Dostoevsky Character Analysis

When Dostoevsky was a young man in the 1840s, many new and radical ideas were entering Russia from West European countries, especially France and Germany. Like Raskolnikov in crime and punishment, Dostoevsky soon came under the influence of such revolutionary ideals and he hoped that Russia could also became a liberal country by adopting freer systems of thought and life, as then prevailed in western Europe. However, destoevsky’s soul-shattering experience with death (when he and his revolutionary friends were arrested and almost execute by the tsar) and his later experience of squalid prison life forced him to do some serious thinking upon his return from Siberia in 1858. He now began to feel that rash acceptance of every new idea from the

Petersburg. If he seems somewhat introverted at times, there is good reason to attribute this to the constraints of his financial circumstances and his rather stifling attic-room. Sometimes’ he can be warm, friendly and even compassionate to others more miserable and unfortunate than himself. For instance, he is extremely generous towards Marmeladov’s family after the man dies in a street accident. The testimony of certain witnesses at his trial substantiates the general nobility of Raskolnikov’s character. These witnesses cite examples of his many charitable acts before and after the

He sometimes acts in one manner and then suddenly in a manner completely contradictory.” Evidence for this can be seen throughout the novel. In this way, Dostoevsky makes clear, right from the beginning of his story, that Raskolnikov is not an extraortinary man, at least not in the sense in which Raskolnikov himself uses that term in his the theory of human nature. In the opening pages of the novel, we see raskolinikov at war with himself as he debates his intention to murder an old pawnbroker. “I want to attempt a thing like that,” he says to himself. Then, after visiting the old woman’s flat, ostensibly to pawn a watch, but in reality as a sort of “dress rehearsal” for the murder, he again Question himself: “how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all….. loathsome !”
This inner battle suggests that raskolnikov has mistaken himself for an extraordinary man, a man bound neither by the rules of socity, nor the higher moral law. But in fact, he’s actually just a conscientious ordinary man. The portrait Dosteoevsky paints of him is really quite complex. He often appears to be a sensitive, though confused, young intellectual, who’s been led to entertain his wild ideas more as a results of dire poverty and self-imposed isolation from his fellow man, rather than from sheer malice or selfish