i need help urgently. I have a paper due Tuesday in English and I was thinking of doing it on a comparison of Crime and Punsihment and was wondering what book would be a good comparison. THANKS SO MUCH
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i need help urgently. I have a paper due Tuesday in English and I was thinking of doing it on a comparison of Crime and Punsihment and was wondering what book would be a good comparison. THANKS SO MUCH
One that you've read would be a good choice.
You can get good comparisons from:
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis
Which one depends on which aspect of Crime and Punishment you want to focus on.
Conrad's 'Secret Agent' was supposedly written as an answer to Dostoyevsky's 'The Devils'. I have only read that & Heart of Darkness so I don't know how either of them would compare or contrast well with Crime & Punishment. In my opinion Crime & Punishment borders a bit on the sui generis anyway.
Two come to mind:
1. Edgar Allen Poe's essay "The Imp of the Perverse". As in Dostoevsky's murderer, you will see the similarities in the sometimes paradoxical human desire to do something irrational that you know will only hurt you i.e. the overwhelming urge to confess a succussful (got away with it) murder to the world.
2. Herman Hesse's "Demian" where likewise, Emil Sinclair takes a disturbingly celebratory approach. Sinclair with the help of Demian (alluded to in so many ways as The Prince of Cherubim) adopts a view of the world that evil is clever & good foolish. In fact he suggests that it is a clever and grand thing to kill anyone weaker than you, and only cowardice prevents us from doing so.
Personally, I find literary probings into these aspects of the human mind not so much depressing as unsettling. Such states of imbalence exists but its a mental dark alley I'd rather not go down it.
you could possibly do a comparison of C&P with Plato's Allegory of the Cave. i've seen it done before and it's actually quite effective. you do have to do some heavy explication and theorizing, but it's doable. AND it would be pretty epic.
or...hmm...lemme think about it for a bit longer...currently on the lightrail, so i have some time 'til i reach downtown. :P
Another Edgar Allen Poe suggestion; The Tell Tale Heart.