Crime and Punishment (the novel)

In war, a solider has no room for his own personal feelings and emotions. He has to make logical decisions that will ensure his side victory, and relies on his intelligence, not his morals, to succeed. If he were to make decisions based on his desire not have people get hurt or killed, his goals would most likely not be met. In the same way, Raskolnikov, in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, tries to do what he knows to be logical and ignores his emotions, throwing away his own morals for the sake of a mere idea. Raskolnikov’s struggle to listen to his mind rather than his heart is portrayed through his thoughts and monologues that occur as he faces many hardships. Thoughts about the strangers he meets, the people close to him, and himself, in particular, illustrate his struggle most clearly, and demonstrate Dostoevsky’s idea that people sometimes cling to logic to avoid their true feelings.
From the reactions that Raskolnikov takes upon the people that he meets in Petersburg, one can see how he tries to listen to his own reasoning rather than his emotions. For example, when Raskolnikov leaves money on Marmeladov ‘s windowsill, he believes that he has done “ a stupid thing”since “they have Sonia an

ia and I want it myself.” By giving money to Marmeladov’s family, Raskolnikov shows a moment of emotional impulsiveness, but then the intellectual side of him makes him regret it. Also, later a similar situation occurs when Raskolnikov gives a policeman money to help a sixteen-year-old girl, saying to himself, “He has carried off my twenty copecks…And why did I want to interfere?” Once again, he is torn between his true feelings and how he thinks he should be reacting to such situations. The intellectual part of Rasko’s mind tells him such people are insignificant and have no relation to him, while the other part of him fells compassion for those same individuals. His conflict of logic and emotion is also shown when Raskolnikov meets a man who calls him a murderer on the street. His first feeling was that he was “chilled all over,” but later he laughs to himself, saying “Napoleon, the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker…that’s a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovitch to digest!” He is hiding behind the vanity over his knowledge about the idea of “extraordinary” people when he is in actuality afraid of the consequences of his being found out. Rasko prefers to see himself as a steadfast person instead of a frightened one, so he puts on his bitter smile to shield himself from the reality of his feelings. Similarly, during his interview with Porfiry, he was indirectly proclaimed to be a murderer but was unaffected by the statement, as he thought “the details of the interview were of little consequence.” By thinking this thought, he shows that he is trying to remain unaffected by Porfiry’s words when actually he is in fact frightened. Also, he thinks Svidrigailov can provide him with “information, or a means of escape,” but at the same time thinks “how sick he was of it all!” Rasko is showing again his attempt to act intellectual in the face of being convicted of murder, much like his idea about “extraordinary” people, when actually he is afraid, desperate, and tired of all the hardships he has endured. Many of the strangers that Raskolnikov meets causes him to mentally struggle, as he tries to avoid his true feelings with logical thinking.

At one point or another it is safe to say that each of us has lied to ourselves. Sometimes we just don’t want to admit our anger due to the embarrassment it would cause, or maybe we don’t want to admit that we care for someone when we really do. In such cases we may try to come up with our own logical explanations for the reasons why we might feel a certain way so that we don’t have to admit to ourselves our true feelings, even though