★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: Crime And Punishment
• Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Translator: Constance Garnett
• Year: 1866 (mine was 2007 Barnes & Noble Classics edition)
• Pages: 521*
• Genre: Fiction
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
• ISBN: 978-1-59308-081-5 (trade paperback)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* Page count does not include author biography, timeline, introduction, list of characters, map, and other post-text essays.)

 

Summary

Yay! I finally read a Russian novel!

This book, considered by some to be among the greatest of all time, tells of Russian student Raskolnikov, who commits a murder in an effort to prove to himself that he’s a “Napoleon” — a man to whom ordinary laws do not apply. Most of the novel is in the aftermath of the murder, as Raskolnikov deals with illness and paranoia, poverty and hunger, frustrating family relationships, interference from various people, and the city (St. Petersburg) itself.

 

Praise

I found the narrative rather easy to follow (relative to other 1800s novels). The chronology is straightforward, descriptions of people and places are sharp and clear (though they often go on too long), and the actions of the characters are well-described. Unlike many paper-thin characters in novels of every time period, the characters in this one are solid and tangible — their motivations are perfectly realistic, all of them have depth and believable contradictions, and none are presented as entirely good or bad people, each with his or her strengths and weaknesses.

For a book of its time, I found the story relatively free from racism and sexism. On the gender equality front, Dostoevsky goes out of his way to make his female characters as solid and important as his male characters — which I’ve found to be rare in all time periods. He also goes out of his way to have characters comment on the plight of women in a patriarchal society. In that sense, it seemed fairly enlightened (even when compared to American stories from the 1900s).

 

Criticism

While I found much of the dialog fascinating (‘so this is how people spoke to one another in 1860s Russia!” — or at least in the mind of this one author), it very often went on far too long, and pointlessly. Several times, the person speaking — uninterrupted for several pages — was recounting events we’d only just read about. In those cases, the book could have been shortened by 80 or 100 pages simply by changing those conversations to: “and then [he/she] recounted what had just happened”. Even when the dialog was meant to show that a character is putting her particular spin on events, the author could have simply said that instead of rewriting the entire incident as dialog with a few notable changes from the character’s perspective.

About a third of the way through I began to notice that parts of the story seemed like they were from a different novel, only incidentally connected to the primary plot of Raskolnikov’s crime and aftermath. When Dostoevsky would spend dozens of pages on the Marmeladov family, I kept trying to figure out how those people were relevant to the plot. It turns out they really weren’t relevant. I later learned that Dostoevsky had originally been writing a book called The Drunkards, centered on Marmeladov’s family with the intent of discussing “the present question of drunkenness ... [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstances, etc., etc.” But then, inspired by a true crime story, Dostoevsky began writing the story of Raskolnikov. Instead of making it a separate book, he attempted (badly, in my opinion) to weave it through the existing narrative of The Drunkards. The result is that Crime And Punishment is only half about the crime and Raskolnikov’s thoughts and experiences, while also nearly half about the Marmeladov family. Personally, I think the two stories would have both been improved by separating them into two narratives. As it is, each distracts from the other.

Though I said above that the book was relatively free from racism — it did make appearances. At first, there were only a few humorous depictions of Germans as uneducated simpletons. But then, on page 346, there it was: “It was my mistake, too, not to have given them money ... Why on earth was I such a Jew?”. Later there was another reference to Jews as wealth-hoarders and a derogatory comment about the appearance of Jews — both gratuitously crammed in with no relevance to the story whatsoever.

 

Quotations

Some passages were more memorable than others; here are a few I’ve selected as stand-out quotations. The first hit a little too close to home for me.

“It’s because I babble that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I babble because I do nothing.”

—page 6

The following quotation was ironic, given the author’s later slurs against “Jews”.

“Moreover, in order to understand any man one must approach gradually and carefully to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and remedy afterwards.”

—page 36

The following passage seemed “emo” to me:

“So he tortured himself, taunting himself with such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment in it.”

—page 46

In the following, “one tiny crime” refers to the the murder of Aliona Ivanovna, and “thousands of good deeds” refers to his plan to use money stolen from her to help the destitute.

“Would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”

—page 66

I’ve thought along the following lines quite frequently.

“...we certainly all resemble madmen quite often, but with the slight difference that the deranged are even madder, because we have to draw the line somewhere. It’s true that a normal man hardly even exists. It’s hard to find one in a dozen — perhaps even one in a hundred thousand.”

—page 216-17

“...to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough.”

—page 225

An interesting commentary on the pointlessness of simply locking away criminals for a fixed period of time:

“They say it is necessary for me to suffer! What’s the object of these senseless sufferings? Shall I know any better what they are for, after twenty years’ penal servitude? And what shall I have to live for then?”

—page 493

 

Conclusion

As I do with most older books, I gave consideration to the time period (“Darwinian theory” was mentioned as a very new thing) and tried to recognize that storytelling has changed dramatically over time. Otherwise I would have rated this book with two stars. While parts of it were entertaining, even surprisingly so, other parts were grueling and pointless to read. While literary scholars praise it for being “carefully crafted” and “full of poignant symbolism”, I found neither of those things to be true.

Still, almost every part of it was more interesting than the parts of War And Peace I have read.

 

 

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