Neurologist Sigmund Freud once said, “Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious” (“The Interpretation”). Sigmund Freud firmly believes that dreams allow people to be what they cannot be, and to say what they can not say in our more repressed daily lives (Freud). Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a novel that involves dreams to symbolize characters and foreshadow situations. Raskolnikov’s dreams may give more insight to his mind than the entire novel. Raskolnikov experiences four dreams from beginning to end. Dostoyevsky uses dreams to express Raskolnikov 's actual thoughts, which may be more insightful than events that occur when Raskolnikov is awake.
There are multiple theories involved in dream analysis, which apply to each of Raskolnikov 's dreams. The first theory is the evolutionary theory. Evolutionary …show more content…
In his article all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken? (Dostoyevsky 249)
Even though Raskolnikov wants to believe he is an extraordinary man by writing an article, his dreams conflict that idea and reveal his true feelings toward his crime. While in prison, Raskolnikov is convinced that his act of murder was only “an error” and he becomes very ill. In his fourth dream, there is a plague of microscopic bugs. The bugs infest people, making everyone in the world thinking that they are the most intelligent beings in the world. Raskolnikov says:
But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, [and] their moral convictions so infallible. (Dostoyevsky
There are multiple theories involved in dream analysis, which apply to each of Raskolnikov 's dreams. The first theory is the evolutionary theory. Evolutionary …show more content…
In his article all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken? (Dostoyevsky 249)
Even though Raskolnikov wants to believe he is an extraordinary man by writing an article, his dreams conflict that idea and reveal his true feelings toward his crime. While in prison, Raskolnikov is convinced that his act of murder was only “an error” and he becomes very ill. In his fourth dream, there is a plague of microscopic bugs. The bugs infest people, making everyone in the world thinking that they are the most intelligent beings in the world. Raskolnikov says:
But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, [and] their moral convictions so infallible. (Dostoyevsky