Crime and Punishment

Suffering can sometimes feel like punishment, as if all the hurt and pain we’ve experienced or are experiencing, is a product of some transgression we’ve committed. It’s easy to blame ourselves for a sick twist of events by attributing it to our own sin or blunders. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky unveils a world stricken in moral depravity and poverty, revealing the most putrid aspects of society and human nature. Characters like Svidrigailov, Raskonlikov,and Luzhin embody what some might consider perfect candidates for suffering; they deserve every wound they receive. The main focus for me in this book strayed from my original question, “Does suffering bring out the truest aspects of nature, or distort it?” because I was so wrapped up in labeling characters as either “good” or “bad”. After I finished, I realized that I was closer to my original question than I thought. In the case of Crime and Punishment, I don’t think it’s fair to judge their morality or system of ethics based on their actions given their circumstances. Usually I would take a deontological approach in weighing these characters, but I think it best to utilize situational ethics strictly because of the circumstances in which they live. Sonia, a prostitute, sells herself to pay for her family’s bare necessities for survival. Her suffering in this book was not warranted by a misdeed, but rather a selfless sacrificial giving. For Sonia, her childlike nature remained unmarred, while her actions suggested that she was immoral. The immense suffering she went through did not change who she was, rather, it propelled her to new heights of selflessness. Raskonlikov , a most complex character, up until his crime, does not necessarily go through extreme suffering. His pride and arrogance destroy him, and after he murders the pawnbroker and Lizoveta, suffers mentally and physically. This suffering is created by his own hand, and distorts the potential he holds in himself. Svidrigailov suffers one of the worst blows,-unreturned love- and though it’d be easy to say he deserved his end (suicide) and his pain, did he experience enough suffering in his life to pardon his sins? Not knowing what exactly he went through before I was introduced to him in the novel, I only base my assumptions off of the grotesque nature he was in when I found him. If I am to judge him based on his corrupt nature as it is, I believe that that is a quiet suffering in itself, the weight of sin being one of the hardest burdens to bear. Raskonlikov's "suffering' ultimately redeems him, like Sonia had prayed, even though it took him destroying everything he possesed in order to find it. So for the characters in Crime and Punishment, Oediopus, the hurt can be helper. The punch in the face can be the only thing that redeems our ugliness.

King Lear: Tragedy on Steroids

After having finished reading Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear, I felt as if my classroom was literally at a loss for words, as if such intense and raw suffering almost rendered the hearer speechless. Lear's characters go through unspeakable suffering and immense tragedy. At the close of the play, it was hard to see a light of hope through the dim and dismal end. Lear has lost virtually everything, inlcuding the one soul who may have unconditionally loved him (Cordelia, his daughter), Gloucester is blind, and suicidal, (and after a heart attack upon Edgar's revealing of his idenity, very much dead) Regan poisoned by her own sister, Goneril dead by her own hand and Edmund slain by his own brother. I could even venture to say that Lear dies from a broken heart, snapped in two by the shear magnitude of his suffering. I was trying to ask myself, or rather, come to grips with the fact that after such misfortune, none of these characters truly became better individuals. Kent was left broken and desolate, his leader and beacon dead and gone, and Edgar and Albany, left with a war-torn kingdom to rebuild. How could anyone judge these people fairy after having witnessed all that they had gone through? Had they not acted according to the consequences of tragedy? Lear ultimately goes mad, but how can one hold him accountable after watching his fairest and youngest daughter die before him? If the question at hand is, "does suffering truly bring out the truest reflection of one's character and indenity", I would be led to believe that for the characters in Lear, it ruins them. It reveals the most distorted, the ugliest and darkest aspects of our nature. Ah yes-nature- Edmund, who "reconciles" himself after having been mortally wounded, tries to save Lear and Cordelia but, alas, acts too late. It can be argued in two ways: Edmund, rose to the occassion and acted out in his most compassionate and heroic nature, or, knew he had nothing more to gain or lose and acted to the very end selfishly. For Lear, I have come to the conclusion that the affects of suffering has every potential to bring forth an ugly and gross side of our humanity, but I suppose the optimist in me cannot leave it at just that. I do believe Edmund saw the hero in himself. I do believe that in the moment of his crisis he contained in himself a glimmer of compassion. I have to. Because if the world truly worked that way, that suffering was this corrosive, oppressive force that led everybody to corruption and destruction, I cannot concieve that would have made it even this far.

Oedipus Rex

There are some who are born into privelage, who cannot escape it. There are others who must fight their way to success and power. Oedipus was arguably destined to become a king. It's all too easy to presume that if one has such a life of luxury, they are spared the misery and suffering humanity presents to us all. But examining some of greatest public leaders, figures in literature, kings and princes, it is these individuals that seem to go through the worst of worsts. Hamlet loses his beloved father in a brutal and ugly assassination by his own cowardly uncle. In his own grief and confusion, Hamlet initiates a chain of events that lead to one of the most profound and iconic tragedies of Shakespearean literature. Hamlet did however, rise to the occasion when feeling the first pangs of loss. In a twisted heroic attempt to restore justice and honor to his house, Hamlet takes matters into his own hands, and reacts just as irrationally as he is ironically thorough in his motives. Oedipus' rule over Thebes at first appears relatively smooth and peaceful until a plague washes over the city and chaos ensues. After learning and realizing the identity he had sought to escape, Oedipus accepts his fate and exiles himself from his own city to satiate the wrath of the gods, not before blinding himself by gouging out his eyes in self-reticence. It would be an understatement to assert that finding out you had married your mother and murdered your own father would be hard, rather perhaps the most enormous suffering an individual can bare. Oedipus inadvertently martyrs himself, though he never loses his life, he lets go of all he had once held- the power, the prestige, the honor,- and accepts the shame. He does not try to out run his circumstance but falls- hurdles- into that dark abyss unreluctantly and solidifies his honor. This requires an inspiring amount of character, and reveals the real side, I believe, Oedipus cultured. This act of giving of himself was not something that could be forced, or coerced into, this was Oedipus raw, broken.

The Big Question: Does suffering truly bring out the best in human nature? Does it reveal the true side of our character, or the most distorted?

If we are a human born into this world by a father and mother, without our own hand in our conception, we are privy to the crisis and misfortune that accompany life. Suffering. Most people don't purposefully stick their hand on a burner to soak in the sheer pleasure that arises from the smell of searing flesh and crisp exposed nerves. Most people don't enjoy losing a spouse or child to stage four cancer. Ask the successful man on the bus reading the newspaper if he would like to lose everything he's ever worked for in a tragic financial crash and live out the rest of his life in destitute poverty. But try as we may, not one of us- no not one- can predict or avoid the hurt and suffering that seems to hurdle itself in our direction. Who we are when we are faced with ultimate disaster, the pain of loss, the sting of intense human distress, can that fairly and accurately dictate or describe our base human nature? There are stories about men and women rising above circumstances to achieve heroic stature, to overcome suffering and become better people for it. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and critically acclaimed author of Night, witnessed horror upon horror during his enslavement at Auschwitz. The extent of this young man's suffering is immeasurable as he lost every family member dear to him in the death camps and gas chambers, taking the hate of an entire nation deceived by a malicious lie, experiencing the worst evil an individual can go through. And yet he became an advocate for those who were not as fortunate to survive, he became a beacon of light for the witness of the unconquerable human spirit. Luke Skywalker. The iconic hero-turned- villian goes through tremendous suffering and anguish with the loss of his mother and ultimately identity. After another and another miserable move, Luke practically murders his own wife, the mother of his children. Fictional or not, this is a prime example of one individuals "dark" turn after experiencing an emotionally trying crisis and suffering. Instead of expelling fear, hurt, strife like Weisel, this character internalizes and lets the self-torturous elements in himself brew. So, really this is the ultimate question. Who are we when we experience the most monstrous pain and suffering? It is the defining quality that separates the wheat from the chaff, the mire from the muck.