Spoilers for a book written in the 1800s lol.
Just finished Crime and Punishment for the first time. I liked it alot, and I thought I understood the general message until the very end.
It seems pretty clear the FD believes in objective morality. Raskolnikov thinks that morality is subjective, and reasons out that he has a good reason for murdering this old lady, so it must be fine to do. Then he runs up against the fact that it was in fact morally wrong, he feels immense guilt, and is compelled to confess. He feels so much guilt that he is physically ill and almost dies, and is delirious or at least semi-delirious for a large portion of the book, and he actually craves to be punished.
Then once he is in Siberia, he says "I dont repent of my crime", and goes on to explain that it was a crime in the eyes of the law, but not a crime in any other way, and the only thing he repents of is that he was unable to succeed in his plan, which was to murder the lady, get away with it, and use her money as a launching point for his career.
What are we supposed to take from this? that Raskolnikov is just still in denial after everything he went through? Or that he actually learned no lesson from this whole affair?
by faroresdragn_
3 Comments
The whole point is that his intellectual understanding hasn’t caught up to what his soul/body already knew – he’s still trying to rationalize his way out of genuine repentance even though his physical and emotional breakdown already proved his theory wrong
I think Dostoevsky is showing that intellectual pride dies slowly. Raskolnikov understands emotionally that something is wrong, but his mind still clings to the theory that justified the crime.
The ending suggests that punishment alone doesn’t produce repentance. His real change begins through suffering, humility, and Sonia’s influence, which is why the narrator says his “new story” is only starting.