Crime and Punishment plunges head first into the feverish mental chatter of Raskolnikov. An intelligent, isolated and penniless student in St Petersburg, he envisions himself as a Napoleonic figure---above the conventional morality of society---and is thus able to justify cold-blooded murder on intellectual grounds. The contemplation of murder is clear, and while the act is rehearsed in meticulous detail, the motive is left vague and arbitrary. What follows is a crime, committed in an utterly matter-of-fact manner, and the events that follow. However, his sense of pride is quickly negated as his guilt spirals into self-contempt and delirium.
Does orchestrated violence leave room for salvation?
Dostoyevsky tells a gripping tale, weaving a range of characters from the slum-ridden squalor of Russia in the nineteenth century. Above all, he emphatically proves that action and consequence cannot be separated, and good and bad are never mutually exclusive.
