Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
“A murderer confesses — but the real crime is what happens inside his skull before the police ever knock.”
Character Analysis
Twenty-three years old, former law student, paralyzed between intellectual grandiosity and physical destitution. His name derives from the Russian 'raskol' (schism, split) — he is a man divided against himself. He commits murder to prove he is beyond conventional morality and spends the rest of the novel proving he is not. His pride is not vanity but something deeper: a refusal to accept that he is merely human. The novel is the education of that refusal.
High literary register in interior monologue; awkward, halting in direct speech — especially under surveillance. Uses 'I' obsessively. Cannot perform social ease.