Symbolism In Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment

The life and literary career of the author makes for as much fascinating reading as that of any of his great novels. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a novel that embodied both the writer’s personal dilemma and the dilemma facing his country in its attempts to liberalize or modernize itself and to liberate the common people from the tyranny of the Tsars and their autocratic supporters. The theme of the extraordinary versus the ordinary man relies on this sort of calculated logic. Raskolnikov uses to commit the murders, symbolizes the two halves of Raskolnikov’s nature these opposing sides are in conflict throughout the novel and are reflected in his victims.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The novel is set in Haymarket square, a slum section of St. Petersburg notorious for its intolerable living conditions. As he knew the city so well, and had lived of the kinds of tenement rooms he describes, Dostoevsky is very specific about the sights and smells his characters experience. The city of St. Petersburg as represented in Dostoevsky’s novel is dirty and crowed. Drunks are sprawled on the street in board daylight, consumptive women beat their children and children and beg for money, everyone is crowed into tiny, noisy apartments. The clutter and chaos of St. Petersburg is a twofold symbol. It represents the state of society, with all of its inequalities, prejudices, and deficits. But it also represents the state of society, with all of its inequalities, prejudices, and deficits. But it also represents Raskolnikov’s delirious, against state as he spirals through the novel toward the point of his confession and redemption . He can escape neither the city nor his warped mind from the very beginning, the narrator describes the heat and “the odor” coming off the city, the crowds, and the disorder , and says they “all contributed to irritate the young man’s already excited nerves.” Indeed, it is only when Raskolnikow is forcefully removed from the city to a prison in

By mentioning particular street names and tracing the routes of the characters, he was emphasizing the novel’s realism. Raskolnikov knows, for instance, that it is exactly 730 steps from his house to the pawnbroker’s. Even today, you can walk the route he followed and count the steps. When the physical details are concrete, you tend to accept the rest of the information in the novel too; even the most bizarre things seem