Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Summer Reading Assignment: Crime and Punishment Journal #2-- Angela
I noticed as I began the second part of the book that Raskolnikov seemed much more concerned about the evidence and where to put the treasures and pawns than the fact that he killed two people. On page 111, I realized that everyone was calling him "ill". It was almost as if the author was playing with words and fooling with the reader's mind; was Raskolnikov ill, or just crazed?. After Raskolnikov hid the items, he went back to his slum. This part was confusing because I didn't know what characters, if any, were in the room with him or what was generally going on. It was hard to distinguish if it was all really going on or if he was just dreaming.On page 143, I found it ironic, and even a bit sarcastic at times, how the characters talked about selfishness and how it's based on self interest. They were almost making fun of Raskolnikov and how all he thought about was himself. All he thought about was how much better his life is now without Alyona, Ivanovna and Lizaveta, and how he would not allow his sister to be happy by marrying her fiance. But in a way i almost sympathized with Raskolnikov, because perhaps he felt threatened that the fiance would take his place in being the man in the family, and make Raskolnikov feel like he can’t do anything to help support his mother and sister.Some parts in the middle were really touching to me, such as how everyone seemed to care about his health, as well as how maybe it was just a slip in his mind, that Raskolnikov is truly a good man at heart.Then it occured to me that maybe the murders of Alyona and Lizaveta were all in his mind; maybe he's very sick and simply imagined all of it. However, everything was desrcribed very realistically, and a fantasy conjured up by an ill mind probably would have been much more confusing
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I have to say that you’re right about Raskolnikov and his feelings towards his sister’s fiancé. Being a man who wants to take care of things on his own, he probably sees Mr. Petrovich as an interference with his family. Our protagonist maybe feels that her sister’s fiancé is only marrying for financial reasons and does not want that to be the case. In a sense, because of Dunya’s situation with money, a problem has been created so that only Mr. Petrovich can solve it. Wouldn’t you become irritated knowing that some stranger can take better care of your family than you can?
ReplyDeleteYes, of course I would be it's my family, and I wouldn't want to seem or feel like I couldn't handle a problem within my family. It'd be devastating. But I wouldn't become so irritated as to want to kill someone, that would make me feel even worse. I'd much rather stand still for a minute, and think about how I could fix the problem, wouldn't that be the sensible thing to do? Or would you do it differently?
ReplyDeleteYour totally right about Dostoevsky making this scene and many others confusing. In fact as the translator points out at the bottom of one page Dostoevsky forgets that the setting of the book is at night in that scene and previously Raskolnikov had been yeld at for coming late to the police station and that was much earlier in the day. Along side this the number of contradictions in this book served only to confuse me further. As for Luzhin I think you're totally right about Raskolnikov feeling threatened. This was something I thought as well. Although he says he was upset because he didn't think his sister was actually in love and that she was making a sacrifice for him, I too believed that in a way he felt threatened by Luzhin especially since he had never met him before. When Dunya later begins to form a bond with Razhumikin there is much less animosity from Raskolnikov as compared with how he treated Luzhin. I'm really glad you brought that point up because many people might have taken Raskolnikov at his word and since he's crazy, his word isn't exactly reliable at times. And I can totally see why you might have thought this whole thing was a dream, hell at times it was so confusing I simply skipped pages to avoid a migraine. The way parts are so scrambled really makes you want to believe it is all a dream, unfortunately for Lizaveta, her sister, Raskolnikov, and me it wasn't.
ReplyDelete