Crime and Punishment

Whenever I hear the words "Crime and Punishment", I automatically hear the little mice from the movie "Babe" chiming those words in their squeaky little voices, then giggling their heads off, but the phrase has taken on a whole new meaning for me now that I have actually read the book. One of the big questions that Dostoyevsky brings out in this particular book is whether or not crime is ever justifiable. The story is of a poor, young former student living in Saint Petersburg who has come up with the idea that there is a group of truly great men, of which he seems to think he is a member, whom, many times, must kill a select few people in order that good and progress for the rest of society can result. He carries out his idea, although not seemingly completely in his right mind, by murdering a wealthy old pawnbroker and her sister, Lizaveta. He justifies this by saying that, through the death of that one cynical, rich old lady, many others may be given aid by the money that she would have hoarded for herself. Much of the book describes the agonizing torments that the young student, Raskolnikov Rodion Romanovitch (I love Russian Names!), goes through as a result of his misdeed. Although he does eventually confess to the murders and is sent to a prison in Siberia for a time, his real punishment comes from his own guilty conscience and resulting sickness/insanity. While I still hear the little mice every time I hear or read the words "Crime and Punishment," they now carry a whole new meaning for me with them. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was an awesome writer who could take the reader into the deepest parts of the character's minds, thoughts, and motivations, and made all of his characters, no matter how small, have great depth to them.