Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes

Commentary and Related Work

Freud regarded Dostoevsky as one of the greatest literary psychologists in history, second only to Shakespeare.

Rather than trying to discover who committed a crime, as a detective or mystery novel might do, Crime and Punishment asks a more complex question: Why did Raskolnikov commit murder?

Raskolnikov identifies a number of possible reasons for the murder—he needed money; he wanted to rid the world of a “louse”; he wanted to prove he was above society’s definitions of duty and conscience—noting as well that his act was prompted by pent-up rage, a response to his feelings of powerlessness, and his alienation from the community.

Freud often said that “the poets” discovered the unconscious before he did.

Like Freud, Dostoevsky saw tremendous significance in dreams as manifestations of the unconscious.

When Raskolnikov murders the pawnbroker, it is not in a state of lucidity and rationality, but in a dream-like trance, demonstrating Freud’s later premise that dreams contain desires too difficult to express in waking life.

Freud attempts to locate the guilt Dostoevsky felt regarding the death-wish he held for his father, who was murdered by his serfs when Dostoevsky was eighteen.

Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was the fundamental human drama, and saw it as no coincidence that three masterpieces of world literature—Hamlet, Oedipus Rex, and The Brothers Karamazov—each centered on the murder of a father.

Raskolnikov is a familiar literary and philosophical type: the intellectually gifted but socially disconnected student who views himself as above society and its law.

This character type also forms the basis of Rope, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film about a “perfect” murder; the story is loosely based on a real-life slaying by two University of Chicago students, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

The concept of the übermensch (German for “overman”) has frequently been used to explain the character of Raskolnikov. Friedrich Nietzsche first developed the idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a highly influential philosophical work published in multiple parts in the 1880s. In it, the philosopher Zarathustra comes to earth to urge mankind to emulate the übermensch, a hypothetical individual Zarathustra sees as the pinnacle of human potential. The übermensch  possesses a will so strong that he is completely self-determining. He ignores the morality and prejudices of society, overcomes disease, and disdains the false security of religion. He sublimates his baser  human desires, such as the sex drive, to stronger, more creative outlets, such as art and philosophy.

Raskolnikov puts forward a similar idea of the “extraordinary man” in his article “On Crime,” which Porfiry has read, and uses his “extraordinary man” theory to justify his murder of the pawnbroker during his conversations with Porfiry. However, Raskolnikov lacks the primary quality Nietzsche identifies in the übermensch: the superhuman will to power. Raskolnikov performs his societal transgression not as a powerful act of will, but with a monomania that makes the murder practically involuntary. Raskolnikov also lacks the independence from religion and unimpeachable health of the übermensch.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, French writers associated with the diverse philosophical movement known as existentialism, were heavily influenced by the work of Dostoevsky. An exploration of freedom from external laws and its incumbent angst connects the work of the three writers, and forms the basis of the existentialist discussion.

In his 1946 lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Sartre calls a line spoken by Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov—“If God does not exist, everything is permitted”—the “starting point” of all existentialist thought. Sartre insists that a person’s actions can never be explained by human nature or determinism; rather, he posits, man is perpetually free to do what he likes and therefore is responsible for all his actions. Sartre’s short novel Nausea (1938) and his philosophical work Being and Nothingness (1943) are central documents of existentialism.

In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” published in 1942, Camus confronts the problems inherent in the discovery that life cannot be explained in terms of reason. He rejects both religion, such as that in which Raskolnikov believed, and suicide as responses to that terrible discovery. Instead, he believes that embracing the absurdity of human life is the key to finding happiness.

Dostoevsky’s early novella Notes from the Underground also figures heavily in the history of existentialist thought, with some scholars calling it the founding document. In it, the solitary Underground Man attacks determinism and finds meaning in freedom, while also acknowledging the suffering freedom causes.

“Dostoevsky [is] the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life.”—Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889)

Key Excerpts

The landlady who provided him with the room and with dinner and service lived on the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which was always open. And each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him grimace and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady and was afraid of meeting her. This was not because he was cowardly and browbeaten, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself and isolated from everyone else that he dreaded meeting not only his landlady, but anyone at all.

It would be interesting to know what it is people are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.

But there was such accumulated spite and contempt in the young man’s heart, that, in spite of all the cares of youth, he minded his rags least of all. It was a different matter when he met with acquaintances or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time.

It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.

We all have chance meetings with people, even with complete strangers, who interest us at first glance, suddenly, before a word is spoken.

Such is my trait! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very stockings for drink? Not her shoes—that would be more or less in the order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold for drink! Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too. We have three little children and Katerina Ivanovna is at work from morning till night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the children, for she’s been used to cleanliness from childhood. But her chest is weak and she has a tendency to consumption and I feel it! Do you suppose I don’t feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink, to find sympathy and feeling in drink . . . I drink because I want to suffer profoundly!

For that’s Katerina Ivanovna’s character, and when children cry, even from hunger, she starts beating them at once.

"It’s not Katerina Ivanovna I am afraid of now,” he muttered in agitation—“and that she will begin pulling my hair. What does my hair matter! Forget my hair! That’s what I say! It will even be better if she does begin pulling it, that’s not what I am afraid of . . . it’s her eyes I am afraid of . . . yes, her eyes . . . the red on her cheeks, too, frightens me . . . and her breathing too . . . Have you noticed how people with that disease breathe . . . when they are excited? I am afraid of the children’s crying, too . . . Because if Sonia has not taken them food . . . I don’t know then! I don’t know! But blows I am not afraid of . . . Know, sir, that such blows are not a pain to me, but even an enjoyment. For I myself can’t manage without it . . . It’s better that way. Let her strike me, it relieves her heart . . . it’s better that way."

Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you do nothing now?

In order to understand any man one must approach gradually and carefully to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and remedy afterwards.

Your whole life, your whole future, you will devote to them when you have finished your studies and obtained a post? Yes, we have heard all that before, and that’s all words, but now? Now something must be done, now, do you understand that? And what are you doing now? […] In another ten years? In another ten years, mother will be blind with knitting shawls, maybe with weeping too. She will be worn to a shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine for a moment what may become of your sister in ten years? What may happen to her during those ten years? Have you guessed? So he tortured himself, taunting himself with such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment in it. And yet all these questions were not new ones suddenly confronting him, they were old familiar aches. “It was long since they had first begun to grip and rend his heart. Long, long ago his present anguish had its first beginnings; it had waxed and gathered strength, it had matured and concentrated, until it had taken the form of a horrible, wild and fantastic question, which tortured his heart and mind, clamoring insistently for an answer. Now his mother’s letter had burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear that he must not now languish and suffer passively, in thought alone, over questions that appeared insoluble, but that he must do something, do it at once, and do it quickly. He must decide on something no matter what, on anything at all, or . . .“Or renounce life altogether!” he cried suddenly, in a frenzy—“accept one’s lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle everything in oneself, giving up every right to act, live, and love!”

They won’t face the truth till they are forced to; the very thought of it makes them shiver; they thrust the truth away with both hands, until the man they deck out in false colors puts a fool’s cap on them with his own hands.

I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen […] To go wrong in your own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you’re a human being, in the second you’re no better than a bird.

I’m not wrong. I’ll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them is ‘the influence of the environment,’ and nothing else. Their favorite phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organized, crime will instantly cease to exist, since there will be nothing to protest against and all men will become righteous in an instant. Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it’s not supposed to exist! They don’t recognize that humanity has developed by a living historical process and will eventually become normal; they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organize all of humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! That’s why they instinctively dislike history, ‘nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,’ and they explain it all as stupidity!

The only difference is that I don’t contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In fact, I doubt whether such an argument could be published. I simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right . . . that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep . . . certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfillment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity). […] I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more people, Newton would have had the right, would in fact have been duty bound . . . to eliminate a dozen or a hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market.

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught out in a simple trap. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

Not to speak of the fact that there are cases when women are very, very glad to be insulted in spite of all their show of indignation. There are instances of it with everyone; human beings in general, indeed, greatly love to be insulted, have you noticed that? But it’s particularly so with women. You might even say it’s their only amusement.

There are insults, Avdotia Romanovna, which no goodwill can make us forget. There is a line in everything which it is dangerous to overstep; and when it has been overstepped, there is no return.

Dunia was simply essential to him; to do without her was unthinkable. For many years he had voluptuous dreams of marriage, but he had gone on waiting and amassing money. He brooded with relish, in profound secret, over the image of a girl—virtuous, poor (she must be poor), very young, very pretty, well-born and well-educated, very timid, one who had suffered much, and was completely humbled before him, one who would all her life look on him as her savior, worship him, admire him and only him. How many scenes, how many amorous episodes he had imagined on this seductive and playful theme, when his work was over! And, behold, the dream of so many years was all but realized; the beauty and education of Avdotia Romanovna had impressed him; her helpless position had been a great allurement; in her he had found even more than he dreamed of. Here was a girl of pride, character, virtue, of education and breeding superior to his own (he felt that), and this creature would be slavishly grateful all her life for his heroic condescension, and would humble herself in the dust before him, and he would have absolute, unbounded power over her!

You are still a young man, in your first youth, so to speak, and so you put intellect above everything, like all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you.

I used to think, in fact, that if women are equal to men in all respects, even in strength (as is maintained now), there ought to be equality in [physical fights], too. Of course, I reflected afterwards that a question like that really shouldn’t arise, because there shouldn’t be any fighting and, in the future society, fighting is unthinkable . . . and that it would be strange to try to find a principle of equality in fighting. I am not so stupid . . . though, of course, there is fighting . . . there won’t be later, but at the moment there is . . . damn it!

I am only sorry that recently she has completely given up reading and borrowing books. I used to lend them to her. I am sorry, too, that with all the energy and resolution in protesting—which she has already shown once—she has too little self-reliance, too little independence, so to speak, to break free from certain prejudices and certain foolish ideas. Yet she thoroughly understands some questions, for instance about kissing hands, that is, that it’s an insult to a woman for a man to kiss her hand, because it’s a sign of inequality.

• This book is over 150 years old and they have some of the same debates on equality that we have today.

And tell me, please, what do you find so shameful even about cesspools? I would be the first to be ready to clean out any cesspool you like. And it’s not a question of self-sacrifice, it’s simply work, honorable, useful work which is as good as any other and much better than the work of a Raphael and a Pushkin, because it is more useful. […] What do you mean by ‘more honorable’? I don’t understand such expressions to describe human activity. ‘More honorable,’ ‘nobler’—all those are old-fashioned prejudices which I reject. Everything which is of use to mankind is honorable. I only understand one word: useful!

Because I don’t want in your free marriage to be made a fool of and to bring up another man’s children, that’s why I want a legal marriage.

Perhaps the chief element was that peculiar “poor man’s pride,” which compels many poor people to spend their last savings on some traditional social ceremony, simply in order to do it “like other people,” and not to “be looked down upon.”

“It was like this: I asked myself this question one day—what if Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had not had Toulon or Egypt or the passage of Mont Blanc to start his career, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things, there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that, if there had been no other means? Wouldn’t he have felt a pang at its being so far from monumental and . . . and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I worried myself so terribly over that ‘question’ that I was extremely ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck him that it was not monumental . . . that he would not have seen that there was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way, he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it! Well, I too . . . left off thinking about it . . . murdered her, following his example. And that’s exactly how it was! Do you think it’s funny? Yes, Sonia, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that’s just how it was.” Sonia did not think it at all funny. “You had better tell me straight out . . . without examples,” she begged, even more timidly and scarcely audibly. He turned to her, looked sadly at her and took her hands. “You are right again, Sonia. Of course that’s all nonsense, it’s almost all just talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has scarcely anything, my sister happened to have a good education and  was condemned to slave away as a governess. All their hopes were centered on me. I was a student, but I couldn’t keep myself at the university and was forced for a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on like that, in ten or twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher or clerk with a salary of a thousand rubles” (he repeated it as though it were a lesson) “and by that time my mother would be worn out with grief and anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her in comfort while my sister . . . well, my sister might well have fared worse! And it’s a hard thing to pass everything by all your life, to turn your back upon everything, to forget your mother and politely accept the insults inflicted on your sister. Why should you? When you have buried them to burden yourself with others—wife and children—and to leave them again without a penny? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman’s money and to use it for my first years without worrying my mother, to keep myself at the university and for a little while after leaving it—and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build up a completely new career and enter upon a new life of independence . . . Well . . . that’s all ... Well, of course in killing the old woman I did wrong . . . Well, that’s enough.

And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that closet! And yet I wouldn’t leave it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days on end, and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Nastasia brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I went all day without food; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, because of my sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust is lying an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and thinking. And I kept thinking . . . And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe them!

And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that closet! And yet I wouldn’t leave it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days on end, and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Nastasia brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I went all day without food; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, because of my sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust is lying an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and thinking. And I kept thinking . . . And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe them!

Only then I began to imagine that . . . No, that’s not it! Again I’m getting it wrong! You see, I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—I still won’t be any wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if you wait for everyone to get wiser it’ll take too long . . . Afterwards I understood that that would never happen, that people won’t change and that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that’s true. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia . . . that’s true! . . . And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is very daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! That’s how it has been  until now and that’s how it will always be. A person has to be blind not to see it! Though Raskolnikov looked at Sonia as he said this, he no longer cared whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; he was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had gone too long without talking to anyone).

“I know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all over to myself, lying there in the dark . . . I’ve argued it all over with myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how sick I was then of going over it all! I’ve kept wanting to forget it and make a fresh start, Sonia, and leave off thinking.”

Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once and for all, forever . . . But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. […] “Well, what should I do now?” he asked, suddenly raising his head and looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.

Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now that he had made her more miserable. Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!

Let everyone, let all of Petersburg see the children begging in the streets, though their father was an honorable man who served all his life in truth and fidelity and, you might say, died in service.” (Katerina Ivanovna had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly believed it.)

“Tobacco’s bad for you,” he said, ‘your lungs are affected.’ But how am I going to give it up? What is there to take its place? I don’t drink, that’s the problem, he-he-he, that I don’t.”

From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make a proof, as the English proverb says, but that’s only from the rational point of view—you can’t help being partial, for after all a lawyer is only human.

I told her straight out I couldn’t be absolutely faithful to her. This confession drove her to frenzy, but yet she seems in a way to have liked my brutal frankness. She thought it showed I was unwilling to deceive her if I warned her like this beforehand and for a jealous woman, you know, that’s the first consideration. After many tears an unwritten contract was drawn up between us: first, that I would never leave Marfa Petrovna and would always be her husband; secondly, that I would never go off without her permission; thirdly, that I would never have a permanent mistress; fourthly, in return for this, Marfa Petrovna gave me a free hand with the maids, but only with her secret knowledge; fifthly, God forbid my falling in love with a woman of our class; sixthly, in case I—God forbid—should have a serious passion I was obliged to reveal it to Marfa Petrovna.

And once a girl’s heart is moved to pity, it’s more dangerous than anything. She is bound to want to ‘save him,’ to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and usefulness—well, we all know how far such dreams can go.

I, of course, threw it all on my destiny, posed as hungering and thirsting for light, and finally resorted to the most powerful weapon in the subjection of the female heart, a weapon which never fails. It’s the well-known resource—flattery. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.

But if everything, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society.

I resolved to offer her all my money—thirty thousand rubles I could have made available then—if she would run away with me here, to Petersburg. Of course I should have vowed eternal love, rapture, and so on. Do you know, I was so wild about her at that time that if she had told me to poison Marfa Petrovna or to cut her throat and to marry her, I would have done it at once!

“What if I am fifty and she is not yet sixteen? Who thinks about that?”

Sometimes she steals a look at me that absolutely scorches me. Her face is like Raphael’s Madonna. You know, the Sistine Madonna’s face has something fantastic in it, the face of mournful religious ecstasy.

The fact is that this monstrous difference in age and development excites your sensuality! Will you really make such a marriage?

Napoleon attracted him tremendously, that is, what affected him was that a great many men of genius have not hesitated at wrongdoing, but have overstepped the law without thinking about it. He seems to have fancied that he was a genius too—that is, he was convinced of it for a time. He has suffered a great deal and is still suffering from the idea that he could make a theory, but was incapable of boldly overstepping the law, and so he is not a man of genius. And that’s humiliating for a young man of any pride, in our day especially.

The child suddenly became animated, chattered away in her baby language, something about “Mother” and that “Mother would beat her,” and about some cup that she had “bwoken.” The child chattered on without stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken a cup of her mother’s and was so frightened that she had run away the evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere outside in the rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind the cupboard and spent the night there, crying and trembling from the damp, the darkness and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it.

“Yes, I am going. At once. Yes, to escape the disgrace I thought of drowning myself, Dunia, but as I looked into the water, I thought that if I had considered myself strong until now I’d better not be afraid of disgrace,” he said, hurrying on. “It’s pride, Dunia.”

“Rodia, Rodia, what are you saying! You have shed blood!” cried Dunia in despair.

“Which all men shed,” [Rodia] put in almost frantically, “which flows and has always flowed in streams, which is spilt like champagne, and for which men are crowned in the Capitol and are later called benefactors of mankind.”

“Look into it more carefully and understand it! I too wanted to do good and would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds to make up for that one piece of stupidity, not stupidity even, simply clumsiness, for the idea was by no means as stupid as it seems now that it has failed . . . (Everything seems stupid when it fails.) By that stupidity I only wanted to put myself into an independent position, to take the first step, to obtain means, and then everything would have been smoothed over by benefits immeasurable in comparison . . . But I . . . I couldn’t carry out even the first step, because I am contemptible, that’s what’s the matter! And yet I won’t look at it as you do. If I had succeeded I would have been crowned with glory, but now I’m trapped.” “But that’s not so, not so! Rodia, what are you saying!”

“Oh, if only I were alone and no-one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! None of this would have happened. But, I wonder, shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so meek that I shall humble myself before people and whimper at every word that I am a criminal. Yes, that’s it, that’s it, that’s what they are sending me there for, that’s what they want. Look at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they’d be wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!”

“Is it possible that he has nothing but cowardice and fear of death to make him live?” she thought at last in despair.

Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had considered himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others.

Why does my action strike them as so horrible?” he said to himself. “Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law . . . and that’s enough. Of course, in that case many of the benefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first steps. But those men succeeded and so they were right, and I didn’t, and so I had no right to have taken that step.

He looked at his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in prison than in freedom.