Fyodor Dostoevsky Character Analysis

Raskolnikov only finds redemption when time slows down and gives him opportunities to reflect on his guilt. When Raskolnikov travels to Sonya’s house to hear her reading of Lazarus from the Bible, “the candle-end had long been burning out… casting a dim light in this destitute room upon the murderer and the harlot strangely come together over the reading of the eternal book” (Dostoevsky 328). Dostoevsky employs the candlestick to freeze the passage of time because of the ambiguous state of the candle flame: either long burnt out, or burning for a long time. Before the auspices of the candle, Sonya and Raskolnikov come together overtly for the first time in a moment of eternity. Dostoevsky thus uses these two methods to “freeze this crucial encounter… to resonate with perpetual, biblical time and to separate this scene from Western, linear time” (Tucker, Profane Challenge and Orthodox Response 123). During this scene, Raskolnikov begins to desire salvation from his guilt, stopping his alienation from God and the rest of society. Thus, Dostoevsky indicates that Raskolnikov only finds his redemption during the eternal Orthodox time that brings him closer towards God. The next time Raskolnikov makes significant progress towards absolving his guilt happens much later in Siberia. When he …show more content…
Rushing western thought isolates Raskolnikov, pushing him towards the dual murders, but ultimately Orthodoxy brings him salvation, giving him his life back along with his humanity. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky utilizes the time parallel to excoriate westernization and reveal the destruction of Russia’s rapid rate of westernization, calling for a return to Orthodoxy as an attempt to guide