Patrick Finnegan

January 21, 2009

Suffering for Salvation

Raskolinkov lives in a closet. Svidigailov is a man of class. Mikolka is a tradesman. Although from different backgrounds, the three characters: Svidigailov, Mikolka and Raskolinkov, suffer in order to achieve salvation. The reader must analyze each characters’ attempt to achieve salvation by examining their environment, the causes of their suffering, and the coping mechanisms they use to combat their suffering.

        The environments in which Svidigailov and Raskolinkov are brought up in are very distinct. Svidigailov comes from a family where money is never the issue. Bought into a family of money, he seeks something that money can not buy, love. His priorities in life abruptly foil other characters, such as Raskolinkov. “His closet was located just under the roof of a tall five story house and was more like a cupboard than a room” (1). His almost inhumane living conditions reflect on his precedence’s in life. Raskolinkov and the people who surround him scrape by without money. He feels obligations to the people who are worse off than himself. Finally there is Mikolka, in order to describe the environmental conditions in which Mikolka lives in we must look at his lifestyle. From what one can learn in the book, he is a tradesman who has deep spiritual faith. “He was zealous, prayed to god at night, and read, and could not stop reading…Petersburg had a strong affect upon him, especially the female sex, yes, and wine, too” (455). He is uncomfortable with the sins going on around him. Like Raskolinkov, Mikolka knows that everyone is suffering. Yet he finds a way to get by in life through offering his, and others, misfortunes up to God. These three different environments show how anyone is subjected to suffering.

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Suffering can take place in any environment, but what triggers one to do something to cause personal suffering, is their attempt to find salvation. Their suffering is self inflicted. For example, suffering surrounds Raskolinkov. His mother suffers, his sister suffers, his neighbors suffer, his land lady suffers, and even the old crone suffers. First he gives out his money to people in need, then Raskolinkov does the unimaginable, he tries to purge everyone’s’ suffering. “The extraordinary have the right to transgress the law, because in point of fact they are extraordinary” (259). Hinting that he is an extra ordinary man, Rakolinkov ...

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