Notes on CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Motivations for the Murder

Motivations

Why did he do it? This is the central question of C and P, which is a murder mystery, but not what they call a “whodunnit.” This novel is a “whydunnit,” or a “I-done-it-but-I-don’t-know-why-I-dunnit.” Of course, in all of Dostoevsky’s fiction characters are ruled by subconscious impulses that they themselves are unaware of. Raskolnikov is mired in the cyclical processes of human reasoning, which Dostoevsky, the great anti-rational rationalist, treats with suspicion.

So, as one critic, Phillip Rahv, has put it, Raskolnikov is “the criminal in search of his motive” (Norton Critical Ed., p. 540-41). Why did he do it? The full complexity of the issue becomes manifest only about halfway through the book (Part 3, Ch. 5; p. 218-25 in the Norton Critical Ed.), when, for the first time we hear about the article he has published on crime. Much to the surprise of Raskolnikov, who was not even aware that his article had been printed, the police inspector, Porfiry Petrovich tells him that he has read it. The central point of the article is that human beings are divided into the ordinary and the extraordinary. The ordinary are like sheep, baaing their way passively through life, but the extraordinary have the right to overstep the boundaries of morality and law, to commit immoral acts in furtherance of their majestic goals. This overstepping provides the title of the novel, Преступление и наказание—the word for ‘crime’ in Russian, at its root meaning, suggests a “stepping across,” akin to the word “transgression” in English.

In his conversation with Sonya (Part 5, Ch. 5; p. 348-54), Raskolnikov’s confusion about his motive becomes apparent, when he goes through nearly every possible motivation for his crime, rejecting or revising each of them on the fly. Svidrigailov, who is conveniently eavesdropping on this conversation, later recapitulates the motivations to Dunya (Part 6, Ch. 5, p. 415). Here is roughly how the process goes in Raskolnikov’s feverish mind.

I did it because I was poor and I needed money to launch my career, but no, what I really wanted was to help my mother and sister and, after all, I had just received a letter from my mother describing how my sister Dunya was about to prostitute herself by marrying a despicable character, sacrificing herself to help me, but no, it wasn’t really that, what I wanted was to get money so that I could go about doing good, working toward the eradication of human evil and social inequality on earth, and I figured that by killing one contemptible old woman, who nobody on earth needed and who soon would die anyway, I could get that money and then atone for this one transgressive act by doing great good for the rest of my life, and, besides that, I was, after all, insane, or nearly insane, going nuts lying here in that cramped coffin of a room and actually physically ill as well, feverish, not even aware of what I was doing, but no, it wasn’t really that, what I wanted to be was a great man, a man who can transcend commonplace vulgar morality and become a superman, prove that he is above the ethics of the stupid baaing herd, a Napoleon, and I really could have been a Napoleon, I’ve got the stuff for it, but no, really I’m just a common louse like everyone else, but I had to know, you see, it was an experiment, I had to find out if I was a man or a louse, I had to know whether I really could overstep the bounds, whether I could do something that ordinary men are not capable of doing, and I didn’t really care about my mother and sister or the money, it was just the principle of the thing, and you know what’s the most despicable thing of all? By collapsing emotionally and physically the way I have, all I’ve really proved is that I’m a louse after all, Napoleon would have done it without even thinking about the sleaze of it, the immorality, he wouldn’t have worried for a moment about the ethics of the thing, he was beyond mere morality, a superman, but me, I’m a louse, and yet maybe I judge myself too soon and too harshly, maybe I still have great things in me, maybe I’m not a louse after all, yes I am, no, you’re not, etc., etc., etc., the round and round goes on.

In addition to the reasons Raskolnikov himself lays out, only to keep rejecting, there are several other possibilities: (1) His mental illness as the primary motivation. Certainly he would not have committed murder had he been in a balanced state of mind; (2) The idea that he is consciously seeking suffering. The “punishment” of the title operates even before he commits the crime, and he is punished in his own agonizing mind long before he is convicted and sent to Siberia. In this novel, as in so much fiction that Dostoevsky wrote, much is made of suffering as a means of purification of soul. Marmeladov says that he drinks not to relieve himself of guilt, but in order to redouble his sufferings. The peasant Mikolka, though not guilty, confesses to the crime in order to “accept his suffering” and suffer his way through to some redemption. As Porfiry Petrovich remarks, Mikolka is a “religious schismatic,” which in Russian is “iz raskol’nikov.” The very similarity of the word ‘schismatic’ with Raskolnikov’s surname suggests that this character is an alter ego of Raskolnikov. In fact, in summing up the possible reasons why Mikolka confessed (Part 6, Ch. 2, p. 383), Porfiry recapitulates Raskolnikov’s reasons for committing the crime. He ends up, once again, with suffering:

“Do you, Rodion Romanovich, know what some of these people mean by ‘suffering’? It is not suffering for somebody’s sake, but simply ‘suffering is necessary’—the acceptance of suffering . . . . . .  Mikolka desires to ‘accept suffering’ or something of the sort . . . . . What, can’t you admit that such fantastic creatures are to be found among people of this kind?”

(3) The issue of suppressed sensuality. Some psychological critics of Dostoevsky have suggested that Raskolnikov is, above all, a passionate character who has suppressed his own libido. In the text of the novel he is certainly a prude, and he reacts with revulsion to Svidrigailov’s openly expressed sensuality, his love for anatomy above all else. These same critics assert that one way Raskolnikov has of working out his repressed sexuality is murder. They comment on the sexual symbolism of the murder of two women, calling this a kind of sublimated rape.

Maurice Beebe mentions the succession of events just prior to the murder: the episode in which Raskolnikov encounters a drunken girl on the street, and saves her from a lecherous dandy pursuing her, followed by the mare dream (murder of a female horse), followed by his own acts of murder:

“The progression from seduced girl to beaten horse to murdered pawnbroker [and her sister] tells us much about the strain of aggressive sexuality that lies within Raskolnikov, a taint which he himself denies on the conscious level” (Beebe in Norton Critical Ed., p. 591).

In the epilogue of the novel Raskolnikov still struggles with motivations for his act. He is still suffering his way through to some kind of redemption, but we do not know if he will ever get there, because Sonya’s God of meekness and love still struggles in his soul with the devil of his pride. At any rate, by this late point in the novel it seems clear that the “superman motive,” his fierce pride and desire to prove himself better than other mere men, has taken precedence over the many other motivations for his crime.

Notes to "Crime and Punishment" DOSTOEVSKY THE NEUROSCIENTIST (Dunya and Svidrigailov)

D. Shmarinov, Illustrations to C and P: Dunya

Dostoevsky the Neuroscientist

(Dunya and Svidrigailov)

Dostoevsky’s métier as a writer of fiction is his deep understanding of human psychology. In fact, his insights are so acute that already in the nineteenth century he anticipated the findings of neuroscience in the twenty-first century. In the past twenty years brain scientists have learned, among many other discoveries, that we humans are often not in control of our actions, even unaware, on a conscious level, of why we do certain things. In control, rather, are neurons deep in our brain, working sometimes at cross purposes even with our own ethical principles.

Examples of such a situation are rife throughout Dostoevsky’s works of fiction. A good example in C and P is Dunya Raskolnikov’s relationship with the perverse Svidrigailov. We learn that while she worked as a governess on his estate he constantly pursued her, in an attempt to seduce her. During that past time in the narrative she resisted him, as she does in present time narrative. Of the many melodramatic scenes in subplots of the novel, the encounter of Dunya and Svidrigailov in his lodgings, their last meeting, stands out (Part 6, Ch. 5).

Svidrigailov has lured her to a one-on-one meeting with his promise to tell her about her brother’s secret—his having committed murder—which Svidrigailov has discovered by eavesdropping on a conversation between Raskolnikov and Sonya. The confrontation scene is quite well motivated until Dunya draws a revolver; at which point we are into pulp fiction, and the scene ends up like something out of a Saturday afternoon serial at the local cinema. 

Svidrigailov has offered to save Raskolnikov, to help him escape to America. And given Dunya’s character, we expect more logically that she would yield to Svidrigailov in order to save her brother. But she shoots at him, grazing his scalp.

This confrontation scene does a good deal to advance the action of the main plot. For example, Svidrigailov recapitulates for Dunya the multiple motivations for Raskolnikov’s crime. Much is also said about how Dunya related to Svidrigailov back when she worked on his estate. While resisting his advances, she was constantly trying to reform him, to cure him of his “broadmindedness,” which he brings up again at this meeting.

“Ah, Avdotya Romanovna [Dunya], everything is mixed up now, though that is not to say that it was ever particularly straightforward. The minds of the Russian people in general are broad, Avdotya Romanovna, like their country, and extraordinarily inclined to the fantastic and chaotic (Русские люди вообще широкие люди, Авдотья Романовна, широкие, как их земля, и чрезвычайно склонны к фантастическому, к беспорядочному); but it is disastrous to have a broad mind without special genius. Do you remember how often we two discussed this theme . . . . sitting on the terrace in the garden, in the evening after supper? You were always reproaching me with that breadth of mind.”

Given what we learn in this confrontation scene, plus what information we have about Dunya and Svidrigailov previously, it is clear now that Dunya is both attracted to him and repulsed simultaneously. There is good reason for asserting that, against her own will, she may be even a bit in love with him. She is morally horrified by that deep neuron in her brain that wants Svidrigailov, she refuses to admit the attraction and openly expresses the revulsion. 

Svidrigailov, who like the police inspector Porfiry Petrovich, is one of the keen psychologists of the novel, earlier has explained to Raskolnikov how he set up Dunya for her fall.

“In spite of Avdotya Romanovna’s real aversion for me, and my persistently gloomy and forbidding aspect, she grew sorry for me at last, sorry for a lost soul. And when a girl’s heart begins to feel pity for a man, then of course she is in the greatest danger. She begins to want to ‘save’ him, and make him see reason, and raise him up and put before him nobler aims . . . . . I realized at once that the bird had flown into the net of its own accord, and I began to make preparations in my turn” (Part 6, Ch. 4).

So exactly how does Dunya feel about Svidrigailov? It depends on which neuron deep in her brain that you ask. Nothing is ever black or white in the complicated psychology of Dostoevsky’s characters. Dostoevsky often emphasizes that she resembles her brother, and is fully as complex a person as is he. Dunya is a secondary character, so there is not room in C and P to develop her to the full. At the end of the book Dostoevsky has conveniently married her off to the generous and good-hearted Razumikhin, but, given her tempestuous and complex nature, we wonder how successful that marriage will be.

Notes on CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Gogol Conjures up Raskolnikov Before He Exists

                                             Raskolnikov Conjured Up in "Dead Souls"

Sometimes it’s amazing how much influence Nikolai Gogol had on Dostoevsky. There’s a passage in Gogol’s Dead Souls, describing Chichikov’s return to the provincial town where he is staying, feeling in high spirits after his recent purchase of dead souls from the landowner Plewshkin.

So typical of Gogol’s style in his masterpiece, the action suddenly veers off out of Chichikov’s carriage, and we find ourselves in St. Petersburg, making the acquaintance of a young romantic dreamer who sticks his nose into the novel only this one time, and then vanishes like the wind.

“The thunderous rattling of the carriage and its leaps into the air made the occupant [Chichikov] notice that it had reached a paved way. The street lamps were not yet lit; only here and there had lights begun appearing in windows of the houses, while in the lanes and the blind alleys scenes and conversations were taking place inseparable from this time of day in all towns where there are many soldiers, cabbies, workmen, and beings of a peculiar species who look like ladies, wearing red shawls and shoes without stockings and who dart like bats over the street crossings at nightfall.

“Chichikov did not notice them, nor did he notice even the exceedingly slim petty officials with slender canes who, probably after taking a stroll beyond the town, were now returning to their homes. At rare intervals there would come floating to Chichikov’s ears such exclamations, apparently feminine, as ‘You lie, you drunkard, I never let him take no such liberties as that with me!’ or: ‘Don’t you be fighting, you ignoramus, but come along to the station house and I’ll show you what’s what!’ In brief, [and here we are suddenly in the northern capital, URB] such words as will suddenly scald, like so much boiling water, some youth of twenty as, lost in reveries, he is on his way home from the theater, his head filled with visions of a Spanish street, night, a wondrous feminine image with a guitar and ringlets.

“What doesn’t he have in that head of his and what dreams don’t come to him? He is soaring in the clouds and he may have just dropped in on Schiller for a chat, when suddenly, like thunder, the fatal words peal out over his head, and he perceives that he has come back to earth once more, and not only to earth, but actually to the Haymarket, and right by a pothouse, at that; and once more life has taken to strutting its stuff before him in its workaday fashion” [Dead Souls, Part I, near end of Ch. 6; I use the Guerney translation here].

Note the image of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), the German poet whom Russians of the nineteenth century considered the embodiment of romantic idealism. Schiller is mentioned several times in Crime and Punishment; at one point Svidrigailov calls Raskolnikov “a Schiller,” and in the hero’s mixed up personality there is certainly something of the romantic idealist.

Most fascinating about the Gogolian passage, however, is the way it seems to conjure up—some twenty years before Dostoevsky invented him—the dreamer Raskolnikov, wandering the Haymarket in a daze, amidst all the drunken squalor, trying to concentrate on the dreams and murderous schemes in his deranged head.

Raskolnikov Ascending