience because of its commitment to the social contract and to changing laws through democratic agreements. Only when an individual right is clearly at stake does violating the law seem justified. At stage 6, in contrast, a commitment to justice makes the rationale for civil disobedience stronger and broader. Martin Luther King, for example, argued that laws are only valid insofar as they are grounded in justice, and that a commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws. King also recognized, of course, the general need for laws and democratic processes (stages 4 and 5), and he was therefore willing to accept the penalities for his actions. Nevertheless, he believed that the higher principle of justice required civil disobedience (Kohlberg, 198 1, p. 43).
Summary
At stage 1 children think of what is right as that which authority says is right. Doing the right thing is obeying authority and avoiding punishment. At stage 2, children are no longer so impressed by any single authority; they see that there are different sides to any issue. Since everything is relative, one is free to pursue one's own interests, although it is often useful to make deals and exchange favors with others.
At stages 3 and 4, young people think as members of the conventional society with its values, norms, and expectations. At stage 3, they emphasize being a good person, which basically means having helpful motives toward people close to one At stage 4, the concern shifts toward obeying laws to maintain society as a whole.
At stages 5 and 6 people are less concerned with maintaining society for it own sake, and more concerned with the principles and values that make for a good society. At stage 5 they emphasize basic rights and the democratic processes that give everyone a say, and at stage 6 they define the principles by which agreement will be most just.
THEORETICAL ISSUES
How Development Occurs
Kohlberg, it is important to remember, is a close follower of Piaget. Accordingly, Kohlberg's theoretical positions, including that on developmental change, reflect those of his mentor.
Kohlberg (e.g., 1968; 198 1, Ch. 3) says that his stages are not the product of maturation. That is, the stage structures and sequences do not simply unfold according to a genetic blueprint.
Neither, Kohlberg maintains, are his stages the product of socialization. That is, socializing agents (e.g., parents and teachers) do not directly teach new forms of thinking. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine them systematically teaching each new stage structure in its particular place in the sequence.
The stages emerge, instead, from our own thinking about moral problems. Social experiences do promote development, but they do so by stimulating our mental processes. As we get into discussions and debates with others, we find our views questioned and challenged and are therefore motivated to come up with new, more comprehensive positions. New stages reflect these broader viewpoints (Kohlberg et al., 1975).
We might imagine, for example, a young man and woman discussing a new law. The man says that everyone should obey it, like it or not, because laws are vital to social organization (stage 4). The woman notes, however, that some well-organized societies, such as Nazi Germany, were not particularly moral. The man therefore sees that some evidence contradicts his view. He experiences some cognitive conflict and is motivated to think about the matter more fully, perhaps moving a bit toward stage 5.
Kohlberg also sometimes speaks of change occurring through role-taking opportunities, opportunities to consider others' viewpoints (e.g., 1976). As children interact with others, they learn how viewpoints differ and how to coordinate them in cooperative activities. As they discuss their problems and work out their differences, they develop their conceptions of what is fair and just.
Whatever the interactions are specifically like, they work best, Kohlberg says, when they are open and democratic. The less children feel pressured simply to conform to authority, the freer they are to settle their own differences and formulate their own ideas. We will discuss Kohlberg's efforts to induce developmental change in the section on implications for education.
Moral Thought and Moral Behavior
Kohlberg's scale has to do with moral thinking, not moral action. As everyone knows, people who can talk at a high moral level may not behave accordingly. Consequently, we would not expect perfect correlations between moral judgment and moral action. Still, Kohlberg thinks that there should be some relationship.
As a general hypothesis, he proposes that moral behavior is more consistent, predictable. and responsible at the higher stages (Kohlberg et al., 1975), because the stages themselves increasingly employ more stable and general standards. For example, whereas stage 3 bases decisions on others' feelings, which can vary, stage 4 refers to set rules and laws. Thus, we can expect that moral behavior, too, will become more consistent as people move up the sequence. Generally speaking, there is some research support for this hypothesis (e.g., with respect to cheating), but the evidence is not clear-cut (Blasi, 1980; Brown and Herrnstein, 1975).
Some research has focused on the relationships between particular stages and specific kinds of behavior. For example, one might expect that juvenile delinquents or criminals would typically reason at stages 1 or 2, viewing morality as something imposed from without (stage 1) or as a matter of self-interest (stage 2), rather than identifying with society's conventional expectations (stages 3 and 4). Again, some research supports this hypothesis, but there also are some ambiguous results (Blasi, 1980).
Several studies have examined the relationship between postconventional thinking and student protest. In a landmark study, Haan et al. (1968) examined the moral reasoning of those who participated in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964. Haan found that their thinking was more strongly postconventional than that of a matched sample of nonparticipants, but this f inding was not replicated for some other protests, apparently because moral principles were not at stake (Keniston, 1971, pp. 260-6 1).
Blasi (1980), after reviewing 75 studies, concludes that overall there is a relationship between moral thought and action, but he suggests that we need to introduce other variables to clarify this relationship. One variable may simply be the extent to which individuals themselves feel the need to maintain consistency between their moral thoughts and actions (Blasi, 1980, Kohlberg and Candee, 1981).
IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION
Kohlberg would like to see people advance to the highest possible stage of moral thought. The best possible society would contain individuals who not only understand the need for social order (stage 4) but can entertain visions of universal principles, such as justice and liberty (stage 6) (Kohlberg, 1970).
How, then, can one promote moral development? Turiel (1966) found that when children listened to adults' moral judgments, the resulting change was slight. This is what Kohlberg might have expected, for he believes that if children are to reorganize their thinking, they must be more active.
Accordingly, Kohlberg encouraged another student, Moshe Blatt, to lead discussion groups in which children had a chance to grapple actively with moral issues (Blatt and Kohlberg, 1975). Blatt presented moral dilemmas which engaged the classes in a good deal of heated debate. He tried to leave much of the discussion to the children themselves, stepping in only to summarize, clarify, and sometimes present a view himself (p. 133). He encouraged arguments that were one stage above those of most of the class. In essence, he tried to implement one of Kohlberg's main ideas on how children move through the stages. They do so by encountering views which challenge their thinking and stimulate them to formulate better arguments (Kohlberg et al., 1975).
Blatt began a typical discussion by telling a story about a man named Mr. Jones who had a seriously injured son and wanted to rush him to the hospital. Mr. Jones had no car, so he approached a stranger, told him about the situation, and asked to borrow his car. The stranger, however, refused, saying he had an important appointment to keep. So Mr. Jones took the car by force. Blatt then asked whether Mr. Jones should have done that.
In the discussion that followed, one child, Student B, felt that Mr. Jones had a good cause for taking the car and also believed that the stranger could be charged with murder if the son died. Student C pointed out that the stranger violated no law. Student B still felt that the stranger's behavior was somehow wrong, even though he now realized that it was not legally wrong. Thus, Student B was in a kind of conflict. He had a sense of the wrongness of the stranger's behavior, but he could not articulate this sense in terms that would meet the objection. He was challenged to think about the problem more deeply.
In the end, Blatt gave him the answer. The stranger's behavior, Blatt said, was not legally wrong, but morally wrong--wrong according to God's laws (this was a Sunday School Class). At this point, Blatt was an authority teaching the "correct" view. In so doing, he might have robbed Student B of the chance to formulate spontaneously his own position. He might have done better to ask a question or to simply clarify the student's conflict (e.g,, "So it's not legally wrong, but you still have a sense that, it's somehow wrong. . ."). In any case, it seems clear that part of this discussion was valuable for this student. Since he himself struggled to formulate a distinction that could handle the objection, he could fully appreciate and assimilate a new view that he was looking for.
The Kohlberg-Blatt method of inducing cognitive conflict exemplifies Piaget's equilibration model. The child takes one view, becomes confused by discrepant information, and then resolves the confusion by forming a more advanced and comprehensive position. The method is also the dialectic process of Socratic teaching. The students give a view, the teacher asks questions which get them to see the inadequacies of their views, and they are then motivated to formulate better positions.
In Blatt's first experiment, the students (sixth graders) participated in 12 weekly discussion groups. Blatt found that over half the students moved up one full stage after the 12 weeks. Blatt and others have tried to replicate these findings, sometimes using other age groups and lengthier series of classes. As often happens with replications, the results have not been quite so successful; upward changes have been smaller--usually a third of a stage or less, Still, it generally seems that Socratic classroom discussions held over several months can produce changes that, while small, are significantly greater than those found in control groups who do not receive these experiences (Rest, 1983).
One of Blatt's supplementary findings was that those students who reported that they were most "interested" in the discussions made the greatest amount of change. This finding is in keeping with Piagetian theory. Children develop not because they are shaped through external reinforcements but because their curiosity is aroused. They become interested in information that does not quite fit into their existing cognitive structures and are thereby motivated to revise their thinking Another Kohlberg student--M. Berkowitz (1980)--is examining actual dialogues to see if those who become most challenged and involved in the tensions of moral debate are also those who move forward.
Although Kohlberg remains committed to the cognitive-conflict model of change, he has also become interested in other strategies. One is the "just Community" approach. Here the focus is not the individuals but groups. For example, Kohlberg and some of his colleagues (Power and Reimer, 1979) set up a special democratic high school group and actively encouraged the students to think of themselves as a community. Initially, little community feeling was present. The group's dominant orientation was stage 2; it treated problems such as stealing as purely individual matters. If a boy had something stolen, it was too bad for him. After a year, however, the group norms advanced to stage 3; the students now considered stealing to be a community issue that reflected on the degree of trust and care in the group.
It will be interesting to see if the just community approach can promote further advances in moral thinking. In the meantime, this approach has aroused some uneasiness among some of Kohlberg's associates. In particular, Reimer et al. (1983) have wondered whether Kohlberg, by explicitly encouraging the students to think of themselves as a community, is not practicing a form of indoctrination. Reimer says that he has talked to Kohlberg about this, and he has come away convinced that Kohlberg is committed to democratic groups in which students are encouraged "to think critically, to discuss assumptions, and. when they feel it is necessary, to challenge the teacher's suggestions" (p. 252). Thus, moral development remains a product of the students' own thinking.
KOHLBERG'S THEORY APPLIED TO A MORAL DILEMMA SCENARIO: AN EXAMPLE OF THE THEORY
Consider the following scenarios. What are the possible solutions for each scenario at each of Kohlberg's stages of moral development?
Scenario 1
A woman was near death from a unique kind of cancer. There is a drug that might
save her. The drug costs $4,000 per dosage. The sick woman's husband, Heinz,
went to everyone he knew to borrow the money and tried every legal means, but he
could only get together about $2,000. He asked the doctor scientist who
discovered the drug for a discount or let him pay later. But the doctor
scientist refused.
Should Heinz break into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or
why not?
Scenario 2
Heinz broke into the laboratory and stole the drug. The next day, the newspapers
reported the break-in and theft. Brown, a police officer and a friend of Heinz
remembered seeing Heinz last evening, behaving suspiciously near the laboratory.
Later that night, he saw Heinz running away from the laboratory.
Should Brown report what he saw? Why or why not?
Scenario 3
Officer Brown reported what he saw. Heinz was arrested and brought to court. If
convicted, he faces up to two years' jail. Heinz was found guilty.
Should the judge sentence Heinz to prison? Why or why not?
ASSIGNMENT
Considering what we now about about Kohlberg's theory of moral development, answer each of the questions on the following moral dilemmas. Then, not which of Kohlberg's stages applies to the question:
Joe is a fourteen-year-old boy who wanted to go to camp very much. His father promised him he could go if he saved up the money for it himself. So Joe worked hard at his paper route and saved up the forty dollars it cost to go to camp, and a little more besides. But just before camp was going to start, his father changed his mind. Some of his friends decided to go on a special fishing trip, and Joe's father was short of the money it would cost. So he told Joe to give him the money he had saved from the paper route. Joe didn't want to give up going to camp, so he thinks of refusing to give his father the money.
1. Should Joe refuse to give his father the money? Why or why not?
2. Does the father have the right to tell Joe to give him the money? Why or why not?
3. Does giving the money have anything to do with being a good son? Why or why not?
4. Is the fact that Joe earned the money himself important in this situation? Why or why not?
5. The father promised Joe he could go to camp if he earned the money. Is the fact that the father promised the most important thing in the situation? Why or why not?
6. In general, why should a promise kept?
7. Is it important to keep a promise to someone you don't know well and probably won't see again? Why or why not?
8. What do you think is the most important thing a father should be concerned about in his relationship to his son? Why is that the most important thing?
9. In general, what should be the authority of a father over his son? Why?
10. What do you think is the most important thing a son should be concerned about in his relationship to his father? Why is that the most important thing?
11. In thinking back over the dilemma, what would you say is the most responsible thing for Joe to do in this situation? Why?
Judy was a twelve-year-old girl. Her mother promised her that she could go to a special rock concert coming to their town if she saved up from baby-sitting and lunch money to buy a ticket to the concert. She managed to save up the fifteen dollars the ticket cost plus another five dollars. But then her mother changed her mind and told Judy that she had to spend the money on new clothes for school. Judy was disappointed and decided to go to the concert anyway. She bought a ticket and told her mother that she had only been able to save five dollars. That Saturday she went to the performance and told her mother that she was spending the day with a friend. A week passed without her mother finding out. Judy then told her older sister, Louise, that she had gone to the performance and had lied to her mother about it. Louise wonders whether to tell their mother what Judy did.
1. Should Louise, the older sister, tell their mother that Judy lied about the money or should she keep quiet? Why?
2. In wondering whether to tell, Louise thinks of the fact that Judy is her sister. Should that make a difference in Louise's decision? Why or why not?
3. Does telling have anything to do with being a good daughter? Why or why not?
4. Is the fact that Judy earned the money herself important in this situation? Why or why not?
5. The mother promised Judy she could go to the concert if she earned the money. Is the fact that the mother promised the most important thing in the situation? Why or why not?
6. Why in general should a promise be kept?
7. Is it important to keep a promise to someone you don't know well and probably won't see again? Why or why not?
8. What do you think is the most important thing a mother should be concerned about in her relationship to her daughter? Why is that the most important thing?
9. In general, what should be the authority of a mother over her daughter? Why?
10. What do you think is the most important thing a daughter should be concerned about in her relationship to her mother? Why is that the most important thing?
11. In thinking back over the dilemma, what would you say is the most responsible thing for Louise to do in this situation? Why?
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. the drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $400 for the radium and charged $4,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money and tried every legal means, but he could only get together about $2,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from if." So, having tried every legal means, Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
1. Should Heinz steal the drug? Why or why not?
2. Is it actually right or wrong for him to steal the drug? Why is it right or wrong?
3. Does Heinz have a duty or obligation to steal the drug? Why or why not?
4. If Heinz doesn't love his wife, should he steal the drug for her? Does it make a difference in what Heinz should do whether or not he loves his wife? Why or why not?
5. Suppose the person dying is not his wife but a stranger. Should Heinz steal the drug for the stranger? Why or why not?
6. Suppose it's a pet animal he loves. should Heinz steal to save the pet animal? Why or why not?
7. Is it important for people to do everything they can to save another's life? Why or why not?
8. It is against the law for Heinz to steal. Does that make it morally wrong? Why or why not?
9. In general, should people try to do everything they can to obey the law? Why or why not? How does this apply to what Heinz should do?
10. In thinking back over the dilemma, what would you say is the most responsible thing for Heinz to do? Why?
Two young men, brothers, had got into serious trouble. They were secretly leaving town in a hurry and needed money. Karl, the older one, broke into a store and stole a thousand dollars. Bob, the younger one, went to a retired old man who was known to help people in town. He told the man that he was very sick and that he needed a thousand dollars to pay for an operation. Bob asked the old man to lend him the money and promised that he would pay him back when he recovered. Really Bob wasn't sick at all, and he had no intention of paying the man back. Although the old man didn't know Bob very well, he lent him the money. So Bob and Karl skipped town, each with a thousand dollars.
1. Which is worse, stealing like Karl or cheating like Bob? Why is that worse?
2. What do you think is the worst thing about cheating the old man? Why is that the worst thing?
3. In general, why should a promise be kept?
4. Is it important to keep a promise to someone you don't know well or will never see again? Why or why not?
5. Why shouldn't someone steal from a store?
6. What is the value or importance of property rights?
7. Should people do everything they can to obey the law? Why or why not?
8. Was the old man being irresponsible by lending Bob the money? Why or why not?
When Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in the mid-1860s, he was already a well-known author. Nonetheless, he lived in near-poverty and was plagued by gambling debts. Born in Moscow in 1821, he was the second child in a family that eventually consisted of seven children. The family's life was unhappy: Dostoyevsky's father, a doctor, ruled the family with an iron hand; his mother, a meek woman, died when the boy was sixteen. Young Dostoyevsky developed a love of books and enthusiastically read Russian, French, and German novels. However, his father insisted that Dostoyevsky study engineering, and from 1838 to 1843 Dostoyevsky trained in this subject at the military engineering academy in St. Petersburg. During this time the elder Dostoyevsky was murdered by one of his serfs, an incident that had a profound impact on Fyodor.
In the mid-1840s Dostoyevsky embarked on a literary career, writing several short stories and novellas, including "The Double" (1846). The concept of the "double" — the notion that a person may have a divided personality, symbolized by a good or evil "twin" — surfaced in several of his later works, including Crime and Punishment. His early published works brought Dostoyevsky some recognition. In 1848 Dostoyevsky joined a group of radical intellectuals (known as the "Petrashevsky Circle" after their leader Mikhail Petrashevsky). The group discussed literary and political ideas and advocated reforming the autocratic tsarist government. Dostoyevsky and several of his friends were arrested for treason, tried, and sentenced to death. Just as they were lined up in front of the firing squad, a messenger arrived with news that the tsar had commuted the death sentence to a term of hard labor in Siberia. Dostoyevsky later alluded to this event in Crime and Punishment and in other books. (It is believed that the authorities intended a mock execution all along.) During his five years in prison, Dostoyevsky came to know many of the prisoners, the great majority of whom were ordinary criminals rather than political prisoners. Through his dealings with them, the writer developed an understanding of the criminal mentality and the Russian soul. His political views also changed. He rejected his earlier pro-Western liberal-socialist ideas and instead embraced a specifically Russian brand of Christianity. His prison experiences provided the material for his later book The House of the Dead (1861).
After his release from prison camp in 1854, Dostoyevsky had to spend several more years in Siberia as an army private. He returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 and resumed his literary career. In the early 1860s he traveled extensively in Western Europe. However, he was troubled by personal misfortune, including the death of his wife and his brother, with whom he edited a literary journal. He also was afflicted by epilepsy, a condition little understood at the lime. Moreover, he was unable to control his compulsive gambling habit, and he found himself on the brink of poverty. His writing during this period was stimulated not only by an intense desire to express important ideas but also by a need to earn money. In 1864 he wrote Notes from Underground, whose narrator is a self-confessed "sick ... spiteful ... unattractive man," an embittered character who resents society. Immediately after this book, Dostoyevsky started work on Crime and Punishment (1865-66), regarded as his first true masterpiece. Important Russian critics hailed the work, and Dostoyevsky was acclaimed as one of Russia's most significant writers and thinkers. However, he still faced financial ruin, and the next year he wrote, in just one month, a novella called The Gambler in order to pay his debts. He subsequently married the stenographer to whom he had dictated the work, Anna Snitkina. She helped reform his life, and they lived abroad for several years. Foremost among his later novels are The Idiot (1869), The Possessed (also translated as The Devils, 1871), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). With Crime and Punishment, these books express the essence of Dostoyevsky's social and moral philosophy and his insight into human character. In the last decade of his life, Dostoyevsky finally gained critical acclaim, social prestige, and financial security. He died in St. Petersburg in 1881.
Dostoyevsky's reputation and his influence remain strong to the present day. Virtually all his books have been translated into English and are in print. His insights into the complexities of human psychology anticipated the theories of Sigmund Freud and other early psychologists. (Indeed, Freud acknowledged Dostoyevsky's importance in this field.) Later novelists as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Iris Murdoch all drew inspiration from Dostoyevsky's themes and characters, while Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn carries on with Dostoyevsky's unique brand of Russian nationalism and Christianity. Filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen have also acknowledged a debt to Dostoyevsky in their views of human nature. Some scholars have gone so far as to claim that Dostoyevsky's view of the Russian character and politics prophesied the Russian Revolution and the terrible deprivations that Russia suffered under Soviet Communist rule in the twentieth century. With his contemporary Leo Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky is today regarded as one of the two greatest nineteenth-century Russian novelists and indeed as one of the most important novelists of any nation or period.
MOST OBVIOUS THEMES IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
On the surface, Crime and Punishment belongs to the popular genre known as the crime novel. A young man (Raskolnikov) commits a murder and then tries to conceal his guilt and evade arrest. In the end he confesses, is arrested, and is sent to prison, where he begins a process of spiritual regeneration. The novel's suspense arises not only from the question "what will happen next?", but from Dostoyevsky's close and relentless examination of the murderer's psyche. Dostoyevsky is more interested in important philosophical questions than in the technical police procedures of bringing a criminal to justice. He is also interested in the criminal's motives, which are ambiguous. The title indicates Dostoyevsky's interest in opposites and in the duality of human nature. The nature of guilt and innocence, the role of atonement and forgiveness, and the opposition of good and evil (and God and the Devil) all play an important thematic role in the book. While Dostoyevsky also examines social and political problems in the Russia of his day, his concerns are universal.
Guilt and
Innocence
In large part, Crime and Punishment is an examination of the guilty
conscience. For Dostoyevsky, punishment is not a physical action or condition.
Rather (much as in Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost), punishment
inherently results from an awareness of guilt. Guilt is the knowledge that one
has done wrong and has become estranged from society and from God. From the very
beginning of the novel, Raskolnikov (whose name derives from the Russian word
for "schism") suffers from this estrangement. In murdering the pawnbroker, he
seeks to prove that he is above the law. But his crime only reinforces his sense
that he is not a part of society.
Although she is a prostitute, Sonya is the embodiment of innocence. Her motive in becoming a prostitute was not one of lust. Indeed, in all of the novel, there is no indication that Sonya has any lustful or sexual inclination. On the contrary, she is embarrassed by, and ashamed of, her profession. In Dostoyevsky's eyes, she is not guilty of any transgression. She does what she does out of sheer necessity, not out of any base instincts or any hope for personal gain.
In contrast with Sonya's sense of shame over the life she leads, Pyotr Luzhin is shameless in the way he manipulates Raskolnikov's sister and mother (Dunya and Pulkheria Aleksandrovna). He is guilty of emotional blackmail as well as of fraud. Arkady Svidrigailov is an even more "guilty" character. Luzhin's crimes are calculated, whereas Svidrigailov's crimes result from his complete surrender to his evil nature. Rather than facing up to his guilt and its consequences, as Raskolnikov does, Svidrigailov partially acknowledges his guilt but evades the consequences by committing suicide. Although Raskolnikov is the central figure of Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky suggests that Raskolnikov may not quite be the book's most guilty criminal. Svidrigailov and Luzhin are also guilty of criminal misdeeds, and they are less open than Raskolnikov to the possibility of redemption.
Atonement and
Forgiveness
The theme of atonement and forgiveness is closely related to that of guilt and
innocence. As Dostoyevsky's title suggests, punishment is the only logical and
necessary outcome of crime. Punishment, however, does not mean merely a legal
finding and a sentence of imprisonment. In Dostoyevsky's view, the criminal's
true punishment is not a sentence of imprisonment. Nor is legal punishment the
definitive answer to crime. The criminal's punishment results from his own
conscience, his awareness of his guilt. However, he must not only acknowledge
his guilt. The criminal must atone for it and must seek forgiveness.
Raskolnikov at first tries to rationalize his crime by offering various explanations to himself. Foremost among these is his "superman" theory. By definition, the superman theory denies any possibility of atonement. The superman does not need to atone, because he is permitted to commit any crime in order to further his own ends. Raskolnikov also rationalizes his crime by arguing that the old pawnbroker is of no use to anyone; in killing her, he is ridding the world of an unpleasant person. Driven by poverty, he also claims that he wants to use her money to better his position in life. In the course of the book, he comes to realize that none of these excuses justifies his crime.
Raskolnikov's reasons for fearing arrest are equally complex. It is clear, however, that without the example and the urging of Sonya, he would not be able to seek forgiveness. He finds it remarkable that when he confesses his crime to her, Sonya immediately forgives him. She urges him to bow down before God and make a public confession. This act of contrition, she believes, will enable him to begin to cleanse his soul.
Svidrigailov is aware of his own guilt, but he does not seek forgiveness. Unlike Raskolnikov, he does not believe in the possibility of forgiveness. In giving money to Sonya and others, he attempts a partial atonement for his sins. However, even these gestures are motivated partly by base self-interest. Because he is spiritually dead, he feels that the only atonement he can make is to commit suicide.
Ubermensch
("Superman")
Part of the motive for Raskolnikov's crime comes from a theory that he has
developed. In an essay that he publishes, Raskolnikov argues that humankind is
divided into two categories: ordinary people, and geniuses or supermen. Ordinary
people must obey the law, but "supermen" — of whom there are very few in any
generation — are entitled to break existing laws and make their own laws.
Raskolnikov cites the French emperor Napoleon as the epitome of the superman
type. He argues that Napoleon rose to power by overstepping the laws that govern
ordinary people. Napoleon made his own laws and achieved his goals by killing
tens of thousands of people in wars. Because Napoleon was a genius, Raskolnikov
reasons, he was not regarded as a criminal. On the contrary, he was hailed as a
hero. Early in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov has become obsessed with
the notion that he himself is a "superman." Therefore, he thinks, he is not
subject to the laws that govern ordinary people. (In the original Russian text,
Dostoyevsky frequently uses a word that means "overstepping" or "stepping
over"—that is, transgressing. This word is closely related to the Russian word
for "crime" (prestuplenie). Raskolnikov decides to murder the pawnbroker
Alyona Ivanovna partly to prove that he is a superman. However, his indecision
and confusion throughout the novel indicate that he is not a superman. Moreover,
in the course of the novel, Dostoyevsky seeks to prove that there is no such
thing as a superman. Dostoyevsky believes that every human life is precious, and
no one is entitled to kill.
Dostoyevsky's formulation of the superman theory (through Raskolnikov) clearly anticipates the ideas developed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1880s. For Nietzsche, the superman and his "will to power" were supreme ideals. Christianity stood in the way of the superman, and Nietzsche scorned Christianity as a "slave morality." Dostoyevsky's view of the superman is absolutely opposed to Nietzsche's. For Dostoyevsky, following the "superman" theory to its natural conclusion inevitably leads to death, destruction, chaos, and misery. Rather than seeing Christianity as a "slave mentality," Dostoyevsky views it as the true vision of the human place in the world and of the human relationship with God. In Dostoyevsky's view, all people are valued in the eyes of God.
Narrative
Crime and Punishment is written in the third person. However,
Dostoyevsky's narrative focus shifts throughout the novel. Crime and
Punishment is widely credited as the first psychological novel, and in many
passages, Dostoyevsky is concerned with the state of mind of the central
character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. In these passages—including those that
relate Raskolnikov's brooding, the murder itself, and his encounters with the
inspector Porfiry Petrovich—Dostoyevsky puts us inside Raskolnikov's head. We
view the action from Raskolnikov's viewpoint and share his often-disordered and
contradictory thoughts. These passages read more like a first-person confession
than a detached third-person fictional narrative. At the same time, he describes
exterior events with clear realism. Critics have pointed out that Dostoyevsky is
essentially a dramatic novelist. He does not so much tell a story as enact it.
Crime and Punishment is full of dramatic scenes, of which Raskolnikov's
murder of the pawnbroker is only one. There are also a number of dramatic
confrontations between characters. Dostoyevsky's characters rarely have calm
discussions; rather, they have fierce arguments and verbal duels. Generally (but
not always) Raskolnikov is at one end of these confrontations. At the other, in
various scenes, are his friend Razumikhin, his sister and mother, his sister's
corrupt suitor Luzhin, the police investigator Porfiry Petrovich, the innocent
prostitute Sonya, and the cynical landowner Svidrigailov. These duels and
pairings help to illustrate the idea of the double, discussed further below.
Setting
The action of the book takes place in St. Petersburg, the capital city of
Russia, in the summer of 1865. (The brief epilogue is set in Siberia.) Crime
and Punishment is a distinctly urban novel. In choosing a definite urban
setting, Dostoyevsky was paving new ground for Russian fiction. His Russian
predecessors and contemporaries such as Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy generally
set their stories on country estates. In confining the action of his novel
entirely to St. Petersburg, Dostoyevsky was emulating the English author Charles
Dickens, who set his well-known stories in the British capital, London.
Moreover, St. Petersburg is not just a backdrop, but it is an inherent part of
the novel. Dostoyevsky recreates St. Petersburg's neighborhoods and its streets,
bridges, and canals with great realism. In his narrative, Dostoyevsky does not
give the full street names, but uses only abbreviations. (In the very first
paragraph, for example, he refers to "S—Lane" and "K—n Bridge.") Readers who
were familiar with St. Petersburg would probably have been able to identify most
of these specific locations, as modern scholars have done.
Much of the action takes place indoors, generally in cramped tenement apartments. With these settings, Dostoyevsky creates a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere. For example, in the weeks before he commits the murders, Raskolnikov has been lying in his tiny room and brooding. He retreats to this room after the murders, occasionally leaving his lair to wander the city's streets.
Most of the book's main characters are not natives of St. Petersburg, but have come to the city from Russia's far-flung rural provinces. Thus, they are not at ease in this urban setting. Provincial Russians might normally regard the capital city, created by Peter the Great as Russia's "window on the West," as a place of opportunity. However, for Raskolnikov, Katerina Ivanovna, Svidrigailov, and other characters, the city turns out to be a destination of last resort, a place where their diminished expectations are finally played out. (Svidrigailov remarks that "there aren't many places where there are as many gloomy, harsh and strange influences on the soul of man as there are in St. Petersburg.") This sense of the city as a dead-end is emphasized by the settings. The apartments where Raskolnikov and the Marmeladovs live are so small that there is scarcely enough space for a small group of visitors. Moreover, at several points in the novel, characters are threatened with eviction and fear that they will wind up on the streets. Near the end of the book, Katerina Ivanovna and her children beg on the streets by singing and dancing.
Most readers tend to think of Russia as a "winter" country, with lots of snow and cold weather. Dostoyevsky contradicts these expectations by setting his story during an unusual summer heat wave. The heat and humidity add to the general sense of discomfort that pervades the narrative. They also reflect and reinforce the feverish state that afflicts Raskolnikov throughout the book.
Structure
Crime and Punishment is divided into six parts plus an epilogue. Each
part is broken further into several chapters. For the most part, each chapter
centers around a self-contained dramatic episode. Much of this episodic
structure is attributable to the fact that Crime and Punishment was
written for serialization in a magazine. Magazine readers wanted each
installment to be complete in itself and to contain colorful incidents. Many
chapters end with the sudden, unexpected arrival of a new character. By
introducing such developments at the end of many of the chapters, Dostoyevsky
maintained a high level of suspense. He knew that his readers would be curious
to know what would happen in the next chapter and that they would look forward
to the next installment. Moreover, an unresolved complication at the end of a
particular chapter would also stimulate Dostoyevsky to write the next chapter.
This method of writing helps account for the numerous abrupt shifts in the plot
focus.
Coincidence
Like many other important nineteenth-century novelists, Dostoyevsky does not
hesitate to use coincidence to advance the plot. Indeed, many of the crucial
developments in Crime and Punishment depend on sheer coincidences that
seem highly unlikely to the modern reader. However, coincidence was an accepted
literary convention of the period. Dostoyevsky does not attempt to explain away
his coincidences, but on the contrary he simply states them as matters of fact.
He uses this technique as a shortcut to bring together certain characters and
set up dramatic situations.
While he is walking down the street, Raskolnikov comes upon the scene of an accident. The accident victim turns out to be Marmeladov, a drunken civil servant whom he had met earlier in the novel. Marmeladov has been run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Raskolnikov takes charge of the situation and has Marmeladov carried home, where the injured man dies. This coincidence leads to Raskolnikov's first meeting with Marmeladov's daughter Sonya, who has turned to prostitution to support the poverty-stricken family. Drawn to Sonya by her meek nature and pure heart, Raskolnikov will later confess to her. In another coincidence, Sonya turns out to have been a friend of Lizaveta. This disclosure serves to increase Raskolnikov's sense of guilt and further points up Sonya's selflessness.
It is also purely coincidence that the scheming Luzhin happens to be living temporarily in the same building as Katerina Ivanovna. This makes plausible his appearance at Katerina's funeral party and his attempt to frame Sonya for robbery. Later, Svidrigailov just happens by coincidence to be renting the apartment next door to Sonya's apartment. Thus, he is able to overhear Raskolnikov's murder confession. Svidngailov's awareness of Raskolnikov's guilty secret helps set into motion another chain of events. There are many more such coincidences in the course of the story. That such coincidences involving a relatively small number of characters would occur in a large city like St. Petersburg is almost unbelievable. However, Dostoyevsky's narrative has such dramatic force that the reader is able to overlook the implausibility of these coincidences.
Symbolism and
Imagery
As already discussed, Dostoyevsky's literary technique mixes narrative realism,
dramatic scenes, and psychological analysis. He also uses symbolism and imagery,
not so much for aesthetic effect as to emphasize certain points about his
characters' psychology. One of his main symbolic devices is the pairing of
certain characters. Early in his writing career, Dostoyevsky formulated the idea
of the "double." That is, he believed that there may be two sides to a human
personality. In giving a character like Raskolnikov several "doubles,"
Dostoyevsky emphasizes certain aspects of Raskolnikov's personality by
contrasting him with these "doubles."
Among Raskolnikov's symbolic "doubles" are Marmeladov, Razumikhin, Dunya, Sonya, and Svidrigailov. Where Raskolnikov is obsessed with a theory, Marmeladov lives entirely by impulse. Where Raskolnikov is extreme, Razumikhin is reasonable. (The Russian word razum means "reason.") Raskolnikov cuts himself off from his family, while his sister Dunya is completely dedicated to the family. Sonya too sacrifices herself for her family. Furthermore, her meekness and faith contrast with Raskolnikov's pride and his rejection of God. Raskolnikov is literally sickened by his crime and does not give any indication that he will commit more murders, whereas Svidrigailov takes pleasure in his criminal lust and persists in it.
Appropriately enough, blood and blood imagery pervade the book. Before he commits the murder, Raskolnikov has a horrific nightmare in which a group of drunken men flog "a little grey mare" to death. The notion of "shedding blood" becomes quite literal. Raskolnikov's murder of the pawnbroker and her sister with an axe is naturally a bloody act. As he attempts to escape notice, Raskolnikov becomes obsessed with the idea that he is covered in blood and that this will give him away. Toward the end of the novel, his sister Dunya tells him that "you have blood on your hands"; Raskolnikov defiantly replies that the world is covered in blood. It can be noted, as well, that the novel's blood imagery is paralleled by frequent references to tears.
Dostoyevsky uses dreams to give insight into his characters' psychology, as well as for symbolic purposes. Critics have debated the meaning of Raskolnikov's nightmare about the horse, mentioned above. As well as indicating his tormented state of mind, this nightmare may also symbolize the brutality of murder and the helplessness of the innocent. In the book's epilogue, in Siberia, Raskolnikov dreams that the world is swept by a terrible plague that turns people mad. This dream is generally believed to symbolize what would happen if all people rejected traditional morality and acted out Raskolnikov's "superman" theory. Svidrigailov, too, has terrible dreams and claims that he has seen the ghosts of his deceased wife and of a servant. The night before he kills himself, he dreams about a little girl whom he has victimized. In this dream, he sees the moral consequences of his crimes.
It may seem paradoxical to claim that critics have not sufficiently concerned themselves with Dostoevsky's attack against rationalism in Crime and Punishment; yet this aspect of the novel has frequently failed to receive adequate attention, not because it has been overlooked, but because often it has been immediately noticed, perfunctorily mentioned, and then put out of mind as something obvious. Few writers have examined the consequence of the anti-rationalistic tenor of the novel: the extent to which it is paralleled by the structural devices incorporated in the work.
Dostoevsky held that dialectics, self-seeking, and exclusive reliance on reason ("reason and will" in Raskolnikov's theories and again in his dream of the plague) lead to death-in-life. In Crime and Punishment he set himself the task of exposing the evils of rationalism by presenting a laboratory case of an individual who followed its precepts and pushed them to their logical conclusion. By working out what would happen to that man, Dostoevsky intended to show how destructive the idea was for individuals, nations, and mankind; for to him the fates of the individual and the nation were inseparably interlocked....
The underlying antithesis of Crime and Punishment, the conflict between the side of reason, selfishness, and pride, and that of acceptance of suffering, closeness to life-sustaining Earth, and love, sounds insipid and platitudinous when stated in such general fashion as we have done here. Dostoevsky, however, does not present it in the form of abstract statement alone. He conveys it with superb dialectical skill, and when we do find direct statements in the novel, they are intentionally made so inadequate as to make us realize all the more clearly their disappointing irrelevancy and to lead us to seek a richer representation in other modes of discourse....
Symbolism is the method of expression with which we are primarily concerned here, but it is far from being the only indirect, non-intellectual manner of expression on which Dostoevsky depends. Oblique presentation is another means which he uses; one example is the introduction of the subject of need for suffering. The idea is first presented in a debased and grotesque form by Marmeladov. His confession of how he had mistreated his family, of his drinking, and of the theft of money—to Raskolnikov, a stranger whom he has met in the tavern—is almost a burlesque foreshadowing of Raskolnikov's later penance, the kissing of the earth and his confession at the police station. Marmeladov is drunk, irresponsible, and still submerged in his selfish course of action; he welcomes suffering but continues to spurn his responsibilities; he is making a fool of himself in the tavern. His discourse throughout calls for an ambiguous response. Raskolnikov's reaction may be pity, agreement, laughter, or disgust; the reader's is a mixture and succession of all those emotions.
Thus the important ideas summed up in Marmeladov's "it's not joy I thirst for, but sorrow and tears" are introduced in a derogatory context and in an ambivalent manner, on the lowest, least impressive level. Yet the concept is now present with us, the readers, as it is with Raskolnikov—even though it first appears in the guise of something questionable, disreputable, and laughable—and we are forced to ponder it and to measure against it Sonya's, Raskolnikov's, Porfiry's and others' approaches to the same subject of "taking one's suffering."
A simple, unequivocal statement, a respectable entrance of the theme on the stage of the book, would amount to a reduction of life to "a matter of arithmetic" and would release the reader from the salutary, in fact indispensable task of smelting down the ore for himself....
In Crime and Punishment the reader, as well as Raskolnikov, must struggle to draw his own conclusions from a work which mirrors the refractory and contradictory materials of life itself, with their admixture of the absurd, repulsive, and grotesque....
Traditional symbolism, that is, symbolism which draws on images established by the Christian tradition and on those common in Russian non-Christian, possibly pre-Christian and pagan, folk thought and expression, is an important element in the structure of Crime and Punishment. The outstanding strands of symbolic imagery in the novel are those of water, vegetation, sun and air, the resurrection of Lazarus and Christ, and the earth.
Water is to Dostoevsky a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. It is regarded as such by the positive characters, for whom it is an accompaniment and an indication of the life-giving forces in the world. By the same token, the significance of water may be the opposite to negative characters. Water holds the terror of death for the corrupt Svidrigaylov, who confirms his depravity by thinking: "Never in my life could I stand water, not even on a landscape painting." Water, instead of being an instrument of life, becomes for him a hateful, avenging menace during the last hours of his life....
Indeed it will be in the cold and in the rain that he will put a bullet in his head. Instead of being a positive force, water is for him the appropriate setting for the taking of his own life.
When Raskolnikov is under the sway of rationalism and corrupting ways of thinking, this also is indicated by Dostoevsky by attributing to him negative reactions to water similar to those of Svidrigaylov. In Raskolnikov, however, the battle is not definitely lost. A conflict still rages between his former self—which did have contact with other people and understood the beauty of the river, the cathedral (representing the traditional, religious, and emotional forces), and water—and the new, rationalistic self, which is responsible for the murder and for his inner desiccation.... There is still left in Raskolnikov an instinctive reaction to water (and to beauty) as an instrument of life, although this receptivity, which had been full-blown and characteristic of him in his childhood, is now in his student days overlaid by the utilitarian and rationalistic theories....
But Raskolnikov also realizes that his trends of thought have banished him, like Cain, from the brotherhood of men and clouded his right and ability to enjoy beauty and the beneficent influences of life symbolized by water; hence his perplexity and conflict....
Related to the many references to the river and rain, and often closely associated with them, are two other groups of symbolic imagery: that of vegetation (shrubbery, leaves, bushes, flowers, and greenness in general) and that of the sun (and the related images of light and air).
In contrast to the dusty, hot, stifling, and crowded city, a fitting setting for Raskolnikov's oppressive and murderous thoughts, we find, for example, "the greenness and the freshness" of the Petersburg islands.... The natural surroundings reawakened in him the feelings of his youth, through which he came close to avoiding his crime and to finding regeneration without having to pass through the cycle of Crime and Punishment.....
By the same token, vegetation exercised the opposite effect on Svidrigaylov: it repelled him. In the inn on the night of his suicide, when he heard the leaves in the garden under his window, he thought, "How I hate the noise of trees at night in a storm and in darkness." Whereas Raskolnikov received a healthy warning during his short sleep "under a bush," Svidrigaylov uses the sordid setting of an amusement park which "had one spindly three-year-old Christmas tree and three small bushes" merely for vain distraction on the eve of his suicide, and contemplates killing himself under "a large bush drenched with rain." In him all positive elements had been rubbed out or transformed into evil.
Similar to water and vegetation, sunshine, light in general, and air are positive values, whereas darkness and lack of air are dangerous and deadening. The beauty of the cathedral flooded by sunlight ought to be felt and admired.... Before the murder, he looks up from the bridge at the "bright, red sunset" and is able to face the sun as well as the river with calm, but after the murder, "in the street it was again unbearably hot—not a drop of rain all during those days .... The sun flashed brightly in his eyes, so that it hurt him to look and his head was spinning round in good earnest—the usual sensation of a man in a fever who comes out into the street on a bright, sunny day." The sun is pleasant for a man in good spiritual health, but unbearable for a feverish creature of the dark, such as Raskolnikov had become....
Absence of air reinforces the lack of light suggestive of inner heaviness. Raskolnikov, whom Svidrigaylov tells that people need air, feels physically and mentally suffocated when he is summoned to the police-station: "There's so little fresh air here. Stifling. Makes my head reel more and more every minute, and my brain too." Later he tells his friend Razumikhin: "Things have become too airless, too stifling." Airiness, on the contrary, is an indication of an advantageous relation between outward circumstances and Raskolnikov's inner state. The warning dream of the mare comes to Raskolnikov in a setting not only of greenness but also of abundance of fresh air: "The green vegetation and the fresh air at first pleased his tired eyes, used to the dust of the city, to the lime and mortar and the huge houses that enclosed and confined him on all sides. The air was fresh and sweet here: no evil smells."
When we turn to specifically Christian symbolism in Crime and Punishment, we find the outstanding images to be those of New Jerusalem, Christ's passion, and Lazarus. New Jerusalem is an important concept throughout Dostoevsky's work.... Porfiry asks Raskolmkov, "Do you believe in New Jerusalem?" The significance of Raskolnikov' s positive answer lies in the fact that the New Jerusalem which he means is the Utopian perversion of it, to be built upon foundations of crime and individual self-assertion and transgression (prestuplenie). It is the "Golden Age," as Raskolnikov called it in the draft version in Dostoevsky's notebook: "Oh why are not all people happy? The picture of the Age of Gold—it is already present in minds and hearts. Why should it not come about? ... But what right have I, a mean murderer, to wish happiness to people and to dream of the Age of Gold?"
The confession of Raskolnikov is described in terms reminiscent of Christ's passion on the road to Golgotha: he goes on "his sorrowful way." When Raskolnikov reads in his mother's letter of Dunya' s having walked up and down in her room and prayed before the Kazan Virgin, he associates her planned self-sacrifice in marrying Luzhin with the biblical prototype of self-assumed suffering for the sake of others: "Ascent to Golgotha is certainly pretty difficult," he says to himself. When Raskolnikov accepts Lizaveta's cypress cross from Sonya, he shows his recognition of the significance of his taking it—the implied resolve to seek a new life though accepting suffering and punishment—by saying to Sonya, "This is the symbol of my taking up the cross."
One of the central Christian myths alluded to in the novel is the story of Lazarus. It is the biblical passage dealing with Lazarus that Raskolnikov asks Sonya to read to him. The raising of Lazarus from the dead is to Dostoevsky the best exemplum of a human being resurrected to a new life, the road to Golgotha the best expression of the dark road of sorrow, and Christ himself the grand type of voluntary suffering....
The traditional emphasis of the Eastern Church is on Resurrection—of the Western, on the Passion. In Crime and Punishment both sides are represented: the Eastern in its promise of Raskolnikov's rebirth, the Western in the stress on his suffering. Perhaps at least part of the universality of the appeal of the novel and of its success in the West may be due to the fact that it combines the two religious tendencies....
The Christian symbolism is underlined by the pagan and universal symbolism of the earth. Sonya persuades Raskolnikov not only to confess and wear the cross, but also to kiss the earth at the crossroads—a distinctly Russian and pre-Christian acknowledgment of the earth as the common mother of all men.... In bowing to the earth and kissing it, Raskolnikov is performing a symbolic and non-rational act; the rationalist is marking the beginning of his change into a complete, organic, living human being, rejoining all other men in the community. By his crime and ideas, he had separated himself from his friends, family, and nation; in one word, he had cut himself off from Mother Earth. By the gesture of kissing the earth, he is reestablishing all his ties....
Now that we have examined selected examples of symbolism in the novel, let us take a look at the epilogue as a test of insights we may have gained into the structure and unity of the novel, for the epilogue is the culmination and juncture of the various strands of images which we have encountered earlier....
If we approach the epilogue with the various preparatory strands of images clearly in our minds, what do we find?... [We] see the state of the soul of the unregenerate Raskolnikov, the Lazarus before the rebirth, expressed by Dostoevsky through the symbolic imagery to which the novel has made us accustomed—water and vegetation. The love for life (which Raskolnikov does not yet comprehend) is represented by a spring with green grass and bushes around it.
When the regeneration of Raskolnikov begins, it is expressed in a manner still more closely linked to previously introduced imagery. His dream of the plague condemns Raskolnikov's own rationalism. It shows people obsessed by reason and will losing contact with the soil.... This dream of the plague, coming immediately before the start of the hero's regeneration, may also be another reminiscence of the Book of Revelation with its last seven plagues coming just before the millennium and the establishment of the New Jerusalem.
The epilogue then goes on to emphasize that it is the second week after Easter—the feast of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection; and that it is warm, bright spring—the season of the revival of dead nature, again a coupling of Christian and non-Christian symbolism of rebirth such as we have encountered earlier in the novel.
The crucial final scene which follows takes place on "a bright and warm day," and "on the bank of the river." The river which Raskolnikov sees now is no longer a possible means for committing suicide nor a sight inducing melancholy; it is the river of life.
Then appears Sonya, and with her arrival comes the moment when Raskolnikov is suffused with love for his guide and savior.... Vivid response to all that lives is a joining with the creator in creating and preserving the world; Sophia is a blissful meeting of god and nature, the creator and creature. In Orthodox thought Sophia has come close to being regarded as something similar to the fourth divine person. Love for Sophia is a generalized ecstatic love for all creation, so that the images of flowers, greenness, landscape, the river, air, the sun, and water throughout Crime and Punishment can be regarded as being subsumed in the concept of Sophia and figuratively in the person of Sonya, the embodiment of the concept. Sonya sees that all exists in God; she knows, and helps Raskolnikov to recognize, what it means to anticipate the millennium by living in rapt love for all creation here, in this world.
It was Sonya who had brought Raskolnikov the message of Lazarus and his resurrection; she had given him the cypress cross and urged him to kiss the earth at the crossroads. On the evening of the day when, by the bank of the river and in the presence of Sonya, Raskolnikov's regeneration had begun, the New Testament lies under his pillow as a reminder of the Christian prototype of resurrection which had been stressed earlier in the novel. Against the background of all the important symbols of the book, Easter, spring, Abraham's flocks, the earth of Siberia, the river, the dream, and Sonya, the drama within Raskolnikov's mind assumes its expressive outward form.
There follow several explicit statements of what happened. We read that "the dawn of a full resurrection to a new life" was already shining "in their faces, that love brought them back to life, that the heart of one held inexhaustible sources of life for the heart of the other," and that "the gradual rebirth" of Raskolnikov would follow. But the power of the general, overt statements depends on the indirect, oblique, dramatic, and symbolic statements which preceded them and prepared the ground for our acceptance of them. If we sense the full significance of the statement that now "Raskolnikov could solve nothing consciously. He only felt. Life had taken the place of dialectics," for example, it is because we have seen dialectics and apathy dramatized in Luzhin, Lebezyatnikov, Raskolnikov, and Svidrigaylov, and resurrection in Sonya and various symbols throughout the novel of which the epilogue is a climax and a recapitulation.
Source: George Gibian, "Traditional Symbolism in Crime and Punishment," in PMLA, Vol. LXX, No. 5, December, 1955, pp. 970-96.
Dostoyevsky's
Russia: Social and Political Background
For most modern Americans, the Russia of Dostoyevsky's time is almost
incomprehensible. Sir Winston Churchill's comment in 1939 that Russia "is a
riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" can apply equally to the Russia of
the 1860s when Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment. In the most simple
terms, much of Russia's historical difference from the West has to do with the
fact that for centuries it was cut off from Western Europe. The Reformation, the
Renaissance, and the Enlightenment that helped transform the countries of
Western Europe from feudalism to modern nations with well-educated citizens and
important cultural institutions barely touched Russia. Moreover, large-scale
foreign invasions (from the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
to the Nazi armies in the early 1940s) periodically devastated the country. As a
result, Russia has historically been suspicious of other nations. Also, early in
its national history, Russia developed a tradition of government that
centralized immense power in the hands of an emperor—the tsar—and a handful of
his advisors. (The Russian title "tsar" derives from the Latin word "Caesar.")
In the mid-1500s, Tsar Ivan IV (known as Ivan the Terrible) established what for
more than the next four hundred years became the model for Russian government,
alternating short-lived periods of ineffectual reform with periods of severe
repression.
Relatively "liberal" rulers such as Tsar Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1725) and Tsarina Catherine the Great (who was actually German; reigned 1762-96) pursued a policy of "westernization." They attempted to import modern technology and manners from Western Europe. At the same time, however, they held tightly onto absolute power and ruthlessly suppressed any challenge to the established political order.
During the period when Dostoyevsky was receiving his education and then establishing his literary career—the 1830s into the 1860s—Russia was stirred by intense intellectual debate. The small class of the educated people recognized that major changes were needed if the huge but backward country was to address its social problems and find its way successfully in the world. One general approach to change was proposed by certain intellectuals collectively known as Westernizers. The Westernizers were influenced by German philosophy and by social ideas that developed in Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution. They were also influenced by contemporary European revolutionary movements. The Westernizers were not united in their goals or methods. There were various factions. Some favored gradual democratic reforms, while others called for revolution to replace the tsarist government with a socialist regime. Among the leading Westernizers was Vissarion Belinsky (1811-48), the most famous Russian literary critic of his day. Belinsky praised Dostoyevsky's first book, Poor Folk (1846), and declared that Dostoyevsky was the literary successor of Gogol.
Another group of thinkers, known as the Slavophiles, proposed an entirely different approach to Russia's problems. Broadly speaking, the Slavophiles felt that Western ideals of rationalism and modernization were dangerous and alien to Russia. Rather than relying on a program of legislation and material improvement, the Slavophiles argued that Russia could only fulfill its destiny when Russians returned to their native spiritual values. Although they disagreed with the Westernizers, the Slavophiles were also opposed to the existing Russian government. By Western standards, the Slavophiles could be considered romantic and reactionary, but they made an important contribution to the debate over the future of Russia.
As a young man, Dostoyevsky was influenced by the Westernizers. In the mid-1840s he joined the so-called Petrashevsky Circle, a small group that met weekly to discuss socialist ideas. The group demanded political reforms and generally opposed the government of Tsar Nicholas I. In the spring of 1849 the members were arrested. Twenty-one of them, including Dostoyevsky, were sentenced to death but were pardoned at the last minute. During his subsequent imprisonment in Siberia, Dostoyevsky underwent a profound spiritual and political change. He renounced political radicalism and came to believe that Russia's hope lay in Slavic idealism. His travels in Western Europe in the 1860s and 1870s reinforced his distaste for modern industrial society. In the great novels of his mature period, including Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky expresses his sympathy with the Slavophiles and attacks the Westernizers and radicals. Raskolnikov reflects the viewpoint of the radical Nihilists (from the Latin word for "nothing"), who rejected all the traditional conventions of society.
By the time Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment Tsar Alexander II (reigned 1855-81) was in the midst of a significant reform policy. In 1861 the Tsar signed a proclamation that freed millions of Russian serfs (peasants who lived and worked in conditions similar to slavery). This was followed by reforms of local government, the courts, and the military. (The police inspector Porfiry Petrovich refers to these reforms.) However, these reforms failed to resolve the major problems in Russia and helped to create new problems. Again, the immense social problems facing Russia at the time—widespread poverty, ignorance, and social agitation—form the background to Crime and Punishment.
Christianity in Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, " If someone succeded in proving to me that
Christ was outside the truth, and if, indeed, the truth was outside Christ, then
I would sooner remain with Christ than with the truth" (Frank 68). It was by no
means easy for Dostoyevsky to reach this conclusion. In Dostoyevsky's life, one
sees that of an intellectual Prodigal Son, returning to the Father In Heaven
only after all other available systems of belief have been exhausted. Reared in
a devout Russian Orthodox home, Dostoyevsky as a young man rebelled against his
upbringing and embraced the anarchist (and atheistic) philosophies of the
intelligentsia, radical students and middle class intellectuals violently
opposed to the status quo in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Morsm 50). Dostoyevsky
revolutionary stirrings were not unnoticed by the Tsar's secret police, and, in
1849, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to a mock execution followed by ten years' hard
labor in a Siberian prison (Morsm 50).
One critic said "It has been customary to say that Dostoyevsky re-learnt
Christianity in prison.(A Boyce Gibson 19.) There, out of his element and
surrounded by hardened criminals, he had plenty of time to contemplate life and
read The New Testament (the only book he was allowed). However, it was not until
his compulsory army service that Dostoyevsky's faith began to blossom. In the
army, Dostoyevsky met a fellow officer and devout Christian named Baron von
Vrangel, who befriended the still young Dostoevesky and helped him re-discover
the Christian faith (Frank 4).
Although a professing Christian for the rest of his life, Dostoyevsky
was not a "plaster saint." (Until he died, he was plagued by doubts and a
passion for gambling.) Instead, Dostoyevsky understood, perhaps better than any
other great Christian author, that his faith was created and sustained by one
thing only: the grace of God.
It is of such grace that Dostoyevsky writes in Crime and Punishment.
Although most critics agree that Crime and Punishment's theme is not as
deliberately Christian as Dostoyevsky's latter works, the novel's voice is still
authentically Christian. Written in 1864, shortly after Dostoyevsky lost his
first wife, his brother, and a close friend (Gibson 32); Crime and Punishment
reveals a time in Dostoyevsky's life when he felt disconnected from the world
and God. Through Crime and Punishment's protagonist, Raskalnikov, (Whose name,
according to Vyacheslav Ivanov, is derived from the Russian root meaning
"schism" or "apostate.") (Ivanov 72) one glimpses into the condition of
Dostoyevsky's soul.
Although Crime and Punishment has a primarily social message, it
provides the reader with "a sidelong approach to a Christian interpretation of
man." (Gibson, 102) Through its pages Dostoyevsky illustrates the inherent
fallacy in humanism: that individualism carried to the extreme is self
destructive. In addition, Dostoyevsky's work cogently illustrates St. Paul's
words in his first Epistle to the Corinthians that "To shame the wise, God has
chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen
what the world counts weakness" (I Corr. 1:27). In Crime and Punishment,
Dostoyevsky also offers a hopeful message: through humility and love, even the
vilest man can be reformed. Finally, it is through learning to love that man
begins to change.
Raskalnikov is the embodiment of the old German proverb, Ein guter
Mensch, in seinem dunklen Drangen, ist sich den rechten weges wohl
bewusst.Translated loosely, the statement means that "A good man, in his dark
impulses, is still conscious of the right way." Although he tries to convince
himself that he is not subject to moral law, Raskalnikov cannot avoid the fact
that he is subject to natural law. He believes that he is a superman, one who do
anything to assure his success, and he murders an old .pawnbroker to prove this
theory. As such, Raskalnikov's greatest sin is not his murder of Aliona Ivanovna
or of Litzeveta, but rather that, in his arrogance, he severs himself from
humanity. Although Raskalnikov sucessfully commits the crime, he is unable to
live with himself. In an 1879 letter to A.N. Lyubimov, Dostoyevsky said that the
end of the humanist was "the complete enslavement of conscience . . . their
ideal is an ideal of the coersion of the human conscience and the reduction of
mankind to th e level of cattle" (Frank 469). To apply Dostoyevsky's comparrison,
Raskalnikov ---in murdering what he calls "a louse" in the name of freedom---
becomes a slave to guilt and lousier than his victim. Thus, Rakalnikov's "
Napoleon" theory is negated, and his question becomes "How can I stop the
guilt?"
illustrated best in this inner dialogue: "This much he (Raskalnikov) knew: he
had to put an end to all that, today, right away, once and for all because he
did not want to live like that. Put an end to it---but how? By what means put an
end to it? About this he had no conception. He did not even want to think of it
. He drove away thougth. Painfully, thought tracked him down. He only felt, he
only knew, one way or another, everything had to be changed." (Dostoyevsky 159)
How can Raskalnikiov change? The rest of Crime and Punishment is devoted
to the question. Raskalnikov's theories and idealism failed him, and he is left
with nothing but guilt, fear, and a knawing desire for freedom from his
concience. But where is such freedom to be found? How can Raskalnikov bridge the
schism he created between himself and mankind? These questions eventually lead
Raskalnikov to prison and to the grace of God, but first he must learn one thing
---humility.
To understand fully the importance of the Christian (and Dostoyevsky's)
concept of humility in Crime and Punishment, one need look no further than to
the novel's second chapter in which Raskalnikov meets a drunk named Marmeladov.
Marmeladov, although nearly in a stupor, manages to grasp the essence of divine
grace and forshadows Raskalnikov's eventual atonement. For full effect,
Marmeladov's statement must be quoted in entirety. He shouts to the crowd in the
bar: "And when He has finished judging all, He will summon us, too: 'You, too
come forth,' he will say, 'Come forth you drunkards, come forth you weaklings;
come forth you shameless ones!' And we will all come forth unashamed. And we
will stand before him, and He will say: 'You are swine, made in the image of the
Beast, with his seal upon you, but you, too come unto me!' And the wise and the
clever will cry out: 'Lord! why dost thou receive these men ?' And he will say:
' I receive them, O wise and clever ones, because not one among them considers
himself worthy of this." (Dostoyevsky 33)
Through Marmeladov's drunken rambling, Dostoyevsky echoes Pauline
sentiment in the first chapter of Corinthians, where it is stated that God will
shame the wise with folly and the strong with weakness (I Cor. 1:27). In Crime
and Punishment, this is the essence of the Gospel. God's acceptance of drunks
and weaklings in Marmeladov's allegory promts incredulity from the "wise and
clever." But to Dostoyevsky, humility is the greatest strength.
Clearly, Raskalnikov's salvation lies in the recognition of his own
weakness, but, after the murder he is far too obsessed with his own strength to
remember Marmeladov's words. Raskalnikov realizes that he is miserable, he is
unrepentant: he does not believe he has done wrong and he still believes that,
through strength of will, he can absolve his guilt. "'Enough,'" Raskalnikov
says. "'Now for the kingdom of light and reason . . . and power . . . Now we
shall match wits!' he added . . . as though he were adressing some dark force .
. ." (Dostoyevsky, 191). However, it is not a dark force with which Raskalnikov
wrestles, but with God. Raskalnikov is still in rebellion and the schism
remains.
Enter Sonya, the embodiment of divine weakness and catalyst of
Raskalnikov's eventual redemption. She is the daughter of Marmeladov. She is
forced into prostitution to provide for her family, but she does so willingly
out of love. She is submissive, uneducated, poor, and a woman. In short, Sonya
is everything her contemporary world counted as folly, but to Dostoyevsky she
too is a testament to God's grace. Sonya "feels that she has sunk to the depths,
and it is only God who keeps her going" (Gibson 94). In Sonya, one sees as great
a sinner as Raskalnikov at peace with herself and with God. Her secrets:
humility and love. Like her father, Sonya recognizes her unworthiness before
God. Her knowlege that God alone gives her worth allows her to love others
unconditionally, including Raskalnikov. To paraphrase I John 4:19, Sonya loves
because God first loved Sonya.
Against Sonya's meekness and love, Raskalnikov begins to break. At
first, he is argumentative, mocking Sonya's childlike faith. "'She's a holy
fool!" (Dostoyevsky 317) Raskalnikov thinks to himself, but he is still drawn to
Sonya's strength. At last, Raskalnikov begins to realize that he is not alone ,
and it is because of this realization that he confesses to Sonya. It can be said
that, in this confession, Raskalnikov's strength begins to submit to divine
weakness. It is through love and humility that the schism will be bridged.
However, Raskalnikov's confession to Sonya is not enough, and Sonya
knows it. Vyacheslav Ivanov said Sonya "asks only one thing of her beloved: that
he should aknowledge the reality of . . . mankind outside himself, and should
solemnly declare his cceptence of this new . . . faith by an act of confession
to all the people" (Ivanov 80). Sonya tells Raskalnikov to bow down at a
crossroads, kiss the earth he offended and say aloud "'I have killed!" After
repenting, Sonya says that Raskalnikov must face the consequences of his action
(Dostoyevsky 407