2024 REREAD: Wow, what a rollercoaster these four months have been! Simultaneously exciting, exhilarating, anxiety-inducing, slow, tedious, messy, anger-inducing, confusing, and cathartic.
I felt a lot and thought a lot upon my reread of 'Crime and Punishment', my first visit to it in over a decade. So many things have changed since then, and I could articulate them here in long, rambling, confused, boring detail. But I've decided instead to conclude with:
Regardless of, well, everything, I still love 'Crime and Punishment'. I find it to be incredibly addictive and readable, at least in the translation of my copy - my now old, battered, creased, waterlogged copy. The characters are utterly rich, real, absorbing, immersive, hardly ever likeable, pretentious, longwinded, and unforgettable.
Overall it is a fascinating novel. One of the best classics ever that continue to hold up, in my opinion.
A favourite always, for a booklover like me.
Final Score: 5/5
Original Review:
Well after living through a power cut, finding the time I could to finish reading this, and nearly losing my mind, I've finally reached the end of 'Crime and Punishment'. I'd say I'd beaten it, but given what it's put me through it may have beaten me all the same.
'Crime and Punishment' is bloody brilliant. A detective novel without the mystery, as it is told from the criminal's POV.
It wasn't at all what I expected it to be. It isn't exactly scary or gory. It is a whirlwind of the main character Raskolnikov's mental, emotional and physical instabilities. It is psychological yet surprisingly simply written for a classic novel, for me anyway. A riveting page turner worthy of all its acclaim.
Raskolnikov, an ex-student living in poverty in St Petersburg, never really comes across as being unlikeable, despite murdering two women at the same time. He does various good deeds throughout the book, such as giving away money to those poorer than himself, despite this. He goes through the motions of his crime; though he doesn't see it as a crime. One of his theories (he constantly mutters to himself, and writes articles) is that human beings - of the extraordinary, liberal kind not taken by order and system - have to go low and commit something considered outside the norm in society and politics, in order to become a revolutionary and aim higher in life for the "good" of mankind. He thinks the women he killed were nothing but worthless louses. But he experiences guilt and madness before and after he commits cold-blooded murder, and to him this shows he was not born to become a revolutionary figure, but an ordinary man of ethics trying to get through life like everyone else he knows.
Much of 'Crime and Punishment' is about Raskolnikov suffering the risk of getting caught, his views and theories being challenged, and about the people around him who are affected by his actions.
Raskolnikov's former university friend Razumikhin is his polar opposite. He is one of my favourite characters - a right chatterbox and an outrageous man of convictions, never giving up on his friends - a great contrast to Raskolnikov's sullen and closed-off personality. His sister Dunya is a firm martyr, especially concerning her impoverished brother - perhaps too selfless for her own good. And there's Sonya, a teenage prostitute living in worse conditions than Raskolnikov; with a home life away from her family whom she tries to support. Her stepmother Katerina Ivanovna is losing her mind more and more each day that passes. But Sonya keeps faith and relies on God, even though this could cause her further harm (making her another contrast to Raskolnikov, who is an atheist). I was a little disappointed that she isn't very strong - she's a typical feeble and saintly female - but I suppose Dunya is meant to fill the role of the strong and assertive female character.
Sonya may be Raskolnikov's salvation in many ways; something that the police detectives of this novel cannot achieve.
Oh, and Ilya "Gunpowder" Petrovich is awesome.
One of the great themes of 'Crime and Punishment' that puts it ahead of its time, one I feel I can talk about in an interesting way (by which I mean an original way as far as I know), is a certain view on women in society:
One character, Svidrigailov, at one point in the story talks to Raskolnikov about how all women can't resist flattery, and that basically any bloke can catch any bird he wants in his net so long as he makes her feel good about herself, thus she is open to being taken advantage of and then tossed aside when the man gets bored with her. Svidrigailov is a villain, in case you didn't guess.
I have my theory about the social art of "flattery". Women, especially from the 1800s, live hard lives. They are made to believe that their looks are all that men want from them, and that they need men in order to be whole and happy, regardless of how they live. When they get no compliments from them they feel that something that is beyond their control is their fault. So when a man does pay her compliments - "flatters" her, as it were - she feels she is something worthwhile. Someone worth existing. She believes or wants to believe that this man genuinely likes her and thinks her special. This also paints men in a bad and pitying light, as it suggests that they are all manipulative lechers who see women as easy gain for their sexual pleasures - by using flattery they can play the Nice Guy role until they eventually make their conscious or unconscious wants clear, which can be revealed years later.
Svidrigailov's theory suggests this unfortunate rift and relationship between the sexes; that men are basically programmed to be unfaithful and unable to resist bare lady skin, and that women are damned if they do and damned if they don't get into loving relationships with men. This leaves women either being seen as stuck-up bitches who are "mean" to guys, or as "whores" (a hateful word too much overused nowadays) with too much freedom. In the words of Maaka Albarn from 'Soul Eater': "You accuse women of making assumptions without reason, but what reason do men have for cheating?"
Of course there are decent and genuinely nice men in the world, and Svidrigailov is making excuses for his actions much in the way Raskolnikov excuses his own: by inventing theories that may or may not be true and may or may not be all that original to begin with. Like a true coward he makes these excuses rather than taking his flaws to heart and working on them in order to change himself, to become a better man.
Safe to say that Svidrigailov gets to suffer near the end in a creative and creepy fashion, when we are put into his head for a time. A significant difference between him and the novel's "hero" is that one of them takes the coward's way out of his suffering.
Plus, given the number of women who die horribly and are often in situations where they could get raped in 'Crime and Punishment', I wouldn't call it a feminist read.
Indeed the novel isn't perfect. A few characters, such as Luzhin, disappear near the end without much of a finale to their arcs. And it took me a while to get used to the Russian names and nicknames so I could tell each character apart, as some names look very similar to others.
However, how could a few little things ruin a whole achievement of literature? 'Crime and Punishment' is a beast of a book that anyone can and should read at least once, even if they don't like classic novels.
Gritty, intelligent, unpleasant but unputdownable, and filled with despicable and unforgettable characters, 'Crime and Punishment' fairly tired me out.
And I won't stop thinking about it any time soon.
Final Score: 5/5
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