Evaluation Of The Protagonist In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime

An Evaluation of the Protagonist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Novel Crime and Punishment

INTRODUCTION

Crime and Punishment is one of the most influential masterpieces representing Russian literature by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky during the nineteenth century. The major focus of the novel is the ethical, moral, and mental situation faced by the protagonist Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov (also nicknamed as “Rodya” or “Rodka”) who committed murder against Alyona Ivanovna, an old pawnbroker to whom Raskolnikov owes a large amount of debt, and Lizaveta Ivanovna, Alyona Ivanovna’s sister. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the mental condition and the process of change of Raskolnikov psychologically, and though these analyzed signs

Owing to that in most cases, a person’s behavior, values, and actions are often determined, or strongly influenced, by his or her backgrounds, it is reasonably important and necessary to consider one’s background into the situation. In Raskolnikov, his backgrounds were, though not in very little amount, not provided by the author Fyodor Dostoyevsky in abundance. However, they do provide us some information.

Funded by his mother, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is at once studying in a college and has some extent of teaching experience, by the description from other characters we acknowledge that he yet express the looking and behavior of a well-educated person, but because of reasons including financial hardship to pay for the tuition fee and others, which the author does not specify in the novel, he to drops both the study and his career, the outcome of these choices is not any better than what he once faced, that in fact he immediately fell into a situation of destitute, living in a cramped garret at the top of an apartment building. He is borrowing money to pay the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, sometimes he even needs to give his valuable things, like a watch, a ring, etc. to her for a tiny amount of money. He does still have family members, including his mother and a sister named Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikov (sometimes named “Dunya” or

PREDICTIONS

Even till the point in which I have read through, the novel shows few signs of his mental condition shifting toward improving nor disproving even days after him committing the crime. However, his condition between the moral superego and the immoral id is yet extremely unstable, therefore, I would describe the possible end of the character into two dividing possibilities.

The first one is that the instability keep increasing that he eventually reach a stage of mental breakdown, which could cause the taking place of more murder, toward either whoever he believe might know about the situation or himself which means suicide.

The second one is that his own consciousness gradually takes over, after a period of putting away the issue and attempt not to think about the problem, he finally began to face it, with great possibility of that he reveals the truth to his close friends such as Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov or Dmitri Prokofych