Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment: No Crime Takes Place in a Societal Vacuum

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment follows the descent into near-madness of a man gripped by guilt and paranoia. At its core, Crime and Punishment is the story of one Russian man named Raskolnikov, but in its more universal sense it stands as statement on how no action undertaken by a human is ever contemplated and carried out in a vacuum. 

Even those crimes that are carried out by those already firmly in the graps of insanity are motivated, at least in part, by the society around them. Raskolnikov’s decision to commit the murder that drives the story of Crime and Punishment is an act that is undertaken in no small part due to the qualities of the time in which he lived.

During the 19th century Russia was experiencing its most tumultuous period since the violence that surrounded its genesis. Theories and ideas which had been formulated in the rest of Europe and in America during the Englightenment had finally penetrated into feudal Russian, which resembled a Middle Ages nation more than a progressive 19th century country in some ways. Radical ideas from socialism to nihilism all had one common thread running through them: revolutionizing and modernizing Russia out of its dark ages trap.

At the same time, however, there also existed a large contingent of people in Russia who believed that reason was not the path to progress and contentment. Raskolnikov is one of those who embraces these radical ideas, especially that of the super-human whose justified immoral acts because they are done in the name of a greater good in which the ends justifies the means. Raskolnikov makes several references to Napoleon, an obvious allusion to his idea of this super-human.