Crime and Punishment

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The Psychological Aspects Punishment in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment explores the psychological aspects of crime, primarily the motive to commit crime and the subsequent guilt that offenders have to deal with. The novel’s protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov kills an old pawnbroker supposedly because her business robs the poor. In essence, he surmised, he was doing humanity justice by eliminating the evil of pawning. However, Raskolnikov realized that the murder of the pawnbroker does not make society any better; on the contrary, his crimes alienate him from the rest of society, and he is perpetually troubled by his guilty conscience. An important aspect of the novel is that the author does not portray punishment as the sentencing that immediately follows conviction, but the conscious self-retribution and wrestling with guilt. Thus, Dostoevsky suggests that true punishment takes place at a psychological level in the form of inner conflict, despair, stress, anxiety, and alienation. With reference to the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, this essay examines the theme of punishment as a psychological process.
The novel portrays interior conflict as the real punishment offenders experience after committing a crime. This aspect is illustrated by the author’s lengthy focus on the protagonist’s inner conflict on whether to proceed with his murderous intentions, and after carrying them out, his self-deliberations on whether he should confess his sins and gain social acceptance. While the commission of crime takes place in part one, it is not until much later, toward the end of the novel, that the protagonist is punished for his sins. The gap between the two endpoints serves as the real time of punishment in which the inner world of the protagonist is filled with fear, doubts and deliria. In fact, Raskolnikov is ill and overwhelmed by guilt, self-loathing and feelings of alienation throughout much of the novel. At the same time, Porfiry Petrovisch, the magistrate in charge of the murder investigations, is suspicious of Raskolnikov and employs mind games to trap him. He is a master of criminal psychology, and constantly monitors Raskolnikov’s mental state to detect any signs that could indicate his involvement with the murders. This is particularly apparent in the manner his presence and questioning unnerves Raskolnikov. On the basis of his understanding of the human psyche, Petrovich is convinced that Raskolnikov’s guilty conscience will eventually force him into confession. He understands that a guilty mind must as a matter of necessity experience psychological torture, as a result of which the criminal will either confess or go mad. He predicted of Raskolnikov, and correctly so, that “freedom will no longer be dear to him, he’ll fall to thinking, get entangled, he’ll tangle himself all up as in a net, he’ll worry himself to death!” (Dostoevsky 161). In this regard, the novel is not really about the immediate repercussions of committing crime as the ultimate punishment, but with way offenders must deal with the torment of guilt. Further, by according little focus on Raskolnikov’s imprisonment, the author downplays the rehabilitation significance of physical punishment. This approach suggests that stress and the conscious attempt to avoid discovery and subsequent retribution is more terrible to the individual than the actual punishment.
The tendency to rationalize the motive ...