Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"

Depictions of Madness and solitude after murder - akin to MacBeth

Marmelodov goes down on his knees as an act of forgiveness to Katerina Ivanovna at the beginning of the novel. She pulls him into the room. 21

Raskolnikov goes to the police station to deal with the summons immediately after the murder. He tells himself that "I shall go in, fall on my knees, and tell the whole story,' he thought as he came to the fourth floor." 80

Raskolnikov talks to himself about his situation after the murder and the feeling of torture he feels: "I have been tormenting and torturing myself and I hardly know what I am doing...when I am well...I shall not torture myself like this...but what if I never get quite well again" 93

After Raskolnikov throws the 20 kopek piece into the river he feels particularly alone. "He felt that he had in that moment cut himself from everybody and everything, as if with a knife" 97

Anton on his bed laying watching TV is like Raskolnikov lying on his bed waiting for the suffering and thinking all the time. Nothing to eat and drink. A dark coffin of an apartment. He is contacted by phone and brought out of his revery like Raskolnikov is by Natasha who brings him food and harasses him. **

Zametov and Razumikhin are talking and Raskolnikov sends them away from his apartment. Zametov tells Raz "...You know, he has something on his mind!...Something immovable, weighing him down...That is decidedly what I am very much afraid of" 130

Raskolnikov to Zametov and Raz "Perhaps I'm ungrateful, perhaps I am mean and base only leave me alone, all of you, for God's sake leave me alone!" 143

**For all the troubles that Anton had after having become an Other and after having met with the witch and his internal doubt from the failed abortion - he could not just end it like Svidrigailov - why could he not just commit suicide like in C&P? He could too easily been fixed by the Others or he could have gone into the gloom and just stayed there, but that keeps your soul to a certain extent and that is not a good ending  - anyway there is not the availability of just killing himself. Also, he could not have just gone to the police and told on himself as he was to a certain extent the police. He could have gone to the Dark Others, but this would have meant changing his entire belief system and he was not able to do that. Interesting that the same way out was not available to Anton that it was to Raskolnikov - so Anton had to just work his way out of the funk. There was nothing left for him, but to try to be the best person he could and do the work that he believed in in order to make the world a better place. **

Raskolnikov finishes with helping Marmelodov on his death bed and speaking with Polechka.  He had been able to help a man's family monitarily and emotionally. He had also connected himself with God and fo Dostoevsky, this is perhaps the most important part. It is a glimmer of hope that he is showing and that from good deeds may come more good deeds and life can be made of helping others. It is full of pride for Raskolnikov, but at least he is thinking of something else. He says to himself: "Enough!' he said decidedly and solemnly. 'Away with illusions, away with imaginary terrors, away with spectres!... Life is! Was I not living just now? My life did not die with the old woman! May she rest in peace and - enough, old woman, your time has come! Now comes the reign of reason and light and ... freedom and power... now we shall see! now we shall measure our strength!" 161

"Strength, strength is what I need; nothing can be done without strength; and strength must be gained by strength - that is something they do not know..... ....His pride and self-confidence grew with every minute; in each succeeding minute he was a different man from what he had been in the preceding one. But what had happened that was so special? What had so transformed him? He himself did not know; it had come to him suddenly, as to a man clutching at a straw, that even for him it was 'possible to live, that life was still there, that his life had not died with that old woman'. Perhaps he had been in too much haste to reach this conclusion, but of this he did not think." 161

**For Anton, he is able to grow a bit more interested in life as far as it seems after he saved Yegor and realized that there may be something more than the life of a NW agent especially as it is through them that he put Yegor in danger in the first place. He realizes what he must do and this is to save Yegor from the vampire and from the DW. He still does not know that the child is his or that the child is destined to become a great Other, but he realizes that he can and wants to save the child and that gives him a sense of purpose and life. **

According to Zosimov the doctor, "According to his observations, the illness had some psychological causes in addition to the bad material conditions the patient had been living in for the past few months; 'it is , so to say, a product of many complex moral and material influences, anxieties, apprehensions, worries, certain ideas...and other things.'" 175

"He had observed in his patient a certain fixed idea, some indication of monomania..."175

Razumikhin describes Raskolnikov to his mother and sister "...sometimes he is dreadfully taciturn: he has no time for anything-people are always interfering with him- but he spends all his time lying there doing nothing. He never jests, bot because he lacks the sharpness of wit for it, but because he has no time for such trifles. He doesn't hear people out. He is never interested in the same things as other people at any given moment. He sets a terribly high value on himself, not, I think, without some justification." 182

Raskolnikov is talking to his mother, sister, Zosimov, Raz, about getting well "...you come to a certain limit and if you do not overstep it, you will be unhappy, but if you do overstep it, perhaps you will be even more unhappy..." 192

**The idea of prestuplenie in the novel C&P as it relates to NW is interesting. As Anton has stepped over a moral and maybe a civil boundary he has caused himself to be ill. However, now that he has come in contact with Yegor he has the opportunity to make things right. However, to what end must he go to do so. He almost kills himself in the barber shop and ends up killing the barber vampire Andrei. He almost dies in the gloom with Yegor trying to save him and has to make a blood sacrifice to get out of it. He nearly causes the curse to explode by working on Sveta at the same time as Yegor, though this tactic worked to get the story out. He takes on Zavulon with a sword - the leader of the DW and the Dark Others. He nearly kills Yegor to save him from Zavulon, yet Zavulon saves Yegor. Anton had to go to extremes and not follow the protacal of the NW in trying to do so. He had to step over the bounds in order to get himself right after the events that took place 12 years earlier despite the fact that they may end the world or make the entire situation worse. He can only do what his conscience allows and can do no more or no less. **

Room like a coffin. 196

Svidrigailov is discussing ghosts and illness with Raskolnikov on their first meeting. Svid says : Apparitions are, so to speak, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the first beginnings of them. There  is, of course, no reason why a healthy man should see them, because a healthy man is mainly a being of this earth, and therefore for completeness and order he must live only this earthly life. But as soon as he falls ill, as soon as the normal earthly state of the organism is disturbed, the possibility of another world begins to appear, and as the illness increases, so do the contacts with the other world, so that at the moment of a man's death he enters fully into that world." 244

Sonya and Raskolnikov in her rooms talking about Katerina Ivanovna: "And aren't you sorry, aren't you sorry for her?' exclaimed Sonya again. 'Yet I know you gave her your last penny, when you had seen nothing. If you had seen everything, good heavens! And how often I have drivern her to tears, how often! Even this last week! Yes, I! Not more than a week before he died. I was cruel. And how many times I have behaved so, how many!... Oh, how painful it has been all day to remember it now!' Sonya rung her hands as she spoke, with the pain of remembering.
'You cruel?'
'Yes, I, I! ... ... I had gone there chiefly to show Katerina Ivanovna some collars; Lizaveta, the dealer, had let me have some collars and cuffs cheap, and they were quite new and very pretty, figured ones. Katerina Ivanovna liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself in the glass and she liked then very, very much: "Please give them to me, Sonya," she said. She said please, and she so wanted them. But when could she wear them? It was just that they reminded her of the old, happy days. She looked at herself in the glass and admired herself, and she had had no dresses, none at all, no pretty things, for so many years! and she would never ask anybody for anything; she is proud; she would rather give away her own last possessions, but now here she was asking for them - she like them so much! But I didn't want to give them away: "What use are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna? " I said. Yes, that is how I spoke to her. I should not have said that to her! she just looked at me , and she was so terribly sad that I had refused her, that it made me sorry to see her...And she wasn't sad about the collars, but because I had refused her, I could see that. And now I wish I could change it all, do it all over again, take back all those words...Oh, I ...But why am I saying all this? It makes no difference to you.' ... ...
"Katerina Ivanovna has consumption, in a very advanced stage; she will soon die,' said Raskolnikov after a silence..."
"Oh, no, no, no!' With an unconscious gesture sonya seized both his hands hin hers, as though imploring him not to let it happen." 270

"At last he went up to her; his eyes were glittering. He took her by the shoulders with both hands and looked into her weeping face. His piercing eyes were dry and inflamed, his lips twitched violently...With a sudden swift movement he stooped, fell to the ground, and kissed her foot. sonya started back in fear, as though he were mad. Indeed, he looked quite mad.
'Why, why do you do that? To me!' she murmured, turning white, and her heart contracted painfully.
He rose at once.
'I prostrated myself not before you, but before all human suffering,' he said wildly, and waskled away to the window. 272

"I said it not because of your dishonour and your sin, but because of your great suffering. That you are a great sinner is true,' he added, almost exultantly, 'but your greatest sin is that you have abandoned and destroyed yourself in vain." 272

**Sveta is sort of in the same position as Sonya. She has done a great sin in this world and is punishing herself for it, but it is all for naught. She knows her mother will die and can do nothing to save her. She even went through the motions of trying to help her mother, though her heart was not in it. She knew that her mother would refuse, which made it all the easier for her to offer her own kidney. Sveta cannot do anything about it and only suffers and curses herself because she knows she did not do it with the right heart. Sveta also has only a few ways open to her: to kill herself - which is basically happening with the vortex, to go mad - which she doesn't have time for because of the vortex, and to succumb to the debauchery that will turn her heart to stone - also not possible because she doesn't have enough time. The lack of time is not the important thing here - it is the universality of the sin "Sonya's position in society was fortuitous, was an accident, although unfortunately not exceptional or isolated" 273. The point is that Sveta curses herself as perhaps anyone could for their inability to sacrifice themselves to save another. It happens everyday. Mothers die and daughters are not always either able or willing to make the sacrifice. Sveta has the ability, just not the heart, though she went through the motions. **