Crime and Punishment: What Is Raskolnikov's Real Punishment?
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is number 23 on BBC Culture's 2018 list of the 100 stories that shaped the world. It is not a novel about who did it, but about what happens to a mind that has given itself permission to kill.
A Novel That Isn't Looking for the Culprit
Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment in Russia in 1866. Unlike a detective novel, here the reader witnesses the crime first-hand.
The question is a different one: what goes on in the mind of someone who decides he has the right to kill.
Raskolnikov and His Theory
The story is set in St Petersburg during a stifling summer. Rodion Raskolnikov is a former law student. He lives in a cramped garret under the roof and owes months of rent. For weeks he has been thinking about killing Alyona Ivanovna, an old pawnbroker.
In a tavern he meets Marmeladov, an alcoholic former civil servant. His daughter, Sonya, works as a prostitute to feed the family. Then a letter from his mother tells him that his sister Dunya is going to marry Luzhin, a calculating lawyer, in order to help him. Raskolnikov sees in that marriage the same thing Sonya is doing: selling herself for the sake of others.
In another tavern he overhears a student proposing a calculation: one death in exchange for a hundred lives. Raskolnikov himself has written an article arguing that extraordinary men, like Napoleon, may break the law if their idea demands it.
The Crime and the Magistrate Who Knows How to Wait
Raskolnikov climbs the stairs to the old woman's flat with an axe hanging from a loop sewn inside his coat. He kills her. Then Lizaveta, the victim's sister, a defenceless woman, walks in, and he kills her too. He takes some jewellery and a purse he never even opens, and hides it all under a stone.
Afterwards he falls ill. He faints at the police station when the murder is mentioned, and goes back to the flat to ring the doorbell. On a bridge over the Neva, he feels he has been cut off from everything and everyone.
Enter Porfiry Petrovich, the examining magistrate. He has no evidence, but he has read the article. Their conversations are duels: Porfiry rambles, smiles and lets the suspect give himself away. Meanwhile, Raskolnikov becomes part of Sonya's life, and she reads him the raising of Lazarus. It is to her, and her alone, that he confesses the crime.
How Crime and Punishment Ends
Spoiler warning: the ending is revealed from here on. Porfiry tells Raskolnikov he knows he did it and advises him to turn himself in. Svidrigailov, Dunya's former employer, has overheard the confession through a partition wall and uses it to lure Dunya. She shoots at him, and he lets her go. That night he gives Sonya money so she can follow Raskolnikov, and at dawn he shoots himself.
Raskolnikov kneels in the Haymarket, kisses the ground as Sonya asked him to, and confesses at the police station. He is sentenced to eight years of penal servitude in Siberia.
The Punishment That Wasn't Prison
In Siberia, Raskolnikov still does not repent. He reproaches himself only for having been weak. To him, his crime was a miscalculation, not a sin.
The punishment in the title is something else: the isolation that began on that bridge. Sonya has followed him to Siberia. The convicts love her and loathe him. While ill, he dreams of a plague that convinces each person that they possess the absolute truth, until humanity destroys itself. It is his own theory, extended to everyone.
One morning, by the river, he weeps with his arms around Sonya's knees. That is where the novel ends. His renewal, the narrator warns, would be another story.
Context and Influence
Dostoevsky published it in instalments in the magazine The Russian Messenger while hounded by debts. Years earlier he had been sentenced to death for belonging to a clandestine political circle, pardoned at the last moment and sent to a prison camp in Siberia. In the Russia of his day, young radicals argued that reason and utility were enough to decide what was right. Dostoevsky took that idea all the way to the axe.
Nietzsche called him the only psychologist from whom he had anything to learn. Robert Bresson drew on the novel for Pickpocket. The creators of Columbo cited Porfiry as a model. And in Match Point, Woody Allen gives the novel to a murderer who gets away with it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the punishment in Crime and Punishment?
It is not prison, but Raskolnikov's isolation, which begins on a bridge over the Neva after the crime. He feels cut off from everything and everyone.
Does Raskolnikov repent at the end?
In Siberia he still does not repent and reproaches himself only for having been weak. The novel ends as he weeps beside Sonya, and the narrator warns that his renewal would be another story.
Who is Porfiry Petrovich?
He is the examining magistrate investigating the crime. He has no evidence, but he lets the suspect give himself away, and the creators of Columbo cited him as a model.
When was Crime and Punishment published?
In 1866, in instalments, in the magazine The Russian Messenger.
Informative article written with the help of AI tools from the verified script of the video. The video is in Spanish.