Crime and Punishment Boook Report
... story of a man, Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, who believes that there are some people who are permitted to commit crimes and to whom the law does not apply. These people, the “extraordinary” or “napoleons”, have the right to allow their conscience to overstep certain obstacles for the fulfillment of an idea. With this in mind, Raskolnikov murders Alonya Ivanovna, an elderly pawnbroker, and her kind younger sister, Lizaveta, with an axe. He thinks society would be better off without the old woman. He also wants her money to pay off debts to his landlady. In addition, he wants to prove his superiority over society. Raskolnikov must then deal with the mental anxiety of his crime. E. The setting of this story is St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 19th century. It mainly takes place in Raskolnikov’s tiny, dirty, apartment. Other settings include the police station, Sofya’s and her family’s apartments, various bars, and along the River Neva. F. Three of the main characters are Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, Dimitri Prokofych Razumikhin, and Avdotya Romanovna (Dunya). Dunya is Raskolnikov’s younger sister. They are very close. Razumikhin is Raskolnikov’s good friend from school. He cares for Raskolnikov while he is sick and watches over Dunya, they eventually fall in love and are married. Dunya is very beautiful. She is around 20 years old with brown eyes and hair. Everyone who meets her seems to be charmed by her wonderful manners and strong, straightforward, personality. She loves her family (brother, Rodion, and mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna) very much. She had an unpleasant job as a governess to raise money for her brother because he was very poor. G. Crime and Punishment took place in the 1800’s; so the times were very different from today. People in the book wore different clothes; it mentioned Raskolnikov wearing an old top hat and that all the women wore dresses. The women in the novel didn’t work. The characters in the book traveled by carriage or on foot. There was no electricity; therefore the characters used candles for light. Mainly the girl’s parents arranged marriages. The girls in the book married at younger ages than they do today and they married older men. A fifteen-year-old girl in the novel became engaged to a fifty-year-old man. The marriages in the novel weren’t for love; they were for social or financial gain. The characters in the novel seemed to be more polite to each other than people are today- even when they were having arguments. An advantage of living in our time as opposed to the time of the novel is that society is much more organized-there are more social advantages. Also, women in our time are allowed to do much more then they did in the past Some of the social issues in the book involve environmental influence, psychological disorders, the conflict between organized religion and personal spirituality, murder, and how suffering can lead to salvation. Some social philosophies that influence the characters in the book include utilitarianism: the theory that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, nihilism: the belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement, and existentialism: a philosophy which regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts. Dostoevsky sees injustice in how children had to endure suffering because of their poverty. An example is how Sofya’s ten-year-old stepsister, Polenka, is given many adult responsibilities in the household and became somewhat of a second mother to her younger siblings. He also emphasizes the fact that seventeen-year-old Sofya was forced into prostitution because her alcoholic father could not provide for the family. The theme in this novel is mainly alienation from society. Raskolnikov believe...