Summer reading Assigment: Crime and Punishment Journal #2-- Fred

Midway through the novel, it’s compulsory to say that whatever Dostoevsky managed to accomplish by displaying the mind and sufferings of a paranoid killer in 500 pages appeals quite petite to me. Obviously, responding to my comment on Ms. Tramantano’s post, I find this novel particularly far from being considered “great.” Yet with the same bit of optimism I used to start Streetcar, the abdomen of this novel is a little lest confusing than the beginning, shedding light to many characters like Dunya, her fiancé Luzhin and Razuhmikin that I had only read in Razko’s dreadful monotone. I like how Dunya’s personality affirms what his mother’s letter had described about her being self-less, intelligent, and a firm personality. So far, she has to be my favorite character of the novel, how her brilliant idea to test Luzhin by bringing Rasko surely solidifies that she’s a much wittier and aspiring character than her beloved brother. I’m ALMOST interested in discovering how it turns out between her and her fiancé, considering Razuhmikin’s attraction to her.

Next, I’ve seen in certain posts on the blog, people seem to marginalize Marmadelov’s role in the story, concerning his death in Sonya’s arms. Thinking again back to the title, Crime and Punishment, in a sense I see this particular subplot as equivalent to a “control” in an experiment. To elaborate, Raskolnikov’s murder of the pawnbroker and her sister have throughout the middle of the novel caused him indeed a lot of pain and paranoia, which I consider in a sense, self-punishment. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but perhaps Dostoevsky’s point in having Marmadelov pass away right in that scene, and have his wife mourn and insult him simultaneously was to contrast both ends of the spectrum, and also to signify the relationship between choices and consequences. Crimes are choices; punishments are the consequence of those choices. Marmadelov dies in sorrow for his drinking and partial neglect of his family; a wrong choice he made. His punishment is natural death. Raskolnikov chose to kill for his own personal gain, and I suppose whatever external punishment, I’ll learn later in the story.

Probably the most eye opening thing to me at the book’s midpoint was when Raskolnikov wrote an article about some superhumans being able to defy normal crime for the greater good. I get the feeling he’s trying to a murderous correspondent to Robin Hood, but to expand I in a sense saw a bit of OJ Simpson in Rasko’s defense to the detective. Back last year, OJ Simpson wrote of very controversial book called “If I did It”, referring to his accusations of killing Nicole Brown and that other dude that he is notorious for. Ironic, he killed two people and published a book about it just as Raskolnikov killed the two women and is trying to defend it with an article. I suppose what I mean is that whatever murder does to a person, and Dostoevsky does well to catch this, it stays with them permanently like some kind of parasite that will never leave. Just my two cents, forgive me but I still think this book is dreadful.