Crime And Punishment By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Forming emotional connections is mandatory for a healthy human life. They are irreplaceable components of the human soul. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1866 novel Crime and Punishment demonstrates the emotional suffering Russian Rodin Raskolnikov undergoes when he is exiled from these mandatory emotional connections internally and externally. Throughout the novel his mental health decreases has he is filled with extreme sorrow and anxiety. While Rodin's internal and external punishment of exile was one filled with tremendous sorrow, it was eventually turned into an enriching experience. The cause of Rodin's internal exile is his mental trauma over the killing of a pawnbroker and her sister. While he had first gladly committed the act, afterwards he was plunged into a state of mental despair over his right to take their lives. This was due to his …show more content…
This is what eventually leads to his external exile. He contemplates the idea of suicide and remembers the people he had once seen jump over a bridge to end their painful life. He ponders this idea at the same time as he questions turning himself in and taking responsibility for his actions. This tension climaxes as he is looking over the bride unable to jump out of a hidden desire to live and recover. This highlights the main value of exile, "It is more of a treatment to the criminal than a punishment such as prison or death" (Rubinstein 27). It appeals to the hope of renewal and healing, "He didn’t understand that that consciousness might be the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future resurrection. He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he could not step over, again through weakness and meanness" (Dostoyevsky 956). Rodin is bound by human nature to stay alive. In the end it is the pure essence of hope that leads to his choice of a punishment such as external exile in Siberia over