Dostoevsky’s protagonist also struggles with his own faith, seemingly using atheism as another disguise and further reasoning for his argument that his crime was justified. However, we see that Raskolnikov only flirts with the idea that a God may not exist as a result of his disillusionment with the distribution of hardship. Dostoevsky creates characters all around Raskolnikov who face great hardships of varied degrees and kinds. For example, “Sonia is kind-hearted but pushed into whoredom by her social and economic condition. Marmeladov, an otherwise civil clerk, because of misfortune is pushed from bad to worse as he ends up in self-inflicted suffering” (Uwasomba 145). There is no explanation, in Raskolnikov’s perspective, for these otherwise
