Is ‘Crime and Punishment’ worth a read?

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

Since the day I completed ‘Crime and Punishment’, I have constantly been thinking about posting my thoughts on it. Sometimes I thought, I should begin with the case of Raskolnikov, then I thought, I must put myself first, only then Raskolnikov. Was I not as unhinged as him once? No, I was never. I was calm, even in tough phases. After all, this was just my thought that I decided to read his story! He did not come to my door to read me his story! That fellow Raskolnikov. But I was inspired. And every time I tussled between these two thoughts, I delayed posting it, and look, it’s more than three years since this mental fracas is going on. I must write now. All water is under the bridge now.

I have decided that I will neither talk about myself nor about Raskolnikov. I should talk about the other young man in the beginning; Fyodor is his name, who invented Raskolnikov! because this is the only young man I completely fell in love with after reading this book. This tug of war inside my head should now stop.

First about inspiration! Some people write their thoughts about a book in such a passionate manner that you sometimes wonder, how? How can a book move you to such a level? When I was new to this online community and not had much knowledge of Russian literature, I read someone’s thoughts on this book. I don’t remember where? a young college-going boy had written it. It was published in an online blog of a newspaper perhaps! But that review was the single source of my inspiration to pick up this book at that time. The review was passionately written and was full of frenzy and fury both. I will not hesitate in saying that my reading of this book was out-turn of my reading of that review. Believe me, some reviews impact you!

Fyodor writes that in the summer of 1865, he had spent all his cash to pay off his demanding creditors and to meet the needs of his stepson, and the family of his just deceased brother and whatever remained, he gambled all in the casino in the next five days. Again he was a ‘destitute’ and he was refused the service in his wretched hotel too, he pleaded for the loan from everybody he knew, which included Turgenev. And these were the moments when his affairs were abominable and could not be worse, he threw himself into “Crime and Punishment”. You must understand the mindset of an author when he is in the process of creating a piece of art something like this book.

This entire book is a case of mind. Isn’t it? A journal of the psyche of a young man who plans to kill a worthless old woman, Why is she alive? Is she useful to anyone at all? Raskolnikov thought. This young man was overwhelmed by the feeling of severance and alienation.

When the story began, this young man was living under the roof, in a garret of a five-story house and his landlady lived one floor below, so any time he had to go out he had to face her floor anyway. And every time he faces her, he had sick feelings of those pestering demands of payment, threats, and complaints. No choice! He cannot jump from the fifth floor to see the marketplace. His garret was dismal, as small as a cupboard. So he preferred to creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unnoticed. This beginning for me was abysmally grand! Very much similar to the story of a struggling young man in a metro city of the subcontinent, even today!

As I moved on in the plot, I also caught a whiff of a special Petersberg stench. It was a miasma of discontent that moved to different places of Petersberg following the footsteps of Raskolnikov throughout the book. The good thing is that the book I have had provided the map of Petersberg of that time for a better understanding. It showed where Raskolnikov’s room was, where Sonia’s room was and where is Tsar’s Winter Palace. It made me feel easier subsuming the geography!

If you ask me about the story, I did not like it. I pity that old woman, those two sisters,

“She held out her hand. ‘But how pale you are, to be sure…and your hands are trembling too? Have you been bathing or what?’
‘Fever,’ he answered abruptly. ‘You can’t help getting pale… if you have nothing to eat,’ he added, with difficulty, articulating the words. His strength was failing him again.”

Crime and Punishment

I should not say much about the story, but this was my first Dostoevsky, I think this was a high-octane dosage of drama and literary art. The drama was singular in scope but the literary art was not restricted to any one thing. It opened a new horizon of infinite layers of perception for a new reader like me. The story was simple; he kills two pawnbroker sisters. He repents. He tries to console his troubled soul throughout the book then. It does not work. He tries to love, he tries to hate. Does he succeed? No idea. With the help of his lover Sonya, there happens a spiritual regeneration in his life.

From the time of the crime to the time of punishment, there is a long thread of astonishing mental situations in between, connecting the psyche of the reader to the psyche of a criminal, who does not know why he was such! This was the part of the book; I guess this book has been so popular for. You cannot avoid entangling your own thoughts with that of the Raskolnikov, whenever he thinks and walks and eats and sleeps. And this is the most prominent thing in this book in my opinion. The author shows such brilliant penmanship in this, inside-the-head narration! Porfiry Petrovich was also an interesting and digestible character; I liked his presence, which made the book more engaging from the suspense angle. His character kept me on tenterhooks. Leave aside everything, what people say, the most important takeaway for me in this book was Fyodor himself, as I broke into his literary world through this book for the first time in my life!

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