Crime and Punishment: The Psychological & The Religious

He shared a prevailing philosophy of the date which held that conventional values were to be disdained and discarded, that morality was simply a matter of not acquiring caught and not getting punished for one's transgressions. When he is summoned to the police authorization after the murder, his turmoil is psychological and emotional certainly, but not yet un washstandny or religious or ethical in any meaningful sense of those terms: "He was conscious of a terrible inner confusion. He was cowardly of losing command of himself. He tried to fix his attention, to think of something kind of outside himself, but he could not do it" (Dostoevsky 81).

However, when he begins to see that he will not be arrested, that he is not under suspicion, his psychological/emotional condition clears: " rejoicing satisfaction in his safety, his escape from imminent looming danger, filled for the time his whole being, to the exclusion of all forebodings, all doubts and questions, all faultfinding analysis, all riddles about the future. It was a moment of . . . purely physical rejoicing" (Dostoevsky 83). The animal, of course, is not a religious or spiritual or ethical creature, and Raskolnikov at that point sees himself as zero point more than a happy animal who has avoided the trap.

It is important to note, as Dostoevsky himself did in describing the novel and the crime, that Raskolnikov has beforehand est

Every last possibility of evasion must be squeezed out of Raskolnikov so that when he looks back he can see that he did indeed try everything in golf-club to avoid doing what he had to do. Despite the fact that he was pursued by the police, despite the fact that he was spurred on to do the right thing by Sonya, it had to finally be his proclaim decision if the act was to lead to his salvation and expiation for the crimes he had committed. The police might have never had enough essay to charge him, and Sonya might not have turned him in; he had to do it himself. He had to take on the unworthy by choice, freely, for the suffering to mean anything finally.

The point has been made that "Raskol," in Russian, literally means a split, or schism, meaning that the causa is at war with himself. Another interpretation might be that the schism is between the character and God. He has, after all, with his philosophy and his crime, set himself up as a kind of a god, meaning that he has rejected the notion of God. There is inhabit for only one God, and as long as Raskolnikov denies God, and sees himself as a god, then he will be in a state of acute suffering, for he will be separate from his creator, from his own essential source, from himself. This is the lie he begins to show as he stands by the river contemplating suicide.

One cannot overcome this fantastical isolation by oneself alone. That is the message of the novel, at least in part. Raskolnikov's isolation is so great that only some large and horrible act, perhaps, can break through the wall of his alienation. He can pull down himself, or he can kill another. Later, driven by his conscience to the brink of suicide, he chooses preferably to turn himself in. The message here is that if Raskolnikov truly believed in his estrange nihilistic philosophy of life, he would have killed himself: "Another purpose added to his suffering: why had he not killed himself? Why, when he stood on the bank of the river,
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