Crime and Punishment Parts I -IV

Questions• What main themes do you discern?

• Pick out a recurrent motif

• What characters do we meet?

• Which is your favourite character?

• Which scene or passage do you find the most striking?

Some Themes• Rationalism vs irrationalism• The alienation of the individual in contemporary

society• Religious faith• Murder • Suicide• Death• The need to suffer• Sexuality• Love• Sickness and death• Sanity and insanity• The legal system

Some Motifs• Money• Clothing• Jewelry• Insects• animals• Smells• Food• Drink• Tobacco• The church

Intertextuality

• References to other works of literature

• Parallels with other texts you have read

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov

His name: • 1. raskolot’ ‘to cleave’, ‘to chop’, ‘to split’• 2. Raskól - ‘schism’ (religious)

The raskolniks were a sect of “Old Believers” – a peasant sect

Typical Russian “intelligent” – rude, violent, lack of personal hygiene, seeks to improve society through violence, bloodshed, terror

Description: One/1 (pp. 6-7)

Raskolnikov’s ideas• His utopian project for cities: One/6 (pp.

89-90)

• His article on Crime Three/5 (pp. 306-316)

• Two categories of human beings (309)

• Right to step across obstacles (308)

• “step over a dead body, over a pool of blood.” (310)

• “New Jerusalem” God and the Resurrection of Lazarus (310-311)

Raskolnikov’s realization

• Three / 6 (325-326)

• “The real overlord…”

• “I killed the principle”

• Raskolnikov’s dream: Three / 6 (pp. 328-330)

Dmitry Prokofievich Razumikhin

• Razumikhin from razum – ‘intelligence’

• Vrazumikhin – from Russ. Vrazumit’: ‘to bring to senses’

• Luzhin misnames him Rassudochkin from rassudok (logic, rationality)

• Energetic, hardworking

Sonya Marmeladova• Paradox of virtue and ‘vice’: how can

one remain chaste and be a prostitute

• Sonya (from Sophia – “wisdom” St Sophia was the mother of three daughters Faith, Hope and Love)

• One of a ‘paradigm of prostitutes’ in the novel

• The path of degradation and destruction

• First description: Two/7 (pp. 220-221)

Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov

• Marmelad: Jellied candy

• Is bringing a cookie for the children when he is killed

• Is he a good or a bad person?

• Sonya has learned to read the Bible from him

Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova

• Three children: Polya, Lyonya, Kolya

• Archetypical widow dying of tuberculosis

Alyona Ivanovna

• Widow, pawnbroker, plans to leave her wealth to monastery

• Sister Lizaveta (pious, always pregnant!)

SECONDARY CHARACTERS

Arkady IvanovichSvidrigailov

• Description Three/4 (p. 290)

• Pure sexual pleasures:

Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin

• Possible significance of first name and patronymic?

• Luzhin – ‘puddle’