Sin and Punishment is sin and punishment in our hearts

What have these past sufferings, all the sufferings, counted! Everything, even his crimes, even the sentences and exiles, now, in the initial impulses he felt were somewhat external, strange, fact that did not seem to be his own experience. But that night, he could not think about anything continuously for a long time, concentrate his thoughts, and now, even if he deliberately solved something, he could not solve it, he just obeyed the feelings. Theory gives way to life, and consciousness should also have a fundamental change. -------- Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a great work, and he uses a unique artistic approach to introduce the reader to tragedy. The book depicts in detail the subtle, almost difficult-to-capture psychological changes in the characters' emotions. Instead of monologues, it is a large number of dialogue forms to express the complexity and change of the character's heart, such as a series of psychological changes before and after the murder of the protagonist of this book, Raskolnikov, we can experience his fear of the discovery of sin, the ecstasy of finding out that sin has not been discovered, and the excitement lasts for a long time, returning to his daily gloom, and self-punishment and pain after the collapse of faith, etc., these emotional experiences are powerless to get rid of its terrible charm for a long time after putting down the book.

Raskolnikov kills not just for his own benefit, but more about practicing his own ideas. This begs the question: Who gave the power to judge others? That is to say, the protagonist kills according to ideas, and after the killing, his conscience condemns him; and even then, he admits that his crime is only that he cannot bear his crime and surrenders himself. That is to say, he killed his principles, and he still believed in his ideas fanatically. But because of his weakness in humanity and compassion, in the end he was destroyed.

Raskolnikov divides people into two categories, one is ordinary, born to be obedient to others; the other is extraordinary, can break the rules and do whatever he wants, of course, there is a premise here for some great purpose, so-called for the public good. Especially when people's lives are full of cruelty and injustice, what does man-made morality mean to a hero? Raskolnikov, who prides himself on being an elite, treats the slain old woman like a lice, not feeling at all that he has done anything wrong; but because of the torment of conscience, and later falling into deep self-doubt, am I also a lice. In his case, good and evil are not important, what matters is utilitarianism.

This question can be boiled down to another, deeper and more important question: What is the criterion for judging good and evil, and how to balance individual and public power? The most terrible thing in life is not evil, not even evil triumphing over good, because such victory can be counted on as temporary. What is terrible is the lack of awareness of good and evil (good and evil are often intertwined), and there is no such social environment for us to establish a just and effective system, who is the hand of God?

Finally Dostoevsky, who was one of the greatest realists, probed the abyss of human suffering, madness and sin, and through the descriptions of different sinners, showed that we were living in a sinful world, and therefore the human heart was burdened with great suffering, and people were in conflict between morality and conscience, between doing good and doing evil. His whole work is soaked with love, and love is its passion, its soul, its poetry.

Another figure, Svidriegelov, is also worth exploring, he himself is evil, but he does evil not because he yearns for evil, but because he wants to transcend it, he wants to subdue this instinct, he is lonely; he has crossed the boundaries of human experience, he wonders whether the burden of life depends only on his will, whether it depends on something other than his will, and as a result, he gets nothing. Now there is only one thing left. He hadn't tried death yet. He intended to die, because death was his destiny, so in the end he committed suicide.

Dostoevsky spoke of the meaning of "sin and punishment," "the sinner himself can be transformed and re-made, and the only way to do it is the law of Christ, which is reflected in the conscience of man."