This vacation (if it can be called so!) I read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s monumental novel Crime & Punishment (C&P). Typical as of a Russian novel, it was also too deep into philosophy and Russian society in general. The book revolves around its protagonist Raskolnikov, who commits a perfect crime, leaving no traces of evidences. The book very well captures a criminal’s mindset and in fact gives a firsthand report of the criminal’s state of mind.
Dostoevsky throws some very deep questions onto the reader. What is crime? Should laws be flexible to certain category of individuals? And again the age old debate of good versus bad.
The protagonist in the novel gives a very interesting and radical view of crime. He says that origin of all crimes have their roots in the injustice and inequality present in the society. And criminals are as such people who some way or the other try to rebel against this order. Mind well that Dostoevsky wrote this much before Russia was caught with Marxian fever. So as to say crime a.k.a ‘rebellion’ will be present in the society till the time society metamorphoses into a “just” society. (Can we think about Indian Maoist insurgency from this perspective?)
Furthermore, he goes onto argue that, there are two kind of people in this world one ‘ordinary’ and another ‘extraordinary’ much like the elitist theory propounded by Pareto, Mosca and Michels. He says that ordinary people are bound to follow all the laws of the society. They cannot or do not have the bravado to go against the society. They are ‘normal’ people like you and me. Ones whose life gets consumed in fulfilling Roti-kapada-makaan requirements of life. He theorizes that such people are only necessary for fulfilling the needs of the society and preserving the human species through reproduction.
Whereas the other class of ‘extraordinary’ men are not obliged to be bound by worldly laws. They surface on earth to change the existing system, hence are permitted to break the existing laws and if need be remove the obstacles in achieving their goal, which may also mean killing the people who oppose them. He cites examples of Sohon, Lycurgus, Napoleon, and Prophets and Messiahs of the world. He believes that it is for the good of the society; that they be allowed to do their work and when others should cooperate.
Obsessed with his ideas and the aspiration to be new age Napoleon he kills a moneylender woman whom he considers worthless burden on earth and to use her ill-gotten money for the welfare of people at large. The novel then takes the reader to the state of mind of the killer, who goes into a deep sense of guilt and self-inflicted torment. He kind of leads an anarchist life, and also abandons his only sister and mother who had great expectations from him.
Later on his female friend helps him and convinces him to confess his crime and he does so. But he atones not for the sin of killing that woman, but for the sin of not taking up the moral responsibility like Napoleon and other greats and succumbing to the guilt feeling.
The book is abundant with pessimistic air of poverty of Russian society. It shows how out of poverty women are forced to sell their chastity, it depicts the appalling conditions of widows and orphans, of workers and their dark, stench ridden habitats. This pessimism is contrasted along with lofty enlightenment ideas of Europe, which of course is relished by the bourgeoisie ‘intellectuals ‘of the Russian society, who in the end turn out to be effeminate café going intellectuals, high on words and low on action.