Dostoevsky - 'Crime & Punishment'.

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime and Punishment,' is a terrific novel and one of the greatest. I don't really like the nihilistic Rodion Raskolnikov and neither did the convicts in the penal settlement. Dostoevsky often chooses a name to indicate something about a character and his name is obviously derived from 'schismatic' or 'dissenter'. The Old Believers or Doukhobors, were known as Raskolnik.

Raskolnikov sees the world as being made up of ordinary and extraordinary individuals like Napoleon. I think the expression 'Napoleon Complex', is used in the novel. For Raskolnikov, the vast majority of people are just passive dupes but, in his mind, there are the exceptional individuals, for whom ordinary laws or moral standards don't apply. They are a law unto themselves. He kills an old woman, a money lender, simply because he can do. He thinks she's worthless and that world would be better off without her. Her sister, who he also kills, just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The examining magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich - the model for the detective Colombo - as him weighed up early on because he's managed to find an article written by Raskolnikov in which he outlines his philosophy of the Napoleon Complex. He never arrests Raskolnikov because he believes that his conscience will eventually get the better of him and he will surrender himself. There's a part in the book where Raskolnikov asks the magistrate if he knows who killed the old woman and he replies, you did it. He also says to Raskolnikov, who in Russia doesn't think he's a Napoleon. Raskolnikov, admits that many do think they're Napoleon, but only a few exceptional people rise to the top.

I wonder if Nietzsche got his idea of the superman from Dostoevsky? He read Dostoevsky and greatly admired him as a psychological writer. When Raskolnikov is sentenced and convicted, I think the judge says that he killed the old woman during a period of illness, when his mind was disturbed. Raskolnikov was hard up and wasn't eating enough food. This is a way of trying to make sense of why a well-educated young law student, acted in the way he did.

Sonya, the street walker, who is an angel and a devout Christian, shows Raskolnikov the way back to redemption, a favourite topic with Dostoevsky. It's Dostoevsky who tells us in the 'The Brothers Karamazov,' that if God didn't exist, everything would be permitted. Sonya sells her body so that her family will have food on the table because her alcoholic father, Marmeladov, squanders all the money on vodka. She goes to live near Raskolnikov so she can visit him in the penal colony. All the convicts love her and call her little mother.

I don't think Raskolnikov was born without a conscience or lacks compassion. He's really far too clever for his own good and he generally thinks the vast majority of people are stupid and docile. Like Nietzsche, he sees the masses as the "bungled and the botched."

 A significant part of that book is the dream that he had, about an event that he witnessed in his childhood. It was when he saw a drunken peasant flog a horse to death with an iron bar when everyone stood about watching this and started laughing at the peasant. This greatly upset young Roddy, but it says a lot about the Russian character.