Crime And Punishment Themes

The book I chose was Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. There were multiple themes in this story, but the one I felt that was shown the strongest was alienation. Additionally, I feel like there two characters that I couldn’t directly connect with, but in a way, I was able to sympathize or understand why they did what they did. Those two characters are Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov.
In the beginning of the story, Raskolnikov’s pride isolates him from society. He views himself as better than everyone else and because of this, he is unable to relate to other people. When it comes to his own personal philosophy, he views other people as objects that he uses for his own gain. After murdering the pawnbroker and another person, Raskolnikov’s separation from society intensifies due to him feeling …show more content…
This also combined with the horrible acts he committed like trying to rape Dunya, lead to him not being able to live his life knowing what he did and what the future most likely holds for him. He seemed to want to die with some form of self-respect, unlike Raskolnikov who doesn’t seem to have much dignity. Svidrigailov seems to try to make up for his bad deeds by doing things like giving money to fiancée and their family. Doing this seems to kind of rid him, so to speak, of his “sins” or bad deeds. In a way, this seems to be his way of apologizing too. If I were in his situation, I wouldn’t be able to live with the things I had done either.
Overall, there were multiple themes in Crime and Punishment, but the one I felt that was most prominent was alienation. Also too, I felt like there were two characters whom I was able to sympathize with or understand their point of view or where they were coming from. The two characters I could sympathize or understand were Raskolnikov, and