The Thematic Parallels Between Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov

University Degree Linguistics, Classics and related subjects

Chelsea Greenlee

Dostoevsky

10 August 2011

Between the years 1866 and 1880, Russian author and philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky completed several renowned novels, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. In each of his novels, Dostoevsky examines and interprets several social, physical, mental, and emotional situations and conditions which he believed to both influence and shape the nature of humanity. His theories concerning the causes and effects of these situations are evident throughout each of his works. Despite the fourteen-year gap between when he wrote the first of his novels, Crime and Punishment, and the last, The Brothers Karamazov, the parallel thematic elements in Dostoevsky's writings remain constant. Both The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment contain corresponding central themes including the motivations and psychological consequences of murder, the suffering of children and the foundation of that suffering, and the effects of the influence and the manipulation of money. Furthermore, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov also represent the theories of philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, concerning his interpretation of Dostoevsky’s works as “polyphonic novels,” which contain multiple voices in a dialogue of “polyphonic truth.”

On November 16, 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was condemned to death for his participation in the Petrashevsky Circle, a liberal intellectual group that illegally printed and distributed socialist propaganda. Having witnessed the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, Russia’s ruler during the mid-19th century, Tsar Nicholas I, harshly punished underground organizations that he perceived to be a threat to the Russian autocracy. The execution, which was, in reality, a sadistic mock ceremony meant to punish the radical prisoners psychologically, greatly affected Dostoevsky, especially concerning his political and religious convictions and the preoccupations of his psyche. Influenced by his close encounter with death, by the brutal murder of his father at the hands of serfs who were never brought to justice, and by the death of his own son Alyosha in 1878, Dostoevsky employed the subject of death and crime, murder in particular, and psychological punishment as themes in his most famous publications, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, both of which include murder as a central thematic element.

In Crime and Punishment, Alyona, the pawnbroker, and her sweet but slow sister Lizaveta are brutally murdered by the protagonist, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. In his original plans for the murder, Raskolnikov intended to kill only the pawnbroker. By committing this murder, Raskolnikov believed that he would be performing a sort of service to society -- ridding the world of the greedy, thieving “louse,” while also proving to himself that he is indeed an “extraordinary man,” a man that moves and improves society by contravening the moral codes that govern the rest of humanity. However, Raskolnikov also kills the innocent Lizaveta when he is surprised by her sudden entrance into the apartment immediately following the murder of the pawnbroker. The unjustifiable killing of Lizaveta is soon pushed out of the minds of both Raskolnikov, who cannot validate his vicious action against her, and the other characters, as the plot moves forward, and Raskolnikov attempts instead to justify his murder of the culpable pawnbroker.

In The Brothers Karamazov, the death of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the wealthy patriarch of the Karamazov dynasty, happens in a similar circumstance as the murder of the pawnbroker Alyona in Crime and Punishment. Coarse, vulgar, greedy, and lustful, Fyodor Pavlovich is devoted exclusively to the fulfillment of his sensual desires, with no thought for those whom he harms. Wanting of dignity despite his immense financial prosperity, Fyodor Pavlovich is detested by almost everyone who knows him. Overall, very few characters suffer or are perplexed at the news of Fyodor's death. However, Smerdyakov's motivations for murdering Fyodor were not as obvious as Raskolnikov’s reasoning for the murder of Alyona. The apparent motives that may have compelled Smerdyakov to murder Fyodor Pavlovich can be dismissed – that he wanted to steal money from Fyodor Pavlovich and open a restaurant in Moscow, which is the motive that Smerdyakov confesses to Ivan, though Smerdyakov proves to be no more interested in this money than Raskolnikov is in the money he steals from the pawnbroker after he murders her; or because he is Fyodor Pavlovich’s angry illegitimate son. Unlike Raskolnikov, who believes, or attempts to convince himself, that the murder of the pawnbroker is the benevolent act of an extraordinary man, Smerdyakov’s murder of Fyodor Pavlovich is instead the act of a true atheist. Inspired by Ivan’ s convictions of antireligious amorality, Smerdyakov, blind to Ivan’s feeble devotion to the theories that he himself advocates, kills Fyodor in a world that he believes has no God, a world in which “everything is permitted.”

In both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, psychological suffering plagues the murderers, as well as other characters connected to the acts, as a deteriorating mode of punishment for their crimes. In the very last chapter of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov admits his crime and is sent to prison. His true punishment, however, takes place throughout the novel, long before his final confession, in the form of mental and psychological anguish and delirium. Dostoevsky describes Raskolnikov’s state of fevered disorientation even as he contemplates the murder of the pawnbroker:

His nervous trembling turned into some sort of feverishness; he ...

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His nervous trembling turned into some sort of feverishness; he even began shivering; in such heat he was getting a chill. As if with effort, almost unconsciously, by some inner necessity, he began peering at every object he encountered, as though straining after some diversion, but he failed miserably, and every moment kept falling into revery. And when he would raise his head again, with a start, and look around, he would immediately forget what he had just been thinking about and even which way he had come.

The progression of Raskolnikov’s psychological suffering is also demonstrated after he has committed the murder, as his physical and mental condition continues to deteriorate:

At first he thought he would lose his mind. A terrible chill seized him; but the chill was also caused by a fever that had begun long ago in his sleep. Now, however, he was suddenly stricken with such shivering that his teeth almost flew out and everything in him came loose.

Raskolnikov’s mental, physical, and emotional condition continues to decline as the novel progresses, even while he serves his sentence in a Siberian prison. Only when Raskolnikov surrenders his egotism and alienation and embraces his sin and his love for Sonya does his psychological suffering conclude.

The plot of The Brothers Karamazov encompasses a generalized theological notion of guilt and punishment. The novel draws on the Biblical concept of original sin -- that humans are guilty from birth as a result of humanity’s inheritance of Adam and Eve's primordial transgression in the Garden of Eden -- and describes this notion of original sin as the principle guide of the actions of people. Because humanity is burdened with this guilt, people must treat others with humility and respect, sharing in their pain and suffering. Many of the characters in the The Brothers Karamazov who reject this sense of guilt, including Ivan, Smerdyakov, and Fyodor Pavlovich, are doomed to discontent, anxiety, isolation, and suicidal despair. In the rare incidents when characters do recognize their inherited guilt, they experience a sense of spiritual enlightenment and potential reconciliation with the rest of the world.

Though he does not physically murder his father Fyodor Pavlovich, Ivan is afflicted with guilt for his philosophical mentorship of Smerdyakov and feels that he paved the way for the killing, making him culpable by association. As a result, Ivan is mentally tormented. His overwhelming guilt, combined with a dangerous consumption of alcohol, eventually causes Ivan to become delirious and to suffer a nervous breakdown, which leads to his death. Despite his innocence, Dmitri, suffers through the misery of realizing his own evil before he can embrace his potential goodness. The psychological consequences of Smerdyakov’s actions are evident in his physical corrosion and subsequent suicide. Much like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, Smerdyakov becomes ill and sallow after he murders Fyodor Pavlovich: “His face was changed, he had become very thin and yellow. His eyes were sunken, his lower eyelids had turned blue.” Despite his atheistic justification of the crime, Smerdyakov’s psychological culpability is evident in the way that his physical body deteriorates and, eventually, in the act of his suicide.

Throughout both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, the suffering of children, and the effects of that suffering, is intertwined as an important thematic element, describing one of Dostoevsky’s many criticisms of his society. The children in his novels possess a simple helplessness, intermingled with an innocent nature which accentuates the contrasting, cruel environments in which they live. In dealing with these unfair conditions, the children must foster individual strength and learn to surrender themselves and their childhoods in order to withstand their burdens. In The Brothers Karamazov, the poor circumstances of children are epitomized in Ilyusha. One of the local schoolboys and the central figure of this crucial subplot in the novel, Ilyusha is the son of Captain Snegiryov, an impoverished officer who brings shame to his family. This shame, the reader is led to believe, is part of the reason that Ilyusha falls ill and possibly serves to illustrate the idea that even seemingly minor actions can heavily impact the lives of others and that, in a world created by God, people are all responsible for one another.

Crime and Punishment also displays the sufferings of children through the family of the drunkard Marmeladov. When Marmeladov’s children are first introduced into the plot, they are poor, cold, and hungry, and at the mercy of their angry, bitter mother Katerina Ivanovna.

The smallest child, a girl of about six, was asleep on the floor sitting somehow crouched with her head buried in the sofa. The boy, a year older, stood in the corner crying and trembling all over. He had probably just been beaten. The older girl, about nine, tall and thin as a matchstick, wearing only a poor shirt, all in tatters, with a threadbare flannel wrap thrown over her bare shoulders, probably made for her two years before, since it now did not even reach her knees, stood in the corner by her little brother, her long arm, dry as a matchstick, around his neck. She was whispering something to him, apparently trying to calm him, doing all she could to restrain him so that he would not somehow start whimpering again, and at the same time following her mother fearfully with her big, dark eyes, which seemed even bigger in her wasted and frightened little face.

Polenka, Marmeladov’s ten-year-old daughter, must abandon her role as child in order to assume adult responsibilities around the house, while Sonya, Marmeladov’s eldest daughter and Raskolnikov’s redeemer, must prostitute herself to financially support her family and fund her father’s alcohol addiction. The misery of the Marmeladov children’s situation is continuous throughout the novel, worsening after the death of their father and even further after the death of their mother. At the end of the novel, they are finally granted a level of reprieve when Svidrigailov bequeaths his estate to the orphans and commits suicide.

In both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, the link between children and suffering is often a weak and incompetent father figure who struggles with an addiction to alcohol. As he emphasizes the social dilemma of children in his society, Dostoevsky also analyzes the issue of drunkenness and the ramifications of addiction, especially concerning family life and the education of children in such conditions. A drunk who squanders his money on liquor, Marmeladov forces his family to suffer poverty and embarrassment as a result of his alcoholism and, in the end, dies as a result of it. Ilyusha’s father, Captain Snegiryov, is a humiliation to his son as a result of his drunkenness and the consequences of the fight that he loses against Dmitri. Though the plot of The Brothers Karamazov focuses on the adult lives of Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha, it is insinuated that much of their childhood was spent in suffering as a result of their father, Fyodor Pavlovich, who abandons them and is, at best, a depraved drunk.

Throughout much of his life, Dostoevsky was burdened with immense financial troubles, a struggle which was often reflected in his writing. In 1864, Dostoevsky's brother, Mikhail, died after a period of critical illness. Shortly before his death, Mikhail established a new magazine, The Epoch, to which Fyodor Dostoevsky greatly contributed. Following Mikhail’s death, Dostoevsky was unable to keep the magazine alive without his brother's management skills, and was obliged to pay off the magazine's debt when it failed. Feeling that he was financially responsible for Mikhail’s derelict family, Dostoevsky borrowed money from friends and family in order to help support their livelihood. Along with the self-imposed financial obligations that he had assumed after his brother’s death, Dostoevsky developed a grave gambling problem, which worsened throughout the 1860’s, causing him to squander what little money he possessed. The burden of Dostoevsky's ongoing financial struggles is reflected as a thematic element in several of his novels, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

In both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, the most obvious thematic function of money is as a motive for murder. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dmitri is convicted of murdering Fyodor Pavlovich, despite his innocence, because of the convincing quality of his supposed motive, which is money. Similarly, in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov claims that one of the reasons he murders the pawnbroker Alyona is to appropriate her wealth. In both novels, money is accurately portrayed as a source of power, one to be used as a means to manipulate others’ dependence on certain individuals. In their manipulation of wealth, both Alyona and Fyodor unfairly wielded power over other people, such as Raskolnikov and Dmitri, and both abused this power and were eventually murdered.

Throughout Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky demonizes characters with great monetary wealth. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky introduces Alyona, the greedy pawnbroker, Luzhin, Dunya’s conniving fiancé, and Svidrigailov, a rich widower who perversely preys on Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister, and several other young women. Luzhin, a wealthy man, though not so wealthy as Svidrigailov, uses his money to wield power over Dunya and her mother, Pulcheria. After Dunya is fired by Svidrigailov’s wife after Svidrigailov attempts to wildly force himself upon Dunya, Dunya’s reputation as a modest young woman is tarnished and the mother and daughter find themselves in diminished financial circumstances. Luzhin takes advantage of their precarious economic and social situation to press Dunya to be his wife. Though not as despicable as Svidrigailov, Luzhin is certainly not an admirable man, as he manipulates Dunya, and even Pulcheria, both of whom are desperate to financially support the ailing Raskolnikov. Following the mysterious death of his wife, Svidrigailov inherits incredible riches. A heinous character who has murdered, raped, and bribed many innocent people, Svidrigailow, like Luzhin, utilizes his wealth in an unsuccessful attempt to possess Dunya and later succeeds in engaging himself to a young teenager as a result of his monetary enticements.

In The Brothers Karamazov, the likewise contemptible individual Fyodor Pavlovich is the most debauched, selfish, and devious character in the novel. Dostoevsky describes Fyodor Pavlovich:

…I will only say of this “landowner” (as he used to call him, though for all his life he hardly ever lived on his estate) that he was a strange type, yet one rather frequently met with, precisely the type of man who is not only worthless and depraved but muddleheaded as well – one of those muddleheaded people who still handle their own little business deals quite skillfully, if nothing else…[H]e remained all his life one of the most muddleheaded madcaps in our district. Again I say it was not stupidity – most of these madcaps are rather clever and shrewd – but precisely muddleheadedness, even a special, national form of it.

Like Svidrigailov and Luzhin, Fyodor Pavlovich uses his wealth to manipulate and exert power over others, especially his eldest son, Dmitri. As a young man, the bold, sarcastic Fyodor Pavlovich manages to elope with a rich, beautiful, and caring woman named Adelaida Ivanovna Miusova, who, after discovering her overwhelming contempt for her husband, deserts Fyodor and their three-year-old son Dmitri, only to die of poverty-induced illness years later. Having been raised by relatives as a result of his father’s abandonment, Dmitri eventually learns that upon his mother’s death, he inherited both money and property, which were in the care of his father. Dmitri confronts Fyodor concerning his inheritance, a confrontation to which Fyodor responds by periodically sending Dmitri small sums of money, which leads Dmitri to believe that he has a sizable inheritance. However, Fyodor Pavlovich continues to deceive his son, telling Dmitri that he has given him the extent of his mother’s inheritance and that Dmitri might possibly owe him a sizeable sum. Stunned, Dmitri finally concludes that his father is attempting to swindle him and decides to remain close to his father in order to claim the fortune that is rightfully his. Until his murder by Smerdyakov, Fyodor Pavlovich continually perplexes Dmitri concerning his seemingly unattainable inheritance, even to the point when Dmitri becomes so enraged by his Fyodor’s calculating tactics that he threatens to kill his own father.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, born on November 17, 1895 in the Russian Empire, was a philosopher, literary critic, and scholar who studied literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. In the 1920s, Bakhtin began analyzing Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and how they could be linguistically, philosophically, and culturally understood. He identified several parallel concepts of human consciousness and perception present within Dostoevsky’s works, describing each novel as “polyphonic” -- consisting of a complex dialogue in which each character represents an infinite and unfinalized voice that speaks for an individual self, distinct from others, which engages in dialogic exchanges with other individual voices:

Human consciousness is inherently open and formed by our continuous interaction with our own speech and that of others. Speech is, by its very nature, neither systematic nor rule-generated, but an endless series of interactive acts of communication. Individuals’ speech and consciousness constantly interpenetrate each other. There are no fixed centers or borders to the self.

As Bakhtin describes, the idea of polyphony is directly related to the concept of “self-and-others”, as it is the ambiguous nature of individuals that creates true polyphony.

In his work Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art, Bakhtin outlined the polyphonic concept of truth as portrayed in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, including The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. He criticized the accepted assumption that if two people disagree, at least one of them must be in error. According to Bakhtin, truth is a number of mutually addressed, though contradictory and logically inconsistent, statements, requiring also a multitude of simultaneous voices within a dialogue. As it cannot be held within a single mind, truth also cannot be expressed by a single, particular voice. Mutually addressed ideas, engagement, and commitment to the context of a real-life event distinguish truth from untruth.

In the 1960’s, Bakhtin’s philosophical works experienced a great revival, prompted by the translation of Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art into English and the subsequent widespread publishing of his works throughout the West. During this revival, Bakhtin added a chapter concerning the concept of "carnival" to Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art and the book was then republished under a slightly different title, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics. Bakhtin describes carnival as the context in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish, and interact together. The carnival creates the situations in which regular conventions are broken or reversed and genuine dialogue becomes possible. Using the notion of a carnival, Bakhtin describes Dostoevsky's polyphonic technique, in which each individual character is strongly defined, each embodying various philosophies, religious ideals, popular ideologies, and corruptions of society, and at the same time the reader witnesses the crucial and inevitable influence of each character upon the other.

Born out of both The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, Bakhtin’s theory of the polyphonic novel is evidenced throughout both novels. One of the most important scenes in Crime and Punishment occurs when Raskolnikov, Porfiry, Razumikhin, and Zamyotov discuss the ideology of Raskolnikov's article “On Crime…”, which concerns the physical, mental, and emotional effects of crime and the fundamental differences between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” men. Throughout this scene, each character represents a different voice or idea, while no character is deemed either in the right or in error. Razumikhin, whose name means “reason”, contributes to Dostoyevsky's anti-radical thematics. He is intended to represent something of a reconciliation of the pervasive thematic conflict between faith and reason, a faculty which Dostoevsky attempts to employ as a foundational base for his Christian faith in God. Following the discussion, in which Raskolnikov elaborately explains the premise of his article to the company present, Razumikhin expresses his distaste with Raskolnikov’s theories:

You’re right, of course, in saying that it’s nothing new, and resembles everything we’ve read and heard a hundred times over; but what is indeed original in it all – and, to my horror is really yours alone – is that you do finally permit bloodshed in all conscience and, if I may say so, even with such fanaticism…So this is the main point of your article. This permission to shed blood in all conscience is…is to my mind more horrible than if bloodshed were officially, legally permitted.

Razumikhin’s reaction to the “extraordinary man” conversation reveals his purpose in the novel, which is to embody simple reason and to interact with other voices within the dialogue, including Raskolnikov’s more radical, Western-influenced voice.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov, while meeting his brother Alyosha at a restaurant, expresses the rationalistic and nihilistic ideology that permeated Russia in the 19th century through the description of his poem “The Grand Inquisitor”. Ivan proclaims that he rejects the world that God has created because it is built on a foundation of suffering. He narrates to Alyosha this poem, which describes a leader from the Spanish Inquisition and his encounter with Jesus, Who has made His return to Earth. In the poem, Jesus is rejected by the Inquisitor, who puts Him in jail. Alyosha, who is deeply disturbed by the poem’s content and implication, as well as by Ivan’s nihilistic convictions, represents a Christ-based reason, which interacts in a polyphonic dialogue with Ivan’s more radical theories.

Throughout each of his novels, author Fyodor Dostoevsky examines and interprets several different social, mental, physical, and ideological circumstances which he believes to influence the nature of humanity. These theories, which reflect his own convictions, serve as corresponding thematic elements within each of his novels. His first novel, Crime and Punishment, and his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, depict several parallel themes, each of which is characteristic of Dostoyevsky’s works. In both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, murder, the suffering of children, and the power of money are central themes which are addressed throughout the novels. Likewise, both novels represent the theories of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, who describes Dostoevsky’s works as “polyphonic novels,” which contain multiple voices in a complicated dialogue. Through his works, Dostoevsky offers a philosophical critique of society and a description of the way in which he viewed the world.