Monday, December 12, 2011
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.
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Lauren,
ReplyDeleteWell,what can I say after that wonderful final comment? We usually deserve that punch in the face, don't we? You're so right that many characters in this novel do deserve it, which undermines R's skepticism regarding punishment, especially for ones as great as he is. One interesting thing is that R does indeed suffer for his crime, and he thinks this is evidence that he is not extraordinary. And he is right that the Napoleans don't seem to suffer for their crimes like ordinary people do. He is also right that we generally don't hold them responsible in the same way we do each other. They have accomplished something great...so their murders are negligible in some sense. If that's too abstract, we can just look at the way we tend to treat celebrities. Not only do we forgive them their trespasses, we expect them, and when we don't get them, we make them up. What makes us do such grossly inconsistent things with our ethics? Boredom? R. is not brilliant, but what if he had been? What if he had used the money to help more people? Would we then consider his suffering to be unjust, in some universal design? R's suffering is something he feels is unnecessary and wrong, but it is that very thing that brings him to the realization that his very own conscience has tied him to the same people he's had utter contempt for through nearly the whole book. I feel I'm rambling, but I hope I've given you another angle from which to consider this idea, anyway. Nicely written, Lauren.