Zeehan's Second and Third Entries on Crime and Punishment

Journal # 2: Crime and Punishment

I would really love to connect to this book at a personal level, but that seems impossible. The only thing that’s similar between me and Roskolnikov is that we talk to ourselves a lot, but he actually seems like a mental case to me, and I’m not sure that I’m at his level yet. Roskolnikov is a crazy person to have come up with such a sophisticated plan of murder and to go through with it. Not only did he plan a murder and commit it, he also committed a second unexpected murder. If I was Roskolnikov, I would have committed suicide the minute I realized what I’ve done. I don’t understand how Rodya didn’t think about how this murder might have affected him and now after committing the murder, his soul is dying from guilt and is trying to hide from the truth in every possible way. In the beginning of the book Rodya seemed like a guy with no conscience, but the way he helped Sonya and her family shows that he does have some conscience left in him and that he wants to be useful. I already feel Sonya changing Rodya and I think their relationship will continue to be interesting throughout the story. I’m not sure what the consequence of Rodya’s guilt will be, but I have a strong feeling he will commit suicide.


Journal # 3: Crime and Punishment

Well a lot has progressed throughout the story, including the exciting mind games between Porfiry Petrovich and Rodya, the relationship between Dunya and Razumikhin, the relationship between Sonya and Rodya, the pitiful suicide of Mr. Svidrigailov, but what shocked me the most was Rodya’s confession of the crime to Sonya. Rodya explains to Sonya that he killed Alyona and her sister not because of his need for money, but for his desire to be another Napoleon, a person who is special and is justified in breaking the rules set by society. I think that at the end, the virus that Rodya dreams about, that almost everyone catches and thinks they are the possessor of the truth, and no one gets along and eventually start killing each other is expressing the importance of the morals and rules set by the society. I think that the narrator is trying to reply to Rodya’s idea that there are some special people in this world who can break the rules of society and be justified in doing so because they are superior. The narrator is saying that it really isn’t okay for anyone to break the morals set by the society because that would lead to absolute chaos and destruction of human society. The narrator is also suggesting that when people begin thinking that they are superior, and they can be excused for crimes that average people can’t be excused from, then they will just go crazy, as Napoleon and Rodya did.