Fyodor Dostoyevsky Research Paper

Unlike many of the Russian writers during the time, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was not born into the landed gentry (Fyodor Dostoevsky Biography). He had a very strict father and a loving mother who both died when Dostoyevsky was very young. Forced to endure the absence of both parents, Dostoyevsky joined a social group for comfort. However, in his adolescence, the Tsar arrested him because of his group’s rebellious attitude towards the government; consequently, he was forced to spend four years in a Siberian prison. These experiences, along with Dostoyevsky’s life after his time in prison, helped shape Crime and Punishment, creating characters and events that parallel with those in his real life. Similar to many of the other Russian children

Pulcheria tries her best to take care of Raskolnikov despite his neglectful attitude towards his family; she displays her selflessness when she writes Raskolnikov a letter exclaiming that she will try her best to “send [Raskolnikov] something more” to help his financial state, when she stays at his house waiting for him to return, and when she worries about Raskolnikov while on her deathbed (Dostoyevsky 25). Dostoyevsky creates Pulcheria as a conventionally idealized, pure, loving, and self-sacrificing parent according to J.R Maze. J.R Maze also states that Dostoyevsky was enormously attached to his mother because he lacked a caring father figure in his life. By creating Pulcheria the way he viewed his mother, Dostoyevsky was able to contrast the different parental figures he had during his

He began to reject the revolutionary ideas entering Russian, believing that Russian society cannot function with the new ideas. This new, rebellious attitude is best exemplified in Marmeladov. While in the bar with Raskolnikov, Marmeladov states that “compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself” just as it “is done now in England” (Dostoyevsky 11). Marmeladov, like Dostoyevsky, believes that Russian society is better off without the influence of England’s “political economy”, which is not capable of benefiting Russian society (Dostoyevsky 11). In addition to the regeneration, Dostoyevsky also strengthened his belief in Christianity while in prison; he became deeply attached to the Russian Orthodoxy, and as a result, conveyed his religious ideals within Sonia. Sonia is depicted as a Christ figure in the novel; just as Jesus sacrificed his purity in order to save man, Sonia sacrifices herself to prostitution in order to save her family from poverty. For example, when Raskolnikov finally takes Sonia’s hand out of love while they are sitting by the river bank, they begin to feel “a full resurrection into a new life” (Dostoyevsky 429). Janet Tucker states that this final pose replicates the iconic representation of Christ holding the hand of the Mother of God. Additionally, Tucker states that Sonia had the ability to heal through faith, tying her to the Mother