The birth of "Crime and Punishment" not only marked the maturity of Dostoevsky's literary creation, but also made him a first-class world-class writer in one fell swoop; "Crime and Punishment" is not only a pearl in the laurels of Russian literature, but also one of the most brilliant treasures in the history of world literature; "Crime and Punishment" is not only a representative work of realism in the 19th century, but also a precedent for modernist literature in the 20th century.
The main contents of the novel:
Movie of the same name
The story takes place in the slums of St. Petersburg, where Raskolnikov, a poor college student who cannot afford to pay his tuition fees, lives in extreme poverty, relies on the meager income of his mother and sister, cannot pay rent, is hungry and cold, borrows usurious loans, and huddles all day in the bucket room of a 5-story apartment. By chance, he met Marmeladov, an unemployed civilian who was equally poor but drunk all day, and Sonia, Marmeradov's eldest daughter, was forced to sell herself on the streets to make ends meet. Forced by his own situation and the desire to be an "extraordinary person", Raskolnikov killed the old woman who was usury, Alyona Ivanovna (who in a panic also killed the old woman's sister Lizavita), and snatched one of the old woman's boxes and money bags. After the incident, he panicked inside, coupled with fever, unconscious for a few days, and then his condition improved, but he fell into extreme internal contradictions, pain, despair, and almost collapsed. He wandered the streets of Petersburg like an abandoned ghost, just in time to meet Malmedov, who had been killed by a car, and gave the only 25 rubles that his mother had sent him to The orphaned and widowed mother of Marmeradov. Later, his mother, his sister Afdodia Aromanlovna, his sister's fiancé Luren, and the landlord SvidrieGalov, who had harassed his sister, also came to Petersburg. Raskolnikov and his friend Razumishin uncover Luren's plot to defraud his sister, Afdodia Aromanlovna. Luren held a grudge against him, so he framed Sonia at Marmeladov's post-funeral party for stealing his money, thus slandering Raskolnikov's improper conduct, and Luren was exposed, and Sonia was very grateful to Raskolnikov. In the end, under the persuasion of Polfiri and the inspiration of Sonia, Raskolnikov chose to turn himself in. Raskolnikov was sentenced to 8 years of second-class hard labor and exiled to Siberia, and Sonia followed him to the penal colony. Gradually, spiritual repentance and awakening began, and it went to a new life.
Deep and rich themes:
Every great literary work has a profound richness, truly showing the characteristics of a certain era, observing the living conditions of the people of the times, and enlightening the lives of future people, so the classic literary works are not only the present, but it will last forever and is the spiritual wealth of the entire human history.
Crime and Punishment is a work of immortal realism
It truly reflects the Russian society and sentient beings before and after the serfdom reform in the mid-19th century. Dull, dirty, dilapidated, lifeless Petersburg. College students who are hungry and cold and have no hope of dropping out of school; poor, unemployed and drunk civilian officials; housewives who are seriously ill and fantasize about aristocratic life; prostitutes who are forced to prostitute on the streets in order to maintain their near collapse; despicable and shameless small bourgeoisie who spend money like dirt for personal gain; landlords who spend money like dirt, are absurd and extravagant, and have compassion for heaven and earth; old wives who are cruel and vicious, exploiting usurious loans to others, and so on. Together, these constituted the Russian society of the time.
This kind of social environment naturally gives birth to various social trends of thought, criminal psychology, ethics and morality.
Raskolnikov's "philosophy of the superman", he believed that man can be divided into two categories: one is the "ordinary man", who is subservient, humble, and only the material for breeding human beings. The other category of people is the "extraordinary people", like Napoleon and Copernicus, who grasp the truth of human development, dominate the world, and firmly pursue their ideals, sacrificing thousands of lives in order to realize their ideals. Driven by this thought, he went to crime, killed the old woman who was usury, Alyona Ivanovna, and robbed her of her money to help the poor.
Polfir believes that all crime is caused by the social environment in which man lives, that the environment and nature lead to crime, and that there is no crime in socialist society.
Sonia redeems herself with the spirit of religious Christ, ferrying others, and she inspires Raskolnikov to be reborn. Raskolnikov's "sin" leads to physical and spiritual "punishment," physical suffering, mental suffering, and conscientious condemnation. This led Raskolnikov to finally repudiate his previous philosophical ideas.
Under the impression of emerging bourgeois ideology, Lu Ren was extremely self-interested.
And so on, these ideas contradict each other in Crime and Punishment, and eventually there is a return to the author's humanistic philosophical ideas. Oppose all violence, and in the torture of the soul, get spiritual perfection and redemption.
Creative artistic approach
Crime and Punishment pioneered modernism.
Narrative downplays the storyline. In fact, the story of "Crime and Punishment" is extremely simple, it describes a murder and crime incident, there is no thrilling story, there is no ups and downs, and the magnificent storyline. But the psychological activity of each character is real and perceptible, and some people have commented that Dostoevsky's depiction of the killing scene is extremely terrifying, scaring not only the reader, but also himself.
The delicate psychological description of the brushstrokes and the display of the inner world of the characters have become the indiscriminate pursuit of future stream-of-consciousness novels. The novel describes the psychological activities of the protagonist Raskolnikov before and after the crime, the wandering and tension before the crime, the tension and haste at the time of the crime, the panic after the crime, the internal contradictions and struggles, and the near collapse. The author uses an inner monologue to write about Raskolnikov's dreams, hallucinations, insanity under contradictions and conflicts, and subconscious activities. This stream-of-consciousness technique was rare before Dostoevsky, and can be said to be his first.
Pioneered the narrative mode of polyphonic fiction. Bakhkin argues that Dostoevsky "created a completely new type of artistic thinking—polyphonic artistic thinking," in which the writer provides a variety of narrative angles to narrate the story. Such as Raskolnikov's philosophy in the novel, Sonia's Christian spirit, Luren's individualistic thought, Polfiri's "realistic life and legal concept", and so on. Many consciousnesses of equal status, together with their respective worlds, in the event of unification, each speaks out, each expresses its own opinions, and each of its own body. This is the narrative form of the polyphonic novel.