Mistakes by Rodion Raskolnikov (School essays). Composition on the topic: Experience and mistakes in the novel Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky Raskolnikov poorly possessed a mistake in a sentence

>Compositions based on the work Crime and Punishment

Experience and mistakes

A person makes many mistakes in his life without noticing it. However, by realizing them and rethinking them, we can turn them into valuable experiences. In his novel Crime and Punishment, F. M. Dostoevsky showed the rebirth of the protagonist, who went through pangs of conscience and suffering. Human nature is not perfect, but only a rethinking of their actions allows people to change and develop for the better. The protagonist of the novel Raskolnikov Rodion Romanovich, following a gloomy theory that he himself put forward, kills an old pawnbroker.

Much later, he realizes that he made the biggest mistake of his life. Trying to prove the idea of ​​the justice of "blood in conscience", he violates his inner balance, spiritual world and harmony, which is no longer easy to restore. Shortly before the crime, his article "On Crime" was published in the newspaper, in which he tried to prove that there are "supermen" who can change the course of history. Further events and consequences prove the fallacy of his theory. The author himself spent some time in hard labor and knew for sure that most crimes are committed due to social and domestic motives.

In this sense, Dostoevsky seemed to support and try in every possible way to justify his hero. But there is another side of the truth. He rejects Raskolnikov's idea that "the end justifies the means". He reveals that the student committed the crime due to lack of money and deep poverty. Over time, he begins to be tormented by pangs of conscience and he wants to confess everything to the authorities. Sonya Marmeladova, an eighteen-year-old girl who had to go to the panel in order to survive at an early age, assures the hero that the best repentance is to explain her crime to people in order to be understood.

From the point of view of Christianity, Raskolnikov committed a grave sin that can only be atoned for by sincere repentance. In addition, the author shows that for a "new life", the hero must certainly change from the inside, understand and accept humanity as it is, become humble. Let not immediately, but the young man comes to this understanding. With the help of a patient and strong spirit Sonya, he begins to understand that the pride of the mind leads only to discord and death, and the humility of the heart leads to unity in love and to the fullness of life. After that, a desire to live and an endless love for Sonya, and at the same time for the people around him, awakens in him.

Arguments to the final essay 2017 on the work "Crime and Punishment"

Final essay 2017: arguments on the work "Crime and Punishment" for all directions

Honor and dishonor.

Heroes:

Literary example: Raskolnikov decides to commit a crime for the sake of his loved ones, driven by a thirst for revenge for all the destitute and poor people of that time. He is guided by a great idea - to help all the humiliated, destitute and desecrated by modern society. However, this desire is not realized quite noble. The solution to the problem of immorality and lawlessness was not found. Raskolnikov became a part of this world with its violations and dirt. HONOR: Sonya saved Raskolnikov from a mental breakdown. This is the most important thing for an author. You can get lost and confused. But getting on the right path is a matter of honor.

Victory and defeat.

Heroes: Rodion Raskolnikov, Sonya Marmeladova

Literary example: In the novel, Dostoevsky leaves victory not for the strong and proud Raskolnikov, but for Sonya, seeing in her the highest truth: suffering cleanses. Sonya professes moral ideals, which, from the point of view of the writer, are closest to the broad masses of the people: the ideals of humility, forgiveness, and humility. “Crime and Punishment” contains a profound truth about the unbearability of life in a capitalist society, where the Luzhins and Svidrigailovs win with their hypocrisy, meanness, selfishness, as well as the truth that causes not a feeling of hopelessness, but implacable hatred for the world of hypocrisy.

Mistakes and experience.

Heroes: Rodion Raskolnikov

Literary example: Raskolnikov's theory is anti-human in its essence. The hero reflects not so much on the possibility of murder as such, but on the relativity of moral laws; but does not take into account the fact that the "ordinary" is not capable of becoming a "superman". Thus, Rodion Raskolnikov becomes a victim of his own theory. The idea of ​​permissiveness leads to the destruction of the human personality or to the generation of monsters. The fallacy of the theory is exposed, which is the essence of the conflict in Dostoevsky's novel.

Mind and feelings.

Heroes: Rodion Raskolnikov

Literary example: Either an act is performed by a person guided by a feeling, or an act is performed under the influence of the character's mind. The acts committed by Raskolnikov are usually generous and noble, while under the influence of reason the hero commits a crime (Raskolnikov was influenced by a rational idea and wanted to test it in practice). Raskolnikov instinctively left the money on the Marmeladovs' windowsill, but later regretted it. The opposition of feelings and rational spheres is very important for the author, who understood personality as a combination of good and evil.

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is the main character of F. M. Dostoevsky's socio-psychological novel "Crime and Punishment". He is a former student, an intelligent and talented man, who lives in a closet that looks like a coffin in the poorest part of St. Petersburg. Stuffiness, crush, stench, drunkenness, "an abundance of well-known establishments" - this is the environment in which the hero had to live, this is where his cruel, inhumane idea was born.

What is the essence of this theory? Raskolnikov conditionally divided all people into "extraordinary", who have the right to shed blood according to their conscience, and "trembling creatures", intended to reproduce their own kind, obliged to live in humility and obey the law. He ranked Napoleon, Magomed, Lycurgus and, of course, himself among the "rights" ...

Next to the hero of the novel, according to D. I. Pisarev, "sentenced to a crime", there is always an author who refutes Raskolnikov's inhuman idea, which, according to F. M. Dostoevsky, is not only inhuman, but also in philosophical and practical terms. plan is clearly imperfect.

Here Raskolnikov conditionally divided all people into two categories, classifying himself as the highest, but he, a loving son and brother, did not determine to which category he would classify his mother and sister dear to his heart. Of course, relatives cannot stand next to Magomed, but Rodion, probably, would never have called the proud, intelligent beauty Dunya a "trembling creature" and even more so for the sake of any idea he would not have killed.

Having given himself the right to shed "blood for conscience", Raskolnikov kills a mean, rich old woman-interest-bearer in order to test his theory, continue his education with the stolen money and save his family from a humiliating situation. However, at the same time, he does not take into account whether people close to him want to use the loot. Knowing the pride and piety of Dunya and Pulcheria Alexandrovna, we can say that women would not take a penny from this money. Yes, and Raskolnikov himself is even afraid to touch this bloody money, at first he wants to throw it away (“quick, hurry, and throw everything away”).

So what did the test for belonging to the highest category bring to the hero? "The principle" he "killed, but he did not cross over," and in return received only mental anguish. Torment only to him? No. And Dunya, and mother, and Razumikhin, and Sonya - all suffer from the crime committed by Raskolnikov. And all this causes new torment in the soul of the hero.

But another test awaits him ahead - the realization that he, the killer, has stood on a par with such scoundrels as Luzhin and Svidrigailov, who do not understand the philosophical reflections of Rodion. So is it worth fighting for a place among the "extraordinary" if there are puddles around ? I think no. It is to this thought that the author leads us: no, and there will not be such an idea for the sake of which one can kill; a man who sheds blood is a murderer, and there is no excuse for him.

Final essay on the topic "Experience and mistakes".

Works used in the argumentation: L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace", F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"

Introduction: Life develops in such a way that everything is intertwined in it: love and hate, ups and downs, experience and mistakes ... One is impossible without the other and it seems that every person once stumbled, understood the wrongness of his actions and learned important lessons for himself .

Since ancient times, the expression has been known: a smart person learns from the mistakes of others, and a fool learns from his own. Most likely, this is true, because it was not in vain that many generations of ancestors sought to pass on their conclusions to their descendants, tried to teach children how to live correctly with useful advice and wrote down the wisdom of bygone centuries in books.

The huge literary heritage left by great writers and poets is an invaluable treasure of life experience that can warn us against many mistakes. Let us consider just a few examples of how in works of fiction the authors, through the actions of their characters, warn the reader about the danger of committing wrong actions.

Arguments: In the epic novel by L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" Natasha Rostova, already being the bride of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, succumbs to temptation and is carried away by Andrei Kuragin. The girl is still young, naive and pure in her thoughts, her heart is ready to love, to succumb to impulses, but the lack of life experience inclines her to a fatal mistake - to run away with an immoral person, for whom all life consists of passions. An experienced seducer, who, moreover, is formally married, did not think about marriage, that he could simply disgrace the girl, Natasha's feelings were not important to him. And she was sincere in her illusory love. Only miraculously, the escape did not take place: Marya Dmitrievna prevented the girl from leaving the family. Later, realizing her mistake, Natasha repents, cries, but the past cannot be returned back. Prince Andrei will not be able to forgive his ex-bride for such a betrayal. This story teaches us a lot: first of all, it follows from it that one cannot be naive, one must be more attentive to people, not build illusions and try to be able to distinguish lies from truth.

Another example of the fact that the experience of other people is important for avoiding one's own mistakes can be the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment". The title itself hints at the moral of the whole work: there will be retribution for misconduct. And so it happens: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a poor student, comes up with a theory according to which people can be divided into "trembling creatures" and "having the right." People of the second category, in his opinion, in order to achieve great things, should not be afraid to step over corpses. For the sake of testing his own theory and instant enrichment, Raskolnikov commits a cruel crime - he kills an old pawnbroker and her pregnant sister with an ax. However, the perfect does not bring the desired: as a result of long reflections, which circumstances prompt him to, the protagonist of the novel repents and accepts a well-deserved punishment, serving it in hard labor. This story is instructive in that it warns readers against fatal mistakes that could have been avoided.

Conclusion: Thus, it is safe to say that experience and mistakes in people's lives are inextricably linked. And in order to prevent fatal false steps, it is worth relying on the wisdom of the past, including the instructive plots of literary works.

“Fantastic” and the very construction of the plot of “Crime and Punishment”. If in an ordinary detective story the whole interest of the story lies in unraveling the mystery of the crime, then Crime and Punishment is a kind of “anti-detective story”, where the criminal is known to readers from the very beginning. One by one, almost all the heroes of the novel, including the investigator Porfiry Petrovich, also penetrate into his secret. However, at the same time, all the initiates, seeing the unbearability of Raskolnikov’s moral torments, are sympathetically disposed towards him and wait for him to repent and turn himself in. Thus, the reader's attention is transferred from the external outline of the plot to the state of mind of the criminal and to the ideas that led him to the crime.

The artistic time of the novel also defies the usual measurement. On the one hand, it is unusually full of events, and on the other hand, sometimes it ceases to be felt at all, “extinguishes in the mind” of the characters. It is hard to believe that all the complex action of the novel fits within the framework of two weeks. The rhythm of time either slows down or speeds up wildly. In the course of one day, as many events in the hero's mental life often happen as a real person would have enough for a lifetime. (For example, on the second day after recovering from a fever, Raskolnikov talks in the morning with his sister and mother who came to him, persuading them to break with Luzhin. He immediately introduces them to Sonya, who suddenly came to him. Then he goes along with Razumikhin to get acquainted with Porfiry, who calls him to a detailed account of his theory and invites him to tomorrow for a decisive explanation, which means life or death for the hero.On returning home, he meets with a tradesman, "a man from under the earth," who throws him in the face: "Killer!" ", and experiences the full horror of exposure. After that, the hero has a nightmare about his murder and, waking up, sees Svidrigailov, with whom he unexpectedly enters into a long philosophical conversation. Then he, along with Razumikhin, who has come, goes to his relatives and provokes their final break with Luzhin. But at the same time, he himself can no longer endure their closeness and suddenly leaves them, telling Razumikhin that he was leaving forever. for the first time to Sonya, makes her tell about herself, then asks her to read about the resurrection of Lazarus and prepares her to open up to her about the crime she has committed. All these events fit within one day).

At the same time, the novel's action is often interrupted by long internal monologues and detailed descriptions of the characters' state of mind. At another moment, a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas sweeps through the inflamed brain of the hero, and the next moment he falls into unconsciousness, as happens to him after committing a murder. In a fever, “sometimes it seemed to him that he had been lying for a month, at another time - that the same day was going on” (6; 92). Even when the delirium ends and Raskolnikov apparently recovers, he does not fully recover and throughout all subsequent chapters continues to be in a feverish, semi-delirious state. Such failures into “timelessness”, along with the intensification of the novel time, predetermine its “catastrophic” nature and otherness to the real.

The whole reality of the novel is also fantastic, which Dostoevsky intentionally brings closer to a dream. Reality often seems to the heroes as the realization of a painful dream, and the dream "revives" ideas and feelings that are "under-embodied" in reality. As in a dream Raskolnikov commits a crime. Then, at the end of the third part, already in an ominous nightmare, he dreams that he is condemned to commit his murder forever. The sudden arrival of Svidrigailov seems to him a continuation of this dream, especially since he pronounces his most cherished and hidden thoughts in a conversation. All this makes Raskolnikov even doubt the reality of his interlocutor.

Every detail in a novel, every meeting or turn of events, with full realistic plausibility, often casts mystical shadows or takes on the significance of a fatal immutability. Unexpected accidents (like the phrase that Raskolnikov accidentally overheard on the square that Lizaveta would not be at home the next day) involve him in the crime, "as if he had hit a piece of clothing in the wheel of a car and began to be drawn into it." (6; 58). Significant, symbolic and all the details of the murder, which does not in the least contradict the realistic salience with which they are forever imprinted in the mind of the reader. What is worth only one plot with an ax, for which Raskolnikov prepared a special loop under his coat, under his left arm, so that it would be more convenient to grab it right away - as a result of which the blade had to fit under the coat right to his heart. However, when the hero, just before the murder, thinks about the master's ax, it does not appear in place, which threatens to destroy all his carefully thought-out plan. “Suddenly he started. From the janitor's closet, which was two steps away from him, from under the bench to the right, something flashed into his eyes ... He rushed headlong to the ax (it was an ax) and pulled it out from under the bench ... so demon,” he thought, smiling strangely. This incident encouraged him tremendously.” (6; 59-60). (Later, Raskolnikov would claim to Sonia that “the devil killed the old woman,” and not he). Raskolnikov inflicts a mortal blow on the old woman with the butt of an ax so that the blade is turned towards him - this is, as it were, a sign that Raskolnikov simultaneously inflicts an irreparable blow to himself and will soon become a victim of his own murder . Raskolnikov kills Lizaveta with a point, as if deflecting a blow from himself, and indeed, from Lizaveta, the thread that saves Raskolnikov goes further to Sonya Marmeladova, whose cross was on the innocently killed. Then it is precisely according to the Gospel of Lizaveta that Sonya Raskolnikov will read about the resurrection of Lazarus. Another example of a symbolic detail: When passers-by serve Raskolnikov like a beggar, a two-kopeck piece, moved to pity by his ragged appearance and the rough blow of the whip he received, he contemptuously throws a coin into the water: “It seemed to him that he seemed to have cut himself off with scissors from everyone and everything at this moment” (6; 90).. Raskolnikov kills Lizaveta with a point, as if deflecting a blow from himself, and indeed, from Lizaveta, the thread that saves Raskolnikov goes further to Sonya Marmeladova, whose cross was on the innocently killed. Then it is precisely according to the Gospel of Lizaveta that Sonya Raskolnikov will read about the resurrection of Lazarus. Another example of a symbolic detail: When passers-by serve Raskolnikov like a beggar, a two-kopeck piece, moved to pity by his ragged appearance and the rough blow of the whip he received, he contemptuously throws a coin into the water: “It seemed to him that he seemed to have cut himself off with scissors from everyone and everything at this moment” (6; 90).

Dostoevsky's characters are also fantastic - in the same sense in which Svidrigailov finds the face of the Madonna "fantastic" in Crime and Punishment: (6; 369). Such a paradoxical combination of the incompatible (heavenly beauty and painful anguish) is typical of Dostoevsky's thinking. All the characters of "Crime and Punishment" are built on such an oxymoron combination of opposites: a noble murderer, a chaste harlot, a cheater-aristocrat, a drunkard-official preaching the Gospel. All of them impress with the “fantastic nature of their position” (6; 358). Intricately intertwined in such natures are high ideals with vicious passions, strength and impotence, generosity and selfishness, self-abasement and pride. “A man is broad, too broad, I would narrow it down... What the mind considers a disgrace, the heart is all beauty,” these words from The Brothers Karamazov perfectly characterize the new understanding of the human soul brought by Dostoevsky to world culture.

Dostoevsky's heroes are distinguished by an unusually eccentric and painful character and are in constant nervous excitement. At the same time, due to the amazing psychological similarity, they quickly guess each other's thoughts, feelings and even ideas. This is what creates the phenomenon in Dostoevsky's novels. doubles, infinite in its varieties and variations. The instability and complexity of Dostoevsky's characters is also aggravated by the fact that the characters are always depicted outside a certain social status - as "falling out" of their estate (like Raskolnikov, Marmeladov, Katerina Ivanovna, and even the rich Svidrigailov, who spends time in the most dubious street companies of St. Petersburg). Dostoevsky's heroes do not have everyday employment either: none of them work, earning their own living (Except for Sonya Marmeladova, however, one can hardly call natural the ugly way in which she gets money, constantly thinking about suicide. We note, however, that in fact “on the panel” Sonya is not shown anywhere in the novel). On the contrary, throughout the novel they are in a kind of “balanced” state, having long and passionate conversations with each other, in which they sort things out or argue about “last” worldview issues: about the existence of God, about permissiveness and the limits of human freedom, about opportunities for radical transformation of the world. The central characters in Dostoevsky's novels are always ideological heroes, captured by some philosophical problem or idea, in the solution or implementation of which their whole life is concentrated. All of them are best characterized by the phrase said about Ivan Karamazov: “... his soul is stormy. His mind is in captivity. It has a great and unresolved thought. He is one of those who do not need millions, but need to solve a thought” (14; 76). The entire novel strives to resolve this “great” thought, and in achieving this goal, the main character is helped by all the others. Therefore, all the mature novels of Dostoevsky - philosophical according to its main conflict.

MM. Bakhtin in his famous work “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics” understands each character as the embodiment of a special, independent idea, and he sees all the specifics of the philosophical construction of the novel in polyphony- "polyphony". The whole novel is built, in his opinion, as an endless, fundamentally unfinished dialogue of equal voices, each equally convincingly arguing their position. The author's voice is only one of them, and the reader will remain free to disagree with him.

But at the same time, Dostoevsky's novels can be called psychological. The question of Dostoevsky's psychologism is extraordinarily complicated, especially since the writer himself did not want to apply this concept to himself: "They call me a psychologist: it's not true, I'm only a realist in the highest sense, that is, I depict all the depths of the human soul" (27; 65). This phrase, so often quoted and so contradictory at first glance, needs a special interpretation. Why does the study of “all depths” in the human soul not belong to the phenomena of psychologism? The fact is that with this phrase Dostoevsky tried to oppose himself to contemporary realist writers and indicate that he depicts a layer of human consciousness fundamentally different from them. To determine which one, Christian anthropology most accurately allows, according to which the human being is trinity and consists of body, soul and spirit. To bodily(“somatic” in theological terminology) level includes instincts that make humans related to the animal world: self-preservation, procreation, etc. On the spiritual(“mental”) level, the actual human “I” is located in all its manifestations of life: the world of feelings, emotions and passions, endless in its diversity: all kinds of love experiences, aesthetic beginning (perception of beauty), mindset with all its individual differences, pride , anger, etc. On the last one, spiritual(“pneumatic”) level is the intellect, the concept of good and evil (categories of morality) and the freedom of choice between them - what makes a person “the image and likeness of God” and what unites him with the world of spirits. This is where existential problems arise for a person - “here the devil fights God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people” (14; 100). This third layer is the most hidden, because in everyday life a person lives primarily in the spiritual world, because the vanity and variegation of vivid momentary impressions obscure the last questions of life from him. On a spiritual level, a person concentrates only in extreme situations: in the face of death or in the moments of the final determination for himself of the purpose and meaning of his existence. It is this level of consciousness (“all the depths of the human soul”) that makes Dostoevsky the subject of close and fearless analysis, considering other levels only in their relation to the latter. In this regard, he really is “not a psychologist”, but a “realist in the highest sense” (or, in the language of theology, “pneumatic”).

From this follows the fundamental difference in the image of the world and man in Dostoevsky and in Tolstoy and Turgenev, who focus on the spiritual, “mental” side of life in all its richness and fullness. We will find in their works an inexhaustible ocean of feelings, a variety of complex characters and a colorful description of life in all its manifestations. But with all the uniqueness of individual feelings, the “eternal questions” are the same for everyone. On the spiritual level, the fundamental difference in characters disappears, becomes unimportant. In critical moments of life, the psychology of the most diverse people is unified and almost coincides. In all hearts, the same struggle between God and the devil is played out, only at its different stages. This explains the monotony of Dostoevsky's characters and the "duality" so common in his novels.

The peculiarity of Dostoevsky's psychologism also determines the specificity of his plot constructions. In order to activate the spiritual layer of consciousness in the heroes, Dostoevsky needs to knock them out of their usual life rut, bring them into a crisis state. Therefore, the dynamics of the plot leads them from catastrophe to catastrophe, depriving them of solid ground under their feet, undermining existential stability and forcing them again and again to desperately “storm” unsolvable, “damned” questions. Thus, the entire compositional structure of "Crime and Punishment" can be described as a chain of catastrophes: Raskolnikov's crime, which brought him to the threshold of life and death, then Marmeladov's catastrophe; the madness and death of Katerina Ivanovna, which soon followed her, and, finally, the suicide of Svidrigailov. In the prehistory to the novel action, Sonya's catastrophe is also told, and in the epilogue - Raskolnikov's mother. Of all these heroes, only Sonya and Raskolnikov manage to survive and escape. The intervals between catastrophes are occupied by Raskolnikov's most intense dialogues with other characters, of which two conversations with Sonya, two with Svidrigailov and three with Porfiry Petrovich stand out. The second, most terrible for Raskolnikov “conversation” with the investigator, when he drives Raskolnikov almost to insanity on the basis that he will give himself away - is the compositional center of the novel, and conversations with Sonya and Svidrigailov, framing him, are located one before and after .

Concerned about the amusement of the plot, Dostoevsky also resorts to the technique of silence. When Raskolnikov goes to the old woman for a “test”, the reader is not privy to his plan and can only guess what kind of “case” he is discussing with himself. The specific intention of the hero is revealed only after 50 pages from the beginning of the novel, immediately before the atrocity itself. The existence of a complete theory in Raskolnikov and even an article with its presentation becomes known to us only on the two hundredth page of the novel - from a conversation between Raskolnikov and Porfiry. In the same way, only at the very end of the novel do we learn the history of Dunya's relationship with Svidrigailov - immediately before the denouement of these relations. Such reticence is calculated on the effect of the first reading, which was and remains typical of all fiction novels and to which Dostoevsky himself attached great importance, trying to expand the circle of his readers and captivate them first of all with the plot, and then with the philosophical problems of the dialogues.

The clearly limited number of actors, the concentration of action in time, the rapid development of the plot, replete with tense dialogues, unexpected confessions and public scandals - all this allows us to speak about the pronounced dramatic features of Dostoevsky's prose, which was noticed by the poet and symbolist philosopher Vyach. Ivanov, who wrote about Dostoevsky's novels as "tragedy novels".

The image of Petersburg in the novel.

Heroes in Dostoevsky's novels are depicted virtually outside the context of everyday life. Life is portrayed by Dostoevsky rather as “anti-life” (life with a negative sign), in its violation or “inhumanity”. He is associated in "Crime and Punishment" primarily with the image of St. Petersburg. “This magnificent capital, decorated with numerous monuments”, “the city of clerks and all kinds of seminarians”, is most clearly described in the novel by Svidrigailov: “This is a city of half-crazy ...<...>Rarely where there are so many gloomy, harsh and strange influences on the soul of a person, as in St. Petersburg. What are some climatic influences worth! Meanwhile, it is the administrative center of all of Russia, and its character should be reflected in everything” (6; 357). A similar sinister spiritual influence of St. Petersburg is clearly felt by Raskolnikov: “Inexplicable coldness always blew on him from this magnificent panorama; this sumptuous picture was full of dumb and deaf spirit for him” (6; 90). The “dead”, “intentional”, “most fantastic” city is endowed with a gloomy mystical power that oppresses the individual and deprives her of the feeling of her rootedness in being. This is a special spiritual space where everything acquires a symbolic and psychological meaning. The main impressions of Dostoevsky's Petersburg are the unbearable stuffiness, which becomes the “atmosphere of crime”; darkness, dirt and slush, from which a disgust for life and contempt for oneself and others develop, as well as dampness and an abundance of water in all forms (let us recall, however, a terrible thunderstorm and flood on the night of Svidrigailov's suicide), giving rise to a feeling of fluidity, fragility and relativity of all phenomena of reality. Those who came to St. Petersburg from the provinces are quickly reborn, succumbing to its “civilizing”, corrupting and vulgarizing influence, like Raskolnikov, Mikolka, Marmeladov, Katerina Ivanovna.

For Dostoevsky, first of all, there is not the Petersburg of baroque and classicism, palaces and gardens, but the Petersburg of Sennaya Square with its noise and merchants, dirty alleys and tenement houses, taverns and "houses of entertainment", dark closets and stairwells. This space is filled with an innumerable number of people, merging into a faceless and insensitive crowd, swearing, laughing and ruthlessly trampling on all those who have weakened in the cruel “struggle for life”. Petersburg creates a contrast between the extreme crowding of people with their extreme disunity and alienation from each other, which gives rise to hostility and mocking curiosity in the souls of people towards each other. The whole novel is filled with endless street scenes and scandals: a whip, a fight, suicide (Raskolnikov once sees a woman with a yellow, “drunk” face throwing herself into a canal), a drunkard crushed by horses - everything becomes food for ridicule or gossip. The crowd pursues the heroes not only on the streets: the Marmeladovs live in the passage rooms, and at every scandalous family scene, “arrogant laughing heads with cigarettes and pipes, in yarmulkes” stretched out from different doors and “laughed amusingly”. The same crowd appears like a nightmare in Raskolnikov's dream, invisible and therefore especially terrible, watching and laughing maliciously at the feverish efforts of the distraught hero to complete his ill-fated crime.

It was here that the main character should have developed an idea of ​​​​people as annoying and vicious insects that eat each other, like spiders locked in a cramped jar. Raskolnikov begins to caustically hate his “neighbors”: “One new irresistible feeling took possession of him more and more every minute: it was some kind of endless, almost physical disgust for everything he met and around, stubborn, vicious, hateful. All the people he met were disgusting to him, their faces, gait, movements were disgusting” (6; 87).

The hero involuntarily has a desire to leave everyone, retire in himself and arrange himself in such a way as to rise and achieve complete dominance over all this human "anthill". To do this, you can kill one of these "nasty and malicious lice", and for this only "forty sins will be forgiven." Then the hero goes to his closet, reminiscent of a “chest”, “cupboard” or “coffin”, to his spiritual “underground”, and there he hatches his inhuman theory. This closet is also an integral part of St. Petersburg, a special spiritual space, meaning the deadness of the hero's habitat, predetermining the murderousness and inhumanity of the theory he is considering. “Then I, like a spider, hid in my corner ... But do you know, Sonya, that low ceilings and cramped rooms cramp the soul and mind! Oh, how I hated that kennel! Still, he didn't want to leave. I didn’t want to on purpose!” (6; 320). Sonya's room was also ugly, like a barn, where one corner was too sharp and black, and the other ugly blunt, which symbolizes the deformity of her life. The image of the “dead room” receives its final philosophical completion in the ominous vision of Svidrigailov, to whom all eternal life was presented as being in a smoky “room, like a village bath” with spiders “in all corners”. This is already the complete absence of “air”, as well as the complete annihilation of time and space. Both Porfiry and Svidrigailov casually say that Raskolnikov does not have enough air for life, but in St. Petersburg there is no air at all (in this case, it is a symbol of living, immediate life), as Pulcheria Alexandrovna notes: where is the air to breathe? Here and on streets, as in rooms without windows. Lord, what a city!” (6; 185) .

The idea of ​​the novel. The image of Raskolnikov.

Dostoevsky himself in a letter to the editor of Russkiy vestnik M.N. Katkovu described his idea for the novel as follows:

“The action is modern, this year. A young man, expelled from the university students, a bourgeois by birth and living in extreme poverty, out of frivolity, out of lack of understanding, succumbing to some strange “unfinished” ideas that are in the air, decided to get out of his bad situation at once. He decided to kill an old woman, a titular adviser who gives money for interest. The old woman is stupid, deaf, sick, greedy, takes Jewish interest, is evil and seizes someone else's eyelids, torturing her younger sister in her working women. “She is good for nothing”, “what does she live for?”, “Is she useful to anyone?” etc. These questions confuse the young man. He decides to kill her, rob her; in order to make her mother, who lives in the district, happy, to save her sister, who lives as a companion with some landowners, from the voluptuous claims of the head of this landowner family ... to complete the course, go abroad and then all his life be honest, firm, unswerving fulfillment of the “humane duty to mankind”, which, of course, will “make atonement for the crime”, if only this act against the deaf, stupid, evil and sick old woman can be called a crime ...

Despite the fact that such crimes are terribly difficult to commit, ... he - in a completely random way - manages to complete his enterprise both quickly and successfully.

There is no suspicion of him and cannot be. This is where the whole psychological process of crime unfolds. Unresolvable questions arise before the killer, unsuspected and unexpected feelings torment his heart. God's truth, earthly law takes its toll, and he ends up being compelled to denounce himself. Forced to die in hard labor, but to join the people again; the feeling of openness and disconnection with humanity, which he felt immediately after the commission of the crime, tormented him ... The criminal himself decides to accept the torment in order to atone for his deed .... Several recent cases have convinced me that my plot is not at all eccentric. Namely, that the murderer of a developed and even good inclinations is a young man ... In a word, I am convinced that my plot partly justifies modernity. (28 II; 137).

We see that the author closely links the idea of ​​Raskolnikov with the historical era of his time, when “everything went from the foundations” and “unusual unsteadiness of concepts” reigns in an educated society “torn off from the soil”. Thus, the problems of the novel are revealed to us as social, and the novel itself must be defined as philosophical-social-psychological. The protagonist of the novel was conceived precisely as a “new” person who succumbed to the “unfinished” ideas floating in the St. Petersburg air, following which he comes to the denial of the world around him.

Dostoevsky saw the reasons for the spiritual crisis of his era in the onset of a “period of human seclusion,” about which he writes in detail in The Brothers Karamazov:

“... For everyone now strives to separate his face most, wants to experience the fullness of life in himself, and meanwhile, out of all his efforts, instead of the fullness of being, only complete suicide comes out, because instead of the fullness of the definition of his being, they fall into complete solitude .. everyone retires into his own hole, everyone moves away from the other, hides and hides what he has and ends up pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself ... But it will certainly happen that the time will come for this terrible solitude, and they will all understand at once how unnaturally they separated one from the other. (14; 275-276).

Raskolnikov's seclusion in the coffin-room turns out to be a sign of the times in the light of this quote. The extraordinary ability to see behind every phenomenon of our time (wars, high-profile court cases, public protest or scandal) its spiritual root cause was, in general, a distinctive feature of Dostoevsky's talent. In Crime and Punishment, such generalizations are put into the mouth of Porfiry Petrovich by the author: fantastic, gloomy, business contemporary, of our time, a case, sir, when the human heart was clouded; when the phrase is quoted that blood is "refreshing"; when all life is preached in comfort. Here are book dreams, sir, here is a theoretically irritated heart” (6; 348).

Raskolnikov was conceived, on the one hand, as a typical representative of the raznochintsy generation of the 60s, who especially easily became fanatics of the idea. He is a half-educated student who, thanks to his education, can already think independently, but still does not have clear guidelines in the spiritual world. Having experienced the loneliness and humiliation of a beggarly existence, he knows life only from its negative side, and therefore does not value anything in it. Living in Petersburg, he does not know Russia; he is alien to the faith and moral ideals of ordinary people. It is precisely such a person who is defenseless against the "negative" ideas floating in the air, since he has nothing to oppose them. What was said about Shatov in The Possessed is quite applicable to Raskolnikov: “He was one of those ideal Russian creatures who would suddenly be struck by some strong idea and immediately immediately crush them with him, sometimes even forever. They will never be able to cope with it, but they will passionately believe, and then their whole life then passes, as it were, in the last writhing under the stone that has fallen on them and half completely crushed them ”(10; 27). The “underground”, “closet” origin of the idea predetermines its abstractness, abstraction from life and inhumanity (which qualities were inherent in all totalitarian theories in the 19th and 20th centuries). It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky gives Raskolnikov the following characterization: "he was already a skeptic, he was young, abstract and, therefore, cruel." Such a person turns into the bearer of the idea, its slave, who has already lost his freedom of choice (remember that Raskolnikov commits a crime as if against his will: going to the murder, he feels like a condemned man, who is being taken to the death penalty).

However, Raskolnikov is not a simple nihilist. He does not build any plans for the social reorganization of society and mocks the socialists: “Hard-working people and merchants; They are concerned with “general happiness”... no, life is given to me once, and it will never happen again: I don’t want to wait for “general happiness”” (6; 211). No wonder the socialist Lebeziatnikov is so caricatured in the novel. Raskolnikov treats his comrades with a kind of aristocratic contempt and does not want to have anything to do with them. Raskolnikov took nihilistic ideas more deeply and thoroughly than his socialist contemporaries, and at once reached "to the last pillars" in them. His idea reveals the deep essence of nihilism, which consists in the denial of God and worship of the self-affirming human "I". (Socialism in Dostoevsky's understanding is also an attempt by mankind to "settle on earth without God", according to its earthly mind, but very naive and distant. This is a common, popular variety of nihilism, while "higher" nihilism is individualistic). Thus, Raskolnikov's idea also has a religious basis - it is no coincidence that Raskolnikov compares himself with Mohammed - the "prophet" from Pushkin's Imitations of the Koran. Fighting against God, the foundation of a new morality - that was Raskolnikov's last goal, for the sake of which he decided to “dare” and take it. "If there is no God, then everything is permitted" - this is the final formulation of this "higher nihilism", which he will receive in The Brothers Karamazov. Such, according to Dostoevsky, is the Russian national version of nihilism, for “Russian nature” is characterized by religiosity, the impossibility of living without a “higher idea”, passion and the desire to reach in everything, both in good and in evil, to the “last line”. This author’s idea is carried out in the novel by Svidrigailov, explaining to Duna the crime of her brother: “Now everything is clouded, that is, however, it has never been in any special order. Russian people in general are broad people... broad as their land, and extremely prone to the fantastic, to the disorderly; but the trouble is to be wide without special genius.” (6; 378).

Porfiry Petrovich characterizes Raskolnikov as “a man dejected, but proud, domineering and impatient, especially impatient.” (6; 344). Together, he sees in his nature an extraordinary strength and directness: “Your article is absurd and fantastic, but such sincerity flickers in it, young and incorruptible pride in it, the courage of despair in it” (6; 345). of those who even cut out the guts, and he will stand and look at the tormentors with a smile - if only he finds faith or God ”(6; 351). The very name of the hero evokes in us an association with schismatics - fanatics of the faith, who voluntarily retired from society for the sake of it. In addition, this “speaking surname” contains a hint of a certain “split”, inconsistency and duality in the character's character - between feelings and mind, between a responsive nature and an abstract theorizing mind. So, according to Razumikhin, Rodion “is gloomy, gloomy, arrogant and proud;<...>suspicious and hypochondriac. Magnanimous and kind. He does not like to express his feelings and will sooner do cruelty than the heart will express in words. Sometimes<...>simply cold and insensitive to the point of inhumanity, really, as if in him two opposite characters are alternately replaced<...>He values ​​himself terribly highly and, it seems, not without some right to do so” (6; 165).

In this characterization, romantic motives coming from Lermontov and Byron are clearly traced: immense pride, a feeling of hopeless universal loneliness and “world sorrow” (“Truly great people, it seems to me, should feel great sadness in the world,” Raskolnikov suddenly blurts out in front of Porfiry - 6; 203). This is also evidenced by Raskolnikov's admiration for the personality of Napoleon, who, together with Byron, was an ideal hero and an unattainable idol of Russian romanticism. Raskolnikov’s character really affects a certain arrogance, which comes from a sense of his exclusivity, which makes some instinctively hate him (as the crowd always hates such proud hermits who are only proud of this hatred - remember the hatred of Luzhin for Raskolnikov, the bailiffs, the tradesman or fellow convicts), and others - to treat him with an unconscious recognition of his superiority (like Razumikhin, Sonya or Zametov). Even Porfiry Petrovich is imbued with respect for him: “In any case, I regard you as the most noble person” (6; 344). “It's not about time, it's about you. Be the sun, everyone will see you. The sun first of all needs to be the sun” (6; 352).

Raskolnikov's theory.

Raskolnikov's crime is much deeper than the usual violation of the law. “You know what I’ll tell you,” he admits to Sonya, if only I killed from the fact that I was hungry ... then I would now ... be happy! Know this!” Raskolnikov killed the very principle by which human deeds can be defined and from time immemorial have been defined as criminal. With the loss of these principles, the undermining of public morality and the collapse of the whole society in general are inevitable.

In itself, the idea of ​​dividing all people into two categories: brilliant, able to tell the world a “new word” and “material”, suitable only for the products of offspring, as well as the conclusion drawn from this about the right of elected people to sacrifice the lives of others for the sake of their highest interests - the idea to put it mildly, not new. It has been proclaimed by individualists in all ages. Even Machiavelli put it at the basis of his theory of government. But in Raskolnikov, the trends of the times are superimposed on this idea: the ideals of progress and the public good, fashionable for the 19th century. Therefore, the crime receives several motivations at once, hiding one under the other. For external, “objective” reasons, Raskolnikov kills in order to save himself, his mother and sister from terrible poverty. But such motivation is quickly swept aside by him. Its imaginary is revealed when Raskolnikov, horrified by the crime committed, wants to throw all the loot into the canal, not even being interested in its quantity and price. On the other hand, Raskolnikov is trying to justify his crime by considerations of the highest good that he will bring to the world, when, thanks to his first “bold” step, he will take place as a person and accomplish everything that is destined for him. It is this version of the theory that Raskolnikov expounds in his article, and then in his first visit to Porfiry: the new word of genius moves all of humanity forward and justifies any means, but “ only in that case if the fulfillment of his idea (sometimes saving, perhaps for the whole of mankind) requires it” (6; 199). “One death and a thousand lives in return” “after all, this is arithmetic.” Wouldn't Newton or Kepler have the right to sacrifice a hundred lives to give the world their discoveries? Further, Raskolnikov turns to Solon, Lycurgus, Mohammed and Napoleon - the rulers, leaders, generals, whose very kind of activity is inevitably associated with violence and the shedding of blood. He calls them veiledly “legislators and establishers of mankind”, whose new word was in their social transformations and who were all criminals already because, “by giving a new law, they thereby violated the ancient one, sacredly revered by society and passed from the fathers” (6; 200). From this follows the conclusion that every genius who speaks a new word is a destroyer by nature, for he “destroys the present in the name of the better” (6; 200).

However, the “small mistake” of this theory lies primarily in the fact that all kinds of “great people” are put in one row according to a very vague criterion of their “greatness”, while the discoveries of the scientist bring something completely different to the world than the deeds of the saint, and the talent of an artist is completely different from the talent of a politician or commander. However, the Pushkin question, whether “genius and villainy” are compatible, as if it does not exist at all for Raskolnikov. Commanders and rulers, by the very nature of their activities, play with the lives of people, as if in chess, and even the most outstanding and attractive of them can hardly be called benefactors of all mankind. Moreover, most of them shed human blood, not at all possessing the genius of Lycurgus and Napoleon, but simply by virtue of the power they received. It is ambition and pride that are their primary stimulus, or at least a necessary condition for their achievement of power. So, the identification of genius with crime, which captivated Raskolnikov, is incorrect even theoretically, not to mention the fact that Raskolnikov himself still does not have any “new word”, except for his theory itself. The “benevolence” of the latter for humanity is perfectly demonstrated by the last dream of the hero in the epilogue, where this idea - as if having taken possession of all minds and replacing the former moral law on Earth - is shown in all its destructive power. Its action turns out to be similar to a pestilence and leads the world to the Apocalypse.

Raskolnikov himself realizes that in vain he assured himself of the supreme expediency and justification of his “experiment” and “for a whole month he worried the all-good providence, calling for witnesses that I was undertaking not for my, they say, flesh and lust, but I mean magnificent and pleasant goal, haha!” (6; 211). He confesses to Sonya the last reason for his murder: “I wanted, Sonya, to kill without casuistry, to kill for myself, for myself alone! I didn't even want to lie to myself! Not to help my mother, I killed - nonsense! I did not kill in order to, having received funds and power, become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I just killed; I killed for myself, for myself alone: ​​and there, if I became someone's benefactor, or all my life, like a spider, I would catch everyone in a web and suck the living juices out of everyone, I, at that moment, should have been all the same!<...>I had to find out then whether I was a louse, like everyone else, or a man?<...>whether a trembling creature or right I have...” (6; 322). So, it was a psychological experiment on yourself, a test of your own genius. It is no coincidence that Napoleon is put forward by him as the most important “authority” - no longer a benefactor of mankind, but a tyrant who made all of Europe the arena of brilliant parades of his glory and covered it with the corpses of the victims of his ambition. Endless self-affirmation, permissiveness, daring transgression of all boundaries and norms - this is the trait that captivated Raskolnikov in Napoleon and formed the core of his idea: “Freedom and power, and most importantly, power! Over all the trembling creature and over the whole anthill!” (6; 253).

The meaning of the title of the novel and the fate of the protagonist.

The title of the novel "Crime and Punishment" is intended to emphasize one of the most important ideas of Dostoevsky: the moral, internal necessity of punishment for the criminal. Interestingly, in the generally accepted German translation, the novel is called “Schuld und Sühne” - “guilt and retribution”, which emphasized its philosophical and religious meaning, although a literal legal translation would be “Verbrechen und Strafe”. The Russian name, with rare ambiguity, absorbs both meanings. The word “crime” already semantically speaks of “stepping over”, “stepping over” a certain boundary or “line”, and Dostoevsky consciously activates this primary meaning. Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov says that the essence of his crime was to step over through morality: “The old woman, perhaps, is a mistake, it’s not the point! The old woman was only a disease... I step over I wanted to hurry up... I didn't kill a man, I killed a principle! I killed the principle, but step over he didn’t cross, he remained on this side ... ”(6; 211).

The motive of “crossing” can be traced in the fates of almost all the heroes of the novel, who, for various reasons, find themselves, as it were, at the turn, on the threshold of life and death and cross the “line” of either chastity and honor, or duty, or morality. Marmeladov says to himself that he has lost his place, “because trait mine has come” (6; 16). Indulging in his vice, he “stepped over” his relatives: Katerina Ivanovna, children and Sonya. Sonya, according to Raskolnikov, also stepped over ... over herself: “You also stepped over ... you could step over. You laid hands on yourself. You ruined your life... yours” (6; 252). The transgression of all moral norms by Svidrigailov turns into a refined pleasure and game in order to somehow warm up his satiated feelings. So, he speaks about debauchery: “I agree that this is a disease, like everything that goes over the limit, but here you will certainly have to go over the edge. <...>but what to do? If it weren’t for this, you probably would have to shoot yourself like that.” (6; 362). Dunya has yet to make such a choice. Raskolnikov venomously remarks to her: “Bah! Yes, and you ... with intentions ... Well, and commendable; you're better off... and you'll reach the point where you won't step over you will be unhappy, but if you step over it, you may be even more unhappy...” (6; 174). (And vice versa, it is said about Raskolnikov’s mother that she “could agree to a lot ... but she was always so trait... for which no circumstances could make her step over” - 6; 158). But all these “transgressions” are completely different in nature, and some of them lead to the death of the hero, others to a terrible spiritual emptiness and suicide, and others can be saved by atoning for guilt with a heavy punishment.

Punishment is an equally complex concept in the novel. Its etymology is “instruction”, “advice”, “lesson”. This “lesson” is given to Raskolnikov by life itself and lies in the terrible moral torment that the criminal undergoes after the murder. This is both disgust, and horror before the perfect crime, and the constant fear of being exposed (so that the criminal would even be glad if he was already in prison), and extreme spiritual emptiness, to which “crossing the borders” led. The murderer violated the very foundation of the spiritual world, and thus “as if with scissors he cut himself off from everyone” (6; 90). “A gloomy feeling of painful, endless solitude and alienation suddenly consciously affected his soul” (6; 81). Not remorse - there were none, but the mystical consciousness of his irrevocable break with humanity oppresses the hero. Most clearly, this gap affects Raskolnikov's relationship with those closest to him: his mother and sister, to whom, because of his terrible secret, he cannot respond with love. When meeting after a long separation, he does not raise his arms to hug them. He looks at them "as if from a thousand miles away" (6; 178), and soon becomes completely indifferent to their fate. Having provoked Dunya's break with Luzhin, Raskolnikov unexpectedly and cruelly leaves his loved ones and himself - in a strange city, where they have no one else to know: “Leave me! Leave me alone!...<...>I must have decided that... Whatever happens to me, whether I die or not, I want to be alone. Forget me completely. It is better...<...>Otherwise, I will hate you, I feel... Goodbye!” (6; 239).

His suffering is terrible. “It was as if a fog suddenly fell in front of him and enclosed him in a hopeless and difficult solitude” (6; 335). “... the more secluded the place was, the more he was aware of someone’s close and disturbing presence, not that terrible, but somehow very annoying, so he quickly returned to the city, mingled with the crowd ...” (6; 337). With his consciousness, he clearly understood that there was no real evidence against him and nothing threatened him: the terrible experiment seemed to be a complete success, but the consciousness itself went out at times, complete apathy set in, interrupted by nightmares.

For a correct understanding of the state of mind of the hero, the motive is very important. disease who accompanies Raskolnikov throughout the novel. After the crime, Raskolnikov returns almost in a frenzy and spends the whole next day as if delirious. Then he collapses in a fever and lies unconscious for four days. Well-groomed by Razumikhin, he gets back on his feet, but his feverish, weakened state continues, not completely disappearing. It is not clear to those around him that the cause of his illness is spiritual, and they are trying to somehow explain it, attributing all the oddities in Raskolnikov's behavior to the disease. The doctor Zosimov determines that the disease must have been preparing in him for many months even before the onset of the crisis: “In three or four days, if it goes like this, it will be completely as before, that is, as it was a month ago, or two ... or perhaps, and three? After all, it started from afar and was being prepared?... Huh? Do you confess now that maybe you yourself were to blame? (6; 171). Only Porfiry mockingly points out to Raskolnikov: “Illness, they say, delirium, dreams, I dreamed, I don’t remember,” all this is so, sir, but why, father, in sickness and delirium all such dreams are dreaming, and not others, could there be others, sir?” (6; 268).

Raskolnikov understands his condition better than anyone. His entire article was devoted to the argument that the commission of a crime always accompanies an eclipse of the mind and a decline in will, which “seize a person like a disease, develop gradually and reach their highest moment shortly before the commission of the crime.<...>The question is, does illness itself give rise to crime, or is crime itself, somehow by its special nature, always accompanied by something like illness? - he still did not feel able to solve it” (6; 59). The author is trying to show in the course of the plot: the very theory of Raskolnikov was the disease he caught in St. Petersburg, like consumption. The onset of the disease coincides with the moment of the original intent of the murder, which was only the transition of the disease into an open form. Raskolnikov had painful states of depression and stupefaction even before the crime, when the idea of ​​“transcending” had already nestled in his soul and took possession of all his thoughts. As soon as he allowed himself to bleed according to conscience he had already committed murder in the soul, and the punishment immediately followed. (This gave rise to the philosopher Lev Shestov to joke that Raskolnikov did not kill the old woman at all, that Dostoevsky himself told him, while the student, an abstract theorist, committed the murder only in his imagination). Further, the disease continues to exhaust and exhaust him, threatening to be fatal. “It’s because I’m very sick,” he finally decided gloomily, “I myself have exhausted and tormented myself and I don’t know what I’m doing ...<...>I’ll recover and... I won’t torment myself... But how can I not recover at all?” (6; 87).

Thus both crime and punishment begin before murder. The real, official punishment begins in the epilogue and turns out to be healing and rebirth for the protagonist.

Raskolnikov did not take into account his nature. He thought to achieve a state of complete ease and freedom through a crime, but he turned out to be shackled by remorse - hateful evidence for him of his belonging to the lowest category of people who are not allowed to “cross over” by nature itself. But at the same time, the hero does not repent and remains convinced of his theory. He is disappointed not in her, but in himself. “He must go through a painful bifurcation, “drag on himself all the pros and contras”, in order to achieve self-consciousness. He is a mystery to himself; does not know its measure and its limits; looked into the depths of his "I", and in front of the bottomless abyss he felt dizzy. He tests himself, makes an experiment, asks: who am I? What I can? What am I entitled to? Is my strength great?

Dostoevsky not only reveals in Crime and Punishment the negative spiritual energy of Byron's individualism: this has already been done by Pushkin in Gypsies and Eugene Onegin. Dostoevsky goes further and subjects the very image of the demonic god-fighting hero to cruel and evil deromanticization. It turns out that if you remove his brilliant romantic halo from the demonic romantic hero, then in the place of Napoleon and Cain there will be a completely ordinary killer. It is the “ugliness” of his crime that kills Raskolnikov. “Napoleon, the pyramids, Waterloo - and a skinny, nasty registrar, an old pawnbroker, with a red stack under the bed - well, what is it like to digest at least Porfiry Petrovich! .. Where can they digest! .. Aesthetics will interfere: will Napoleon climb under the bed to the "old woman"!<...>Eh, I'm an aesthetic louse, and nothing else” (6; 211). “Fear of aesthetics is the first sign of impotence” (6; 400). Raskolnikov’s “false Byronian” posture by Porfiry Petrovich is subjected to cruel mockery: “He killed, but considers himself an honest person, despises people, walks like a pale angel” (6; 348). He finally denounces Raskolnikov's attempt to maintain a noble pose and combine the crime with the high ideals of Svidrigailov: (“Schiller is embarrassed in you every minute!”).

According to the correct generalization of I.L. Almi, “Raskolnikov little by little comes to understand the possibilities that lie before him.

One - desired - to overcome the deed inwardly, to unite with people “above the crime”.

The other - polar to her - to get away from everyone, to live on "a yard of space".

The last - having convinced of the unattainability of the first two, "end" at any cost - suicide or confession.

At first, Raskolnikov strives with all his might to take the first path, wanting to prove to himself that “his life did not die along with the old woman” (6; 147). This opportunity seems available to him, however, only in rare moments of elation: in the police office, upon realizing that he was invited there out of connection with the crime committed, when Raskolnikov is suddenly attacked by terrible talkativeness and frankness, then on the first evening after recovering from severe fever, when Raskolnikov goes out into the street for the first time after five days, becomes painfully animated, talks to passers-by and superbly defeats Zametov “psychologically”, and most importantly, when he manages to help the impoverished Marmeladov family, sincerely sacrificing all his meager means and thereby deserving Polenka’s childhood kiss and living thanks to Sony. However, he manages to deceive himself only for a short time. Then Raskolnikov, by a force incomprehensible to him, is thrown first to the second, and then to the third outcome. Otherwise, "the hopeless years were foreseen<...>cold, deadening melancholy, some kind of eternity was foreseen on the “yard of space” (6; 327).

Raskolnikov alone would not have gotten out of this impasse. Salvation could come to him only from outside, from other people who still connected him with the world and God.

The system of characters in the novel.

Having killed “the most useless creature”, Raskolnikov feels not only his rejection from all other people, but also the conjugation of many mysterious connections with people who were previously completely unknown to him, on whom, for various reasons, his fate now depends: this is the Marmeladov family, and Sonya , and Svidrigailov, and Porfiry Petrovich.

Raskolnikov turns out to be a connecting link between two families: his own and the Marmeladovs. A love triangle is formed along the first line from Dunya, Svidrigailov and Luzhin, and along the second line - a family triangle: Sonya, Marmeladov and Katerina Ivanovna. Raskolnikov himself, in addition, finds himself face to face in a duel with Porfiry. According to this scheme, K. Mochulsky describes the system of characters: “The principle of composition is three-part: one main intrigue and two side plots. In the main one - one external event (murder) and a long chain of internal events; in the by-products - a heap of external events, stormy, spectacular, dramatic: Marmeladov is crushed by horses, Katerina Ivanovna, half-mad, sings in the street and is covered in blood. Luzhin accuses Sonya of stealing, Dunya shoots Svidrigailov. The main intrigue is tragic, the secondary ones are melodramatic” (ibid., p. 366).

I. Annensky builds a system of characters according to a different, ideological principle. In each of the characters, he sees one of the turns, moments of two ideas, the bearers of which these characters are: the ideas of humility and resigned acceptance of suffering (Mikolka, Lizaveta, Sonya, Dunya, Marmeladov, Porfiry, Marfa Petrovna Svidrigailova) or the idea of ​​rebellion, demands from life all kinds of blessings (Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov, Dunya, Katerina Ivanovna, Razumikhin).

Feeling after the murder the impossibility of communicating further with his relatives, “neighbors”, Raskolnikov is attracted like a magnet to the “distant” ones - the Marmeladov family, as if concentrating in itself all possible suffering and humiliation of the whole world. This is one of Dostoevsky's most powerful incarnations of the theme of "humiliated and offended", which originates from "Poor People". However, from the experience of hopeless grief and complete helplessness in the face of fate, everyone in this family took out their own worldview position. Marmeladov himself is a new solution to the "little man" theme, showing how far Dostoevsky has already gone from Gogol's traditions. Even in the inescapable shame of his fall, Marmeladov is interpreted not just as a failed personality, destroyed and lost in a huge city, but as a “poor in spirit” in the gospel sense - a deep and tragically contradictory character, capable of selfless repentance and therefore able to be forgiven and even gain for your humility to the Kingdom of God. Katerina Ivanovna, on the contrary, comes to a protest, a rebellion against God, who so cruelly broke her fate, but a mad and desperate rebellion, driving her to frenzied madness and terrible death. (“What? A priest? .. No need ... Where do you have an extra ruble? .. There are no sins on me! .. God must forgive even without that ... He knows how I suffered! .. But he won’t forgive, so it’s not necessary! ..” - 6; 333). Dostoevsky, however, does not dare to judge her for this, in view of the boundlessness and flagrant injustice of the suffering she endured. Unlike her, Sonya professes, like her father, Christian humility, but combined with the idea of ​​sacrificial love.

Raskolnikov sees this family as a living embodiment of his own thoughts about the impotence of goodness and the meaninglessness of suffering. And before and after the murder, he always thinks about the fate of the Marmeladovs, compares it with his own, and every time he is convinced of the correctness of his decision (you must either “dare to bend down and take it”, “or give up life completely!”). At the same time, helping and benefactoring the Marmeladovs, Raskolnikov is saved for some time from his oppressive spiritual anxiety.

From the bosom of this family appears the "guardian angel" of the hero - Sonya, the ideological antipode of Raskolnikov. Her "solution" is self donation, in that she stepped over her purity, sacrificing herself for the sake of saving her family. “In this, she opposes Raskolnikov, who all the time, from the very beginning of the novel (when he had just learned about Sonya’s existence from her father’s confession), measures his crime by her “crime”, trying to justify himself. He is constantly striving to prove that since Sonya's "decision" is not a genuine solution, it means that he, Raskolnikov, is right. . It is in front of Sonya that from the very beginning he wants to confess to the murder ”- she is the only one, in his opinion, who can understand and justify him. He brings her to the realization of the inevitable catastrophe of her and her family (“It will probably be the same with Polechka”), in order to put before her a fatal question, the answer to which should justify his act: “Should Luzhin live and do abominations or die to Katerina Ivanovna?” (6; 313). But Sonya’s reaction disarms him: “But I can’t know God’s providence ... And who put me here as a judge: who will live, who won’t live?” (6; 313). And the roles of the characters suddenly change. Raskolnikov at first thought to achieve complete spiritual submission from Sonya, to make her his like-minded person. He behaves with her arrogantly, arrogantly and coldly, and at the same time frightens with the mysteriousness of his behavior. So, he kisses her leg with the words: “It was I who bowed to all human suffering. This gesture looks too contrived and theatrical, and it reveals the "literary" thinking of the hero. But then he realizes that he cannot withstand the burden of mortal sin he carries, that he “killed himself,” and comes to Sonya for forgiveness(although he tries to convince himself: “I will not come to ask for forgiveness”) and merciful love. Raskolnikov despises himself because he needs Sonya, and therefore depends on her, this offends his pride, and therefore at times feels a feeling of "caustic hatred" for her. But at the same time he feels that his fate lies in her, especially when he learns about her former friendship with Lizaveta, who was killed by him, who even became her godsister. And when, at the moment of confessing to the murder, Sonya moves away from Raskolnikov with the same helpless childish gesture with which Lizaveta pulled away from his ax, the “defender of all the humiliated and offended” finally sees the falsity of all his claims to the “sanction of truth”.. It is in front of Sonya that from the very beginning he wants to confess to the murder ”- she is the only one, in his opinion, who can understand and justify him. He brings her to the realization of the inevitable catastrophe of her and her family (“It will probably be the same with Polechka”), in order to put before her a fatal question, the answer to which should justify his act: “Should Luzhin live and do abominations or die to Katerina Ivanovna?” (6; 313). But Sonya’s reaction disarms him: “But I can’t know God’s providence ... And who put me here as a judge: who will live, who won’t live?” (6; 313). And the roles of the characters suddenly change. Raskolnikov at first thought to achieve complete spiritual submission from Sonya, to make her his like-minded person. He behaves with her arrogantly, arrogantly and coldly, and at the same time frightens with the mysteriousness of his behavior. So, he kisses her leg with the words: “It was I who bowed to all human suffering. This gesture looks too contrived and theatrical, and it reveals the "literary" thinking of the hero. But then he realizes that he cannot withstand the burden of mortal sin he carries, that he “killed himself,” and comes to Sonya for (although he tries to convince himself: “I won’t come to ask for forgiveness”) and merciful love. Raskolnikov despises himself because he needs Sonya, and therefore depends on her, this offends his pride, and therefore at times feels a feeling of "caustic hatred" for her. But at the same time he feels that his fate lies in her, especially when he learns about her former friendship with Lizaveta, who was killed by him, who even became her godsister. And when, at the moment of confessing to the murder, Sonya moves away from Raskolnikov with the same helpless childish gesture with which Lizaveta pulled away from his ax, the “defender of all the humiliated and offended” finally sees the falsity of all his claims to the “sanction of truth”.

And so “the murderer and the harlot come together to read the eternal book,” reading from the Gospel of Lizaveta about the resurrection of Lazarus. This is the positive philosophy of Dostoevsky and at the same time a symbolic prototype of the fate of both Raskolnikov and Sonya. With the interpretation of the murderous theory of Raskolnikov as a disease threatening death, the beginning of the gospel fragment echoes: “There was is sick a certain Lazarus, from Bethany...” (in the Gospel, Christ also says about Lazarus’s illness: “This illness is not unto death, but to the glory of God.” - John XI; 4). The four days Lazar spent in the coffin correspond to the four days that Raskolnikov spent in his “closet-coffin” after the murder in an unconscious fever. However, Raskolnikov, although he had previously told Porfiry that he believed in the resurrection of Lazarus literally, is still far from trusting the “good news” he heard.

“Sonechkin’s lot”, only with “an excess of comfort,” Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya also thinks to choose, marrying the rich, but despised by her, Luzhin. She also recognizes this act as sacrificing herself for the sake of the happiness of her mother and brother. Raskolnikov proudly repels this victim and upsets his sister's marriage to Luzhin. But, having committed the murder allegedly for the sake of saving his family, Raskolnikov actually almost destroys her, involuntarily betraying his sister into the hands of Svidrigailov, who, having taken possession of Raskolnikov's secret, acquires terrible power over Dunya. And when meeting with Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov sees with horror his actual solidarity with him in a predatory lifestyle at the expense of the “weak of this world”, up to their humiliation and destruction.

If Sonya acts as Raskolnikov’s “good angel”, then Svidrigailov is undoubtedly a demon (in the tradition of Mephistopheles, he even tempts the hero with money: “... go somewhere as soon as possible to America!<...>No money, right? I will give on the road…” - 6; 373). Svidrigailov has everything that Raskolnikov would like to acquire with his “first step”. Thanks to money, an outstanding mind and rich life experience, he achieved the freedom and independence from people that Raskolnikov dreamed of. To do this, he also went through the murder, "stepping over" through his wife Marfa Petrovna, and this is not the first death on his conscience. Because of him, the lackey Filka and the deaf-mute orphan girl raped by him committed suicide. However, Svidrigailov committed his crimes much "cleaner" and safer than Raskolnikov, and, unlike the latter, demonstrates enviable peace of mind, health and balance. This is precisely what he attracts Raskolnikov to himself, embodying the second possible variant of his fate, the opposite of repentance: “get used to it” and remain calmly living with a crime in his soul. Svidrigailov was the first to notice the internal similarity between himself and Raskolnikov: “There is some kind of common point between us”, “we are one field of berries.” They are twins in the sense that they know and foresee each other's innermost thoughts, they follow the same path, but Svidrigailov is bolder, more practical and more depraved than Raskolnikov, which Dostoevsky connects in particular with his "lordly" origin.

Pechorin's hedonistic traits can be noted in Svidrigailov. Like the latter, Svidrigailov lives only to "pick flowers of pleasure" and then "throw them into a roadside ditch." The result for the heroes is the same - complete devastation: just as Pechorin goes to die in Persia, so Svidrigailov is going to America. But Svidrigailov goes a little further than Pechorin: he transcends the sense of honor in order to prolong pleasures and at least somehow diversify them, and thus represents a reduced, cynically vulgarized version of Byronic demonism. Let us imagine Pechorin, who rigged the cards during a bet, out of curiosity to see how Vulich would shoot himself, and we would have the cheater Svidrigailov in front of us. But instead of romantic “endless sadness”, the latter experiences “boundless boredom”.

He laughs at Raskolnikov and reveals his moral contradiction: he crossed, "he allowed blood in his conscience," but still he cannot completely renounce "high and beautiful." (“Schiller in you is embarrassed every minute ... If you are convinced that you can’t eavesdrop at the door, and you can peel old women with anything, for your own pleasure, then go somewhere as soon as possible to America! I understand what questions you have now in go: moral, or what? Questions of a citizen and a person? And you are on the side of them; why do you need them now? Hehe! Then, why are you still a citizen and a person? to take up their own business ”- 6; 373).

He himself is more consistent: that line between good and evil that Raskolnikov had crossed and immediately felt knocked down, Svidrigailov had long and completely erased for himself. Therefore, he is invulnerable to the pangs of conscience and is incapable of repentance. And from good and evil deeds, he experiences the same pleasure. He is an aesthete, “terribly loves” Schiller, subtly judges the beauty of the Raphael Madonna, and at the same time receives almost animal pleasure, torturing his victims. The point here is not only in ordinary voluptuousness, but in the ecstasy of sin and “transgression”. And he had fun as best he could: he was a cheater, he was in prison, he sold himself for 30 thousand to his late wife, ”then he killed her. raped a helpless girl. Maybe out of boredom, fly in a balloon or go to America. Ghosts appear to him, shreds of other worlds, but what vulgar ones! The fact is that when everything is allowed - everything is indifferent. Only the world's boredom and vulgarity remains. The world's nonsense, life and otherworldly existence converge for him in one symbol - eternal imprisonment in a small room, like a village bath, where "spiders are in all corners." This is what absolute freedom leads to - a metaphysical emptiness. Infinity, boundless freedom turn into an extreme narrowing of the living space. Figuratively speaking, Svidrigailov feels himself forever imprisoned in that very closet-coffin, from where Raskolnikov dreamed of going out through the crime to the vast expanses.

However, he is not a banal novel villain: he is also capable of deep and strong feelings, which is proved by his romantic passion for Duna - Svidrigailov's last, desperate attempt to return to life. Seeing that this is impossible, after a wild struggle, he overpowers himself and lets go of the victim, not wanting to harm anyone else. He has already made his last decision - "to go to America" ​​if he is refused. Oddly enough, but the terrible Svidrigailov did more good deeds than anyone else in the novel: he buries Katerina Ivanovna, arranges for Marmeladov’s children, gives a dowry to a poor girl, whom he had previously decided to marry in the form of a cruel joke, gives Sonya money for a trip to Siberia and goes nowhere, because redemption is impossible for him anyway.

As a result, Svidrigailov warns Raskolnikov “from the contrary”, using the example of his fate, showing that the demonic path leads to boredom and despair of non-existence. Sonya silently offers him another choice - to return to the One Who said: “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in Me, even if he dies, will live.”

The role of Porfiry Petrovich in the fate of Raskolnikov.

Porfiry is also a very complex character, unique even in the work of Dostoevsky himself. On the one hand, he is the only representative of legality and official justice in the novel. Already his name (“porphyry” - royal attire, a sign of imperial power, “Peter” - the name of the first Russian emperor) indicates that he speaks in the novel on behalf of the state and expresses the ideology of the society that Raskolnikov opposed. On the other hand, at the end of the novel, he turns out to be the author's reasoner, logically explaining to Raskolnikov the need to repent and turn himself in. On the third, there are reasons to consider him a double of Raskolnikov, but in a different way than Svidrigailov. Porfiry was able to understand Raskolnikov's character and psychology in an unusually deep way, so that at times it may even seem to us that he himself at one time went through the same thoughts and impulses: “I am familiar with all these sensations, and I read your article as if I were familiar” (6; 345). Moreover, the investigator and the defendant are colleagues, because Raskolnikov studied at the Faculty of Law and writes a completely professional article, interesting even for Porfiry, about the psychology of a criminal. Porfiry's penetration into Raskolnikov's soul is insightful to the point of implausibility. Not having a single real fact in his hands, the investigator restores the entire history and picture of the murder to the smallest detail, which allows him to completely take possession of Raskolnikov and, despite the lack of evidence, ingeniously solve the crime.

Porfiry is a relatively young man, about 35 years old, but he feels much older than Raskolnikov, and teaches him how to live from the position of a sophisticated and omniscient person. In his appearance, the author emphasizes some kind of uncertainty: he himself is short, “full and even with a belly”, and there is something womanish in the whole figure, which immediately affects the reader unpleasantly. Nevertheless, the gaze of his watery eyes with whitish eyelashes “somehow strangely did not harmonize with the whole figure ... and gave it something much more serious than at first glance one could expect from it” (6; 192). In such duality, at first, something sinister and even demonic comes through (especially because of Porfiry’s love for “pranks” and the promise to Raskolnikov “and to trick him”, as well as because of his mocking, deliberately vulgar tone with giggles and “ers”: “If you please -s”, “It's a fact, sir”, “for humanity, sir”), in which a veiled mockery of the interlocutor peeps out from under the ostentatious self-abasement. And indeed, at first, Porfiry “chases and catches [Raskolnikov] like a hare”, using a paradoxical device: he completely reveals all his cards to the killer and “sincerely” initiates him into his tactics of doing business, wanting to draw Raskolnikov, tormented by suspicions, into a confessional atmosphere and provoke him to further confessions. At this moment, he looks like a spider, cold-bloodedly catching the victim in neatly placed nets (“It will fly right into my mouth, and I will swallow it, sir, and this is very pleasant, sir, hehehe!” - 6; 262 ).

But the sudden arrival of Mikolka with confession shocks him no less than Raskolnikov (“- Yes, and you are trembling, Porfiry Petrovich. - And I am trembling, sir; I didn’t expect it!”), and the cunning investigator seems to understand that he has violated the law of God mercy, that his cruelty exceeded even Raskolnikov's guilt (it is no coincidence that the tradesman, who heard the whole scene from behind the partition and, undoubtedly, even more established in the opinion that Raskolnikov is the "murderer", comes, shocked, to ask Raskolnikov's forgiveness "for the slander and malice"). A few days later, Porfiry himself comes to Raskolnikov and addresses him in a completely different tone, already without irony and deceit, actually repenting before him, although he says about the same thing as last time.

So unexpectedly, the investigator turns to us with a completely different side, and turns out to be the author's reasoner, summing up everything Raskolnikov has experienced and tortured and justifying the only possible way out for him: “Surrender to life directly, without arguing; don’t worry, it will carry it right to the shore and put it on your feet ... now you only need air, air, air!” (6; 351). And further, Porfiry develops before Raskolnikov the idea of ​​“atonement for guilt by suffering”, the bearer of which in the novel is Mikolka: “you ... have long needed to change the air. Well, suffering is also a good thing. suffer. Perhaps Mikolka is right that he wants suffering” (6; 351). And from the drafts for the novel, we know that this is the central thought of the writer himself. The following important lines speak of this:

IDEA OF THE NOVEL.

ORTHODOX VIEW, WHAT IS ORTHODOXY

There is no happiness in comfort, happiness is bought by suffering. This is the law of our planet, but this direct consciousness, felt by the everyday process, is such a great joy that you can pay for years of suffering. Man is not born to be happy. Man deserves his happiness and always suffering (7; 154-155).

In other words, Porfiry expresses in words everything that Sonya can only make felt in her love. The logic of Porfiry, Sonya's love and the horror of the terrible end of Svidrigailov together move Raskolnikov to take a decisive step - to turn himself in. This is not yet a rejection of the theory (even going to inform on himself, Raskolnikov exclaims: “Never, never have I been stronger and more convinced than now!” - 6; 400), but this is a necessary condition for the subsequent resurrection: Raskolnikov begins to atone for his guilt suffering and lays the foundation for its reunion with people.

Epilogue and its role in the novel.

In assessing the epilogue, the opinions of researchers, as a rule, are divided: one seems to be strained, monologically stopping the polyphony of voices in the novel, distorting the original intention of Raskolnikov's character. It seems to us that it follows logically from the entire philosophical concept of the novel.

At first, Raskolnikov remains true to himself even in hard labor, treats all the people around him with unconscious contempt, which deserves universal hatred, but then life, which he trusted, “takes its toll”. One day he ends up in a prison hospital, and this disease merges in the reader's perception with his general morbid condition throughout the novel. But only here is his final recovery symbolically depicted. The idea leaves his mind after an apocalyptic vision, where it is shown in the full development of its destructive power - in the form of a pestilence that destroys almost all of humanity. But Dostoevsky does not directly force Raskolnikov to dissuade himself and abandon his theory, which would look frankly forced. It's just that at some point the hero ceases to live by one "Euclidean" mind, performing the same all-decomposing self-analytical work, and surrenders to "living life", direct feelings of the heart. We also note that this became possible for him only outside Petersburg, which in the epilogue is contrasted with the first description of nature in the entire novel - the boundless expanses of the steppe with yurts of nomads, where “as if time itself had stopped, it was as if the centuries of Abraham and his flocks had not yet passed” ( 6; 421). This landscape is associated with the biblical time, when humanity was just beginning to explore the Earth and learn God's laws, slowly, for centuries, groping for the way back to God after the fall. It symbolically marks the beginning of a new, difficult and still unknown life of the hero - a return to the primary sources of being, to the Earth, to the sources of "living life" and the subsequent rebirth. And the first living feeling that resurrected him was love for Sonya. Until now, throughout the entire novel, he only used her love as the only thread connecting him with people, but answered her with one coldness, cruelly tormenting and ruthlessly shifting part of his longing onto her fragile shoulders. Now, after recovering from his illness, he was unconsciously drawn to her and "thrown at her feet." This is no longer a demonstrative gesture, like kissing the feet on a first date, but a symbolic sign of humility in the love of a “proud person”. Now "the heart of one contained in itself endless sources of happiness for the other." The gospel has not yet been read by Raskolnikov. But we remember that the writer himself had a spiritual turning point just in hard labor, and therefore we can naturally assume that he believes in the reality of the future coming to the Truth and the resurrection of his hero.

Control questions for "Crime and Punishment":

1. What is the place of the novel "Crime and Punishment" in Dostoevsky's work?

2. What are the main principles of Dostoevsky's depiction of heroes?

3. How does Petersburg appear to us in Crime and Punishment? What is the difference between Dostoevsky's image of Petersburg and Pushkin's, Gogol's, and Nekrasov's Petersburg?

4. What provoked the birth and final formation of Raskolnikov's theory? state the essence of the theory itself.

5. What were Raskolnikov's motivations for his crime?

6. How did Raskolnikov's state of mind change before and after the crime? What was the crime itself? Describe the meaning of the novel's title.

7. Who and on what grounds can be considered Raskolnikov's twins?

8. What is the role of dreams in the novel?

9. What is the specificity of the female images of the novel?

10. What role did the Marmeladov family, Sonya, Porfiry, Svidrigailov play in the fate of Raskolnikov?

11. What is the significance of the novel's epilogue?

Bibliography.

1. Annensky I. The book of reflections. Articles of different years. // Favorites. M., 1987.

2. Belov S.V. F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment". Comment. M., 1985.

3. Berdyaev N.A. Dostoevsky's world outlook. // About Russian classics M., 1993.

4. Kozhinov V. "Crime and Punishment" by F.M. Dostoevsky. // Three masterpieces of Russian classics. M., 1971.

5. Mochulsky K.V. Dostoevsky. Life and work // Gogol. Solovyov. Dostoevsky. M., 1995.