CRIMEN AND PUNISHMENT

 

Crimen and Punishment.

Crimen and Punishment (1866) considered by critics to be Dostoevsky's first masterpiece, is a profound psychological analysis of its protagonist, the young student Raskolnikov, whose firm belief that humanitarian goals justify evil leads him to the murder of a Petersburg usurer.

But , since he commits the crime, guilt will be a constant nightmare with which the student will be unable to live. Dostoevsky's feverish and compassionate style follows with unique mastery the recesses of the student`s contradictory  emotions and reflects the extreme struggle he wages with his conscience while wandering the streets of Saint Petersburg.

REVIEW

It is a dense book, which places us in 19th century Russia, and in which the author emphasizes not insistently on the crime committed by the protagonist nor on the official punishment given, but on the internal struggle that he and that we can go through pages after pages, making it clear that his greatest punishment and prison are his thoughts, demonstrating through Rodia (the protagonist) that sometimes we fall into the false belief that by "eliminating" who we consider the knot of evil, The world will be a better and enlightened place, in addition to bringing the overvaluation of our intelligence to "deal" with the emotions generated after an act that goes against virtue and honorability, being able to see the birth of the sense of guilt, which He becomes the great inquisitor, that jailer who brings within himself the deserved punishment, putting confession on the table as the only way out, releasing from his psyche the demons that feed that guilt. In the same way, certain symbolisms caught my attention, focused mainly on biblical themes, and can bring a note; The protagonist asks his friend to tell him about the story of "Lazarus", being able to understand there that his subconscious seeks that awakening of death, caused by his criminal act, and thus achieve the resurrection of his Being, silencing the noise in his house, in his mind, in his own prison. Without a doubt, a gem of classical literature, which every bibliophile should give themselves the opportunity to taste, and at the same time, reflect on the emotional consequences that we have after every action carried out, mainly when this is done not by reason but by visceral form.