June '05 Book: 'Crime and Punishment'

[~K~]

I just started reading this. So far of what I have read seems to give the tenant's insight of how things have been for him and he gives a keen introspect of the immediate world that is around him. His contact and interaction with others is one of confrontation.
I shall keep reading and see where it leads.
About how far has everyone read?

[papayahed]

I skipped to the end and know how it ends. Ha! Now I can go back to chapter 4 where I left off.....

[Scheherazade]

I quickly checked the Lazarus passage, I think maybe it wants to represent the resurrection and in what will be Raskolnikov's (and Sonja's) redemption...

Thanks for your reply, Koa. I am not very familiar with the Bible and this particular story and your explanation seems good to me

I wonder if Dostoevsky was a religious man himself. Maybe it is time to do some reading on his bio as well.

About how far has everyone read?

I have just finished reading Part V. Not a fast reader and this book is especially taking long time to digest.

[Koa]

Thanks for your reply, Koa. I am not very familiar with the Bible and this particular story and your explanation seems good to me

I wonder if Dostoevsky was a religious man himself. Maybe it is time to do some reading on his bio as well.

Ah I see. For me, it was a sort of easy interpretation...I'm usually really bad at interpreting things like that, but in this case it wasn't hard to find an idea about it all, and I assure you it felt strange ... And now I realise that it must be because of my Catholic background, while someone who has not been raised by going to the church every sunday, as I suppose is your case Scher, will find the whole story less granted... Interesting cultural difference.

I forgot everything about Dostoevskij and Religion If I'm bothered I can find my old notes... But I think he was somehow halfway... like in eternal doubt and that's why most of his characters question religion so hard but there are always some who are firm believers... If you read the Demons, there are wonderful passages with this conflict (I loved that book, that's the one that got me into Russian literature and language). And probably in the Karamazov Brothers as well, but I havent read that one yet.
And I think it somehow has to do also with his death experience... If you didn't read any bio you might not know that he was arrested for conspiracy (even if he apparently had little to do with the secret society group he was attending) and was graced exactly when he was about to be killed (by hanging if I'm not wrong?). And that changed his perception on life somehow... He wrote a lot about suicide but despite his troubled life he never even thought of killing himself, because after that experience he couldn't understand something so strong as suicide: it remained a mystery to him and that's why he portrays it so often.

[Scheherazade]

I agree with you Koa that our cultural background as well as our life expriences affect the way we read and interpret things. I was wondering if the idea of 'original sin' has anything to do with the 'crime' in Crime and Punishment.

[Koa]

I've never thought of original sin in this context... Uhm if I think about it now I don't think it has much to do with Crime & Punishment cos the original sin was something more 'pure', that is they had no sin before, and were somehow naive in thinking there would be no consequence to their deed (though actually they were aware of breaking the rule so maybe it's not that different as it first seemed to me). But Raskolnikov acts in all awareness and convinction and knows about the consequence, that's why he can't find peace and surrenders... To me, it's more related to the Superhuman kind of thingy... But I'd like to see other opinions on this

[Nightshade]

Ive given up I cant be bothered to read it again! MAybe next month.

[papayahed]

I'm almost halfway through!!!!!

[papayahed]

Ha! I finished this book last night. I'm glad I read it.

My thoughts:

the lazarus passage was kind of intersting, I don't know what to make of it other then Sonya and Rashkolnikov were given second chances. I think that differs from the original sin angle because they were just given second chances they haven't be absolved of past sins.

My questions are:

What was the difference between that S guy and Rashkolinkov, where one could commit suicide and the other couldn't?

And was Rashkolinkov driven to "madness" because he felt guilty of killing or because he realized that he wasn't that great of a man that he couldn't do it well?

edited to add:

Does anyone else have trouble keeping those russian names straight??

[crveniormaric]

I read a book and I think that this is the one of world' s gratest. It made me think about rightful crime. There are few questions rising from that theme:
What situations justified violence and who may commit a crime respectively in the name of who or what and is it worth it to sacrifice someone to save someone else?
We have some examples from history:
-Like French revolution: killing noble clerical minority would save more lower class people
-When USA dropped A-bomb at Hiroshima comment was: better to hurt 300.000 innocent people then to prolong war to infinity which would take more victims

So, it looks like that the same thing can be in the same time two different things: crime and heroism – depending of from what side you're looking at. Absolute justice does not exist, not in this or in «other» world. Everything is equally fair an unfair.

[Fontainhas]

I personnaly liked this book alot. But I think "The Idiot" was better.

[BenjaminMN]

Hello everyone,

Sorry for joining in on your discussion at such a late time, but this book is still imprinted rather well in my memory. It must be roughly seven months or so since I read it, and I have loved it ever since.

The moment when he kills the old lady is to me possibly the most thrilling in the whole literature...my heart was beating so fast that all the Stephen Kings and co. can only vanish in comparison!!!

I had a bit of an unpleasent experience with that passage. I was on my way to work, reading 'Crime and Punishment' in the train. I was feeling well, or rather, I was feeling as I do every morning really. Until I get to this passage. The way it was built up beforehand, the way his considerations and thoughts regarding the issue of taking a life had been presented before the actual act - plus reading the act itself made me feel physicly ill. My mouth went dry, my skin was tickling, I went pale.
So I decide to get off the train... Only to faint the moment I get up. I awoke with the sound and feel of someone slapping my cheek while calling for an ambulance. A kind woman was giving me a drink of water, a man was supporting me so I wouldn't fall over again and ofcourse the rest of the passengers had all come to see what exactly was going on.

The ambulance arrived and the physicians ofcourse told me I probably had the flue and that not having breakfast caused this. I never found the guts to tell three ambulance-folk, who pick up people in pieces on a daily basis, that all this "merely" happened because of my first encounter with Dostoyevsky. God I love that man.

True story.

[emily655321]

...which can be proved by the (pathetic) epilogue of the novel (the only part I'm not so fond of cos it just doeesnt fit in too well I think).

Koa, I'm so glad you hated the epilogue, too.

[badtheory]

I've read C&P twice in the last sixth months. A friend recomended it to me, so I read it and really enjoyed it, and then I brought it up in a conversation with my english teacher and she suggested I write on it for my diploma, so i re-read it. Unfortunately, I don't know many others who have read it and i haven't had much time to really discuss it with any one, and the diploma is in two days. O.o; i've gotten some good ideas from this forum, but there are two themes I noticed that I haven't seen a whole lot of commentary on. Firstly, redemption. Its obviously a very important theme, but i dont know why he needs Sonia to redeem him. Also, there's alot of mention about the human need to suffer. Marmeledov (excuse me on the spelling) talks about it in his bar conversation with Raskolnikov, and it comes up again when the painter confesses to the crime. I know its significant, but i still need to bounce it around a little more before i really understand it. any ideas?