Crime And Punishment

Crime and Punishment

Comparison Essay between Crime and Punishment and Notes from the
Underground

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s stories are stories of a sort of rebirth. He
weaves a tale of suffering and how each character attempts to deliver
themselves from this misery. In the novel Crime and Punishment, he
tells the story of Raskolnikov, a former student who murders an old
pawnbroker as an attempt to prove a theory. In Notes from the
Underground, we are given a chance to explore Dostoyevsky’s opinion of
human beings.
Dostoyevsky’s characters are very similar, as is his stories. He puts
a strong stress on the estrangement and isolation his characters feel.
His characters are both brilliant and “sick” as mentioned in each novel,
poisoned by their intelligence. In Notes from the Underground, the
character, who is never given a name, writes his journal from solitude.
He is spoiled by his intelligence, giving him a fierce conceit with
which he lashes out at the world and justifies the malicious things he
does. At the same time, though, he speaks of the doubt he feels at the
value of human thought and purpose and later, of human life. He
believes that intelligence, to be constantly questioning and
“faithless(ly) drifting” between ideas, is a curse. To be damned to see
everything, clearly as a window (and that includes things that aren’t
meant to be seen, such as the corruption in the world) or constantly
seeking the meaning of things elusive. Dostoyevsky thought that humans
ar...

Crime And Punishment

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