Raskolnikov's Lack Of Punishment

Would you kill one person to save ten thousand? Would you kill one person to prevent poverty for everyone else? Would you kill a selfish, wealthy businesswoman who cheats others out of their money to create the betterment for the rest of your community? Dostoevsky forms the moral dilemma and mental torment for Raskolnikov throughout part one of the book by utilizing Raskolnikov’s lack of self-restraint against him. From the beginning of the book, Raskolnikov displays his lack of self-control due to his inner thoughts and dreams making his motive in killing the old woman flourish. From the beginning of the book, Raskolnikov used self-interactive conversations to deal with different situations. These conversations caused me to believe that Raskolnikov

He starts the book by describing Raskolnikov situation of not being afraid of the landlady because of his debt but rather his talking to the landlady was the main problem for Raskolnikov. “To listen to all sorts of nonsense about this commonplace rubbish, which he could not care less about, all this badgering for payment, these threats and complaints, and to have to dodge all the while, makes excuses, lie….” (Dostoevsky 3). He describes Raskolnikov inability and fear of talking to others provoking empathy and sadness for him. The reader gets the insight into Raskolnikov lack of support and inability to be social, but Dostoevsky further initiates the reader’s emotions by demonstrating the flawed mental state of Raskolnikov by identifying his “lack” of self-control in the murder of the old pawn lady. “He simply did not believe himself, and stubbornly, slavishly, sought objections on all sides, gropingly, as if someone were forcing him and drawing him to it” (Dostoevsky 71). During the murder, Raskolnikov constantly stopped thinking if he had the ability to continue committing the crime. Each time it happened, Dostoevsky described this sudden power taking over Raskolnikov to continue completing each task of the crime. Raskolnikov constantly stopping to think about his ability to continue this crime and this power taking on symbolizes Raskolnikov’s mind

It is obvious that Raskolnikov killed both Alena Ivanovna, and eventually Lizaveta, but whether he possessed the mens rea is a completely different issue. Dostoevsky emphasizes the depersonalization of Raskolnikov personality during the murder, the fact that a sudden power “began to take possession of him” (Dostoevsky 80) as if “someone had taken him by the hand and pulled him along irresistibly, blindly, with unnatural force, without objections” (Dostoevsky 90). This lack of mental self-control within Raskolnikov created the moral dilemma of him seeing the killing of Alena Ivanovna’s necessary for the successful well-being of the community. From the beginning of the book, Raskolnikov was immediately agitated and livid because of her cheating him out of money that he felt he deserved from the item he was pawning to her. With the conversation Raskolnikov overheard from the two university kids, the motive behind his killing was to create positive change for everyone. “Hundreds, maybe thousands of lives put right; dozens of families saved from destitutions, from decay, from ruin, from depravity, from the venereal hospitals – all of her money. Kill her and take her money, so that afterward with its help you can devote yourself to the service of all mankind and the common cause..” (Dostoevsky 65). The mental dilemma of committing a crime to save the positive