Crime and Punishment Read Online Free PDF Page A

introduces the theme of the family. Raskolnikov's fatherless family also serves to de-subjectivize and universalize the image in which he appears to the reader. We can understand, not merely intellectually but also in emotional terms, Raskolnikov's desire to do something in order to securethe fortunes of his mother and sister, to assert the strength that is lacking because of his father's absence. At the same time, we are kept aware of the extent to which Raskolnikov has broken away from the lifelines that bind him to existence. The climate of the family is one of humility, tolerance and mutual acceptance; by his thoughts and actions, Raskolnikov transgresses the laws by which it operates – yet only to a certain extent: as Dunya realizes the reason for what he has done, her attitude towards him softens, even though her determination that he should face the consequences of his actions is made resolute. As for Pulkheria Aleksandrovna, his mother, she passes from a state of uncomprehending rejection of her son to one of suffering acceptance. In overcoming his pride and taking upon himself the punishment decreed by the state and society, Raskolnikov re-enters the bosom of his family, which becomes a symbol of narodnost ’ (national and folk identity), and love of neighbour in the Christian sense. This is made abundantly clear in the draft notes, where, for example, Raskolnikov's contempt for the old woman-‘louse’ is seen as a fatal lapse into the attitude of the nihilists, who really care only about themselves. From a study of the drafts, we can see that the novel's horizons are quite certainly intended to include a vision of a universal family as the longed-for ideal, in opposition to the ‘antheap’ or the socialist utopia, founded on theoretic abstractions and delusions of ‘progress’. In Raskolnikov's friendship with Razumikhin we can also perceive Dostoyevsky's conception of true brotherhood, as opposed to the ‘fraternity’ of the student body and the radical movement.
    Raskolnikov's family has its counterpart in that of Sonya. The Marmeladov household, with its alcoholic father, consumptive mother and ultimately orphaned children, took its origins in the novel The Drunkards , which Dostoyevsky eventually merged with the Raskolnikov tale to produce Crime and Punishment , aware of the many parallels of characterization in the two works. For all the disasters that befall it, this menage is none the less a family , an integral unit with its own sacred symbols and objects, such as the green drap-de-dames shawl and the travelling-box. It is no coincidence that it should be Sonya, theprostitute from a broken, destroyed home, who raises Raskolnikov from the ‘death’ of isolation and self-defilement and estrangement into which he has fallen, and restores him to the community of mankind; in order to be thus restored, he must suffer, and his return to humanity must take place in the sign of the Cross and the reality of the Russian earth:
    ‘What should you do?’ she exclaimed, leaping up from her chair, and her eyes, hitherto filled with tears, suddenly began to flash. ‘Get up!’ (She gripped him by the shoulder; slowly he began to get up, staring at her in near-amazement.) ‘Go immediately, this very moment, go and stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the ground that you've desecrated, and then bow to the whole world, to all four points of the compass and tell everyone, out loud: “I have killed!” Then God will send you life again… You must accept suffering and redeem yourself by it, that's what.’
    Sonya, who has suffered the loss of her parents, her honour and her dignity, yet has not abandoned her faith, understands the loss sustained by Raskolnikov, who has abandoned his. He has lost God, lost himself, the sanctity of his own personality, and he can recover this only by penal servitude and the living contact it will involve with the Russian people. Here Dostoyevsky explicitly points to his