Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment, 1864.
A deeply philosophical and religious novelist dedicated to understanding human nature, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this massive tale of sin and its consequences in 1864. Dostoevsky sets the story of poor student who commits murder in the crowded, dissolute streets of St. Petersburg but folds into the novel the social, political and economic issues of 19th Century western culture. Even 150 years after its publication date, this is still a gripping read. The book is the starting point for an imaginative account of what happens when humanity tries to conceive of ethics apart from God. Or, you can combine it with philosophy of Charles Taylor for insight into the disenchantment that accompanies the secular age. Conversely, you can read it as a story of redemption and resurrection, a backstory for a criminal like the thief on the cross who asked Christ to remember him. I recommend the novel as a seminal volume for understanding the internal and external consequences of sin.
The law can condemn. Only God can redeem.
The characters in the novel who embody the novel’s title are Raskolnikov and Porfiry. The former is a poor college student who murders an old pawnbroker as a way of testing his genius. The latter is a police detective who, Columbo-like, intuits Raskolnikov’s guilt and works to find the evidence that will confirm that guilt. Raskolnikov has no religious impulses for 99.5% of the book. Even when he turns himself in to the police, he doesn’t think he’s committed a crime against anyone but himself. He proves unable and unwilling to repent for his crime because he feels he’s done nothing wrong. This is primarily because Porfiry and the police, for all the power they hold, can only condemn a man’s body. Raskolnikov ends the novel in Siberia, serving an eight-year sentence for his crime, his heart—until the novel’s literal final page—unchanged. Although he is a Christian, Porfiry cannot supply godly arguments that will pull Raskolnikov back from the depths of his solipsism and megalomania. He can condemn. As Dostoevesky’s representative of the law, Porfiry shows us the inability to the law to do anything more than punish. It is Sonia’s extension of God’s grace to Raskolnikov through her love for him that lets him see redemption, not a sentence of 8 years or 80 years in Siberia.
Though the women are often victims in this culture, women are the means by which the culture will be redeemed.
The two most spiritually vibrant characters in the novel are women: Dunia, Raskolnikov‘s sister, and Sonia, the woman who loves Raskolnikov. Both women have been victims of a society dominated by godless and selfish men. While Dunia has retained her virtue in the face of advances from sociopaths likes Svidrigailov, she has as the novel opens agreed to marry a man with no virtue who merely wishes to marry her because she is physically attractive and knows Dunia and her family will always be financially dependent upon him. Sonia is even more spiritually alive than Dunia, though her external circumstances have marked her as a sinner. She is a kind of contemporary Mary Magdalene. Because of her father‘s alcoholism and inability to keep a job, she has become a prostitute in order to support her family. Several times in the novel characters refuse to associate with her because of her reputation. This is despite the fact that everyone knows the horrible situation her father has put Sonia, her stepmother, and her step brothers and sisters in.
These characters redeem the men around them, and the plot provides ways to free them from their societal bondage. Instead of marrying the patronizing Luzhin, Dunia ends up marrying Razumikhin, the graduate student pal of Raskolnikov. Her willingness to resist Svidrigailov even when he was holding Raskolnikov’s sequence over her proves decisive in the final events of the novel. She retains her virtue. She cannot be seduced despite her love for her brother.
Sonia is part of one of the novels of the most moving Passages where she reads the story of Lazarus from John 11 to Raskolnikov. As a result of what he hears, Raskolnikov confesses his crime to Sonia, and his connection to her is secured. But that is just the beginning. Her real work of mercy begins in the novel’s epilogue where she journeys with Raskolnikov to Siberia despite the fact that they are not engaged and the fact that Raskolnikov does not love her, despite what Sonia has done for him. And yet because of her prayers and constant visitation (here one might think of Matthew 25 with Sonia carrying out the attributes of all good sheep who attend to those in need) Raskolnikov eventually comes to see his sin and repent. If at first Sonia was Mary Magdalene, she ends the novel as Mary, the sister to Lazarus, the man who Christ raises from the dead.
Humanity reaps the whirlwind when it rejects God’s law.
The murder that opens the novel is the product of Raskolnikov’s desire to show himself a man of genius. He has recently published an article in a St. Petersburg journal arguing that certain superior men are able to transgress normal human laws in pursuit of greatness. The one name on everyone’s lips is Napoleon, and Raskolnikov consistently brings up the fact that mighty men of valor often do things that for ordinary people would be unthinkable.
The other man who attempts to live outside the law is Svidrigailov, who because of his fortune is afforded the opportunity to operate without real fear of being caught for the evil things he does. He is evil is less pronouncedly overt than Raskolnikov. While Raskolnikov believes that taking another person’s life is the ultimate measure of whether someone is a genius or not, Svigrigailov does not need to murder sanyone to find other human beings worthless. By using them for sex or his own gain, he devalues human life and effectively murders them through his hate without ever having to stab someone with an axe like Raskolnikov.
Of course, neither of these men live particularly charmed existences. Svidrigailov commits suicide. Raskolnikov cannot remain in community while he lkeeps his deadly secret from the authorities. Consequently, before Raskolnikov actually gives himself up he has endured nothing but burdens as a result of his sin. Both Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov must sacrifice their own humanity in their misguided attempt to be something more than human outside of God’s laws.
It is easier to represent crime than redemption.
The novel has three spellbinding sequences: Raskolnikov’s murder of the pawnbroker and her sister, Sonia reading Raskolnikov the story of Lazarus, and Svidrigailov’s suicide. Two of them are Dostoevsky’s creation, and both scenes are horrific. As I ponder the novel’s meaning and the place the Lazarus sequence holds, I’ve come to believe that Dostoevsky loves the John passage, the only gospel to record the story, not simply for its spiritual import—thought that is significant. He loves it because the story works; Jesus waits, Lazarus dies, Jesus cries, Jesus comes, and Jesus brings Lazarus back from the dead. John has done more than gesture towards resurrection. He has recorded this mighty miracle in all its splendor. As a human author who cannot claim divine inspiration on the level of scripture, Dostoevsky must content himself with gestures towards, or even wholesale copying of, Biblical redemption. This novel is about why humanity needs redemption. The law is heavy and condemns the criminals who transgress it to eternal punishment. The novel’s final sentence hints at a sequel. It was a book Dostoevsky never wrote and perhaps could never have written.