In a stifling summer in St. Petersburg, Rodion Raskolnikov—an impoverished ex-law student—tests a ruthless idea: that “extraordinary” people may step beyond conventional morality for a supposed greater good. He murders a pawnbroker he deems parasitic, only to discover that the act does not free him but shatters him. The city’s heat, noise, and poverty seem to press on his mind as guilt, fever, and paranoia take hold.
As Raskolnikov spirals, he’s pulled into a tense cat-and-mouse with the canny investigator Porfiry Petrovich, comforted (and challenged) by his loyal friend Razumihin, and confronted by the steadfast compassion of Sofya (Sonia) Marmeladova, a young woman forced into prostitution to support her family. Through Sonia’s fierce mercy and his own mother and sister’s love, Raskolnikov faces the truth he has tried to rationalize away.
Dostoevsky turns the crime story inward, making the “punishment” largely spiritual: self-deception, isolation, and the ache of conscience. Yet the novel also insists on the possibility of moral renewal. In the end, love, confession, and suffering become the path not to abstract “greatness,” but to an honest, human life.
There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.
fromCrime and PunishmentbyIf he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment—as well as the prison.
fromCrime and PunishmentbyHe knelt down in the middle of the square and bowed to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture.
fromCrime and PunishmentbyPain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
fromCrime and PunishmentbyHe suddenly recalled Sonia’s words, ‘Go to the cross-roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth… and say aloud to the whole world, I am a murderer.’ … It came over him like a fit… He fell to the earth on the spot…. He knelt down… and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture.
fromCrime and PunishmentbyI divined then, Sonia, that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up… There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! … I— I wanted to have the daring… and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!
fromCrime and PunishmentbyEternity, you know, is a room as small as a bathhouse… and rather stuffy.
fromCrime and PunishmentbyThat is the beginning of a new story, the story of the gradual renewal of a man, of his gradual regeneration…
fromCrime and PunishmentbyThey were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; that is, the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.
fromCrime and Punishmentby