✍ Scribed by Deborah A. Martinsen
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide focuses on narrative strategy, psychology, and ideology. Martinsen demonstrates how Dostoevsky first plunges the reader into Raskolnikov’s fevered brain, creating sympathy for him, and she explains why most readers root for him to get away from the scene of the crime. Dostoevsky subsequently provides outsider perspectives on Raskolnikov’s thinking, effecting a conversion in reader sympathy. By examining the multiple justifications for murder Raskolnikov gives as he confesses to Sonya, Dostoevsky debunks rationality-based theories. Finally, the question of why Raskolnikov and others, including the reader, focus on the murder of the pawnbroker and forget the unintended murder of Lizaveta reveals a narrative strategy based on shame and guilt.
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<p>A chapter-by-chapter guide to Dostoevsky’s most popular novel that reveals how <i>Crime and Punishment</i> works. Narrative strategy, why the novel is not a whodunit but whydunit, and clear explanations of the novel’s ideological debates.</p>
<span>The gruesome double-murder upon which the novel </span><span>Crime and Punishment </span><span>hinges leads its culprit, Raskolnikov, into emotional trauma and obsessive, destructive self-reflection. But Raskolnikov's famous philosophical musings are just part of the full philosophical thought
<p>The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into critical elements and ideas within classic works of literature. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format.<p><i>CliffsNotes on Crime and Punishment
84 pages
This Casebook is a collection of interpretations of Crime and Punishment. The selection not only reflects earlier work by major critics in the field, but also more recent studies. At the same time the choice of critical approaches has been made on the basis of covering the novel's various aspects: D