What if mankind could be divided in 2 classes: material (Low) and superior (High); with superiors having the freedom of no law being applicable on them, infact they make the laws for the rest. They have the right to kill at will and can bring about events like wars resulting in millions of causalities. We only need to peep into the history and can assign this superior class to number of historical figures like Hitler, Napoleon etc.
Now, what if someone who hypothesizes this theory believes himself to be a superior being with every right to kill people of material class (to develop the world); and what if in this state of mind he murders few material beings and later on – on facing his conscience – he realizes that he infact belonged to material class only with no strength and mind of a superior being. One can only imagine the suffering he has to endure in his life afterwards.
In Crime and Punishment, C&P, Raskolnikov, RSK, the protagonist – a poor but brilliant ex-law student – formulates such a theory and murders an old pawn broker woman and her sister. “When reason fails, the devil helps” With devil on his side and fortune favoring him – not without some hair raising and thrilling experience - he flees from the crime scene without leaving any evidence to trace him. But as they say “You can fool the world, but you can’t fool your own self”, for days afterwards RSK finds himself in a delirious state with continuous suffering. Everyone believes him to be sick and feverish and at times - through his actions and sayings - he reveals a lot about the murder. Porfiry Petrovitch, detective handling the case, after going through all available evidences, RSK’s behavior in general, and having read his theory of material and superior class strongly considers him to be the murderer. He grills RSK - where in he plays with his mind to made him accept his crime (Believe me, these interrogations form the most remarkable and intriguing part of the story).
Porfiry must convince RSK to atone and accept his crime and surrender as that’s only way to save Nikolay (one who has declared himself the murderer fallaciously) and to end the sufferings of RSK forever. Will Porfiry be able to win the battle of mind with RSK? What path will RSK take to end his sufferings; will he surrender or run away?
That’s the tail from the protagonist’s perspective but that’s not all C&P offers; there are around dozens of very interesting characters – not as widely covered and not as complex as RSK – that suffers alongside RSK and play vital roles in his life. His mother (Avdotya), sister (Dounia), friend (Razumihin), his doctor (Zometov) – unaware of his sin - tries to ease his pain and bring normalcy in his life. Dostoevsky has brilliantly given each one of these characters space of their own, without dragging from the central theme and such is there place in the theme that reader – at times – wonder who actually the protagonist is?
"I didn’t bow down to you, I bowed down to all the sufferings of Humanity". Though C&P is majorly about the crime that RSK commits and punishment he receives for it in terms of the torment his SOUL has to go through. “If he has conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment – as well as the prison.” Dostoevsky very meticulously throws light on the sufferings of various other forms through C&P’s other characters. Be it the self attained suffering of Marmaldov and Svidrigailov; or suffering one has to endure for kindness and generosity of nature – Razumihin and Sonia; or suffering one has to bear for the sake of love – Dounia and Avdotya; or the suffering of bad luck in terms series of undesired events – Katarina (Sub-plot of Katarina really touches ones heart and its hard to get out of the gloom it creates in a readers heart.).
After finishing C&P R. L. Stevenson wrote “It nearly finished me. It was like having an illness.” It was quite a same experience for me. When I completed Book 1 – which finishes with murder of two women – I felt restless and frightened as if I’ve committed the murder myself. Right through Book 2-5, I felt delirious, sick and suffered alongside RSK and others. With Book 6 – last one – as the sufferings of each of the characters begins to move towards a climax - like Death of Marmaldov, Katrina and Svidrigailov – it made me sad but it also reduced the suffering – theirs as well as mine – and I infact thanked Svidrigailov for ending the agony of many of them. In the end, as RSK finally settles on his final resolution and starts his journey towards the police Station for surrender, I felt myself moving alongside him and believed it to be the only way leading to HOPE.
Yes, C&P is an illness, but it’s an illness that’s worth being sick with and though it didn’t succeed in finishing me altogether; I must confess that it did finish a part of me, it made me delirious and it will certainly take time for me to come out of it. It did finish my reading habit too and I am still struggling to find any solace among any of the book I picked after it.
C&P is nearly 700 pages long and once you are done with first 160 pages(which marks end of Book 1) there is no way left for the reader but to finish it till very end. I didn’t find anything absurd in C&P; it’s full of interesting as well as variant characters. It belongs to the times of 1850’s Russia and successfully imports the reader to that world so that when you finish reading it you’ll feel as if you knew RSK, Sonia etc personally. Throughout C&P reader suffers with the sufferings of its characters and when – at last – it finishes with a ray of hope it brings a smile on reader’s face. I guess that’s necessary too, otherwise how’d one get out of the sickness that C&P spreads.
Brilliance of Dostoevsky lies in the way he plays with the mind of its characters, esp. that of RSK. RSK is a complex character, moving from firmness to doubt, self-satisfaction to lunacy, self loathing to hatred (for others) within a space of a paragraph. Events that take place are covered from varying perspectives through the reflections of C&P’s chief characters and it’s through these very varying viewpoints Roskolnikov’s mental journey is portrayed with its varying transformations.
C&P is a crime based novel involving murder and mystery, but its beauty lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with question of ‘Who done it?’ as that’s quite clear throughout; It’s the question of ‘Why it was done?’ that it addresses; and its not a question just for the investigator Petrovitch or Friend Razumihin or Sister Dounia or Sonia; or for the reader; but it proves out to be question for the murderer too. I am not a murderer – never would be – but if I were in such circumstances I am sure my mental conditions would’ve been like that of RSK and I don’t think it would’ve taken me more than a day or two to surrender. Torment that one has to bear in a jail is nothing compared to what a Soul has to go through after such a crime is committed, provided Soul is conscious one.
At last, I’ll recommend C&P to all; it’s a brilliant take on the mind of a criminal (with conscience). Like Dostoevsky (There is no happiness in comfort; happiness is bought with Suffering) I believe that in suffering lies the real peace. What life is a life if there is nothing to worry about; if there is nothing to suffer for? So, “Suffering is a good thing. Suffer!”