And Punishment Essay: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is the protagonist of Crime and Punishment. He is a broke man living in a beat down apartment at the very top of a building. He faces many interior struggles throughout the novel that are very hard and intense for him to deal with. These struggles include his decision on whether or not to murder the pawnbroker, and his conflict with confessing his crime and feeling normal again. Due his great loneliness and hatred towards himself, Raskolnikov drives himself insane to a point where he seems ill. He is a former law student and seems to say he dropped out for economic reasons. In the beginning of the novel, he his struggling is described, as well as the fact that he was “was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had …show more content…
This side comes out when he has little time to think over his actions and therefore, comes out as a decent human being. One of my favorite scenes is when Raskolnikov gives the last of his money to a man named Katerina Marmeladov. Through a discussion with Katerina, Raskolnikov learns he has “spent a night on a hay barge, on the Neva.” (Dostoyevsky, Part 1, Chapter 2). This then emphasizes Raskolnikov’s soft, kind hearted side because even though he is very poor as well, he knew this other man could use the money ever more. However, later on, Raskolnikov’s dark side begins to take over again and he regrets his kind actions because now he has no money. This part angered me because I believed Raskolnikov was being a very moral, kind man but then to later regret it, turned his whole mood back to negative. After murdering the pawnbroker, Raskolnikov again suffers with accepting what he had just done. He plays the crime over and over in his head and thinks that it cannot have really happened. He thinks to himself, “surely it isn’t beginning already! Surely it isn’t my punishment coming upon me? It is!” (Dostoyevsky, Part 2, Chapter