Crime and Punishment
In war, a general has no room for his own personal feelings and emotions. He has to make logical decisions that will ensure his side victory, and relies on his intelligence, not his morals, to succeed. If he were to make decisions based on his desire not have people get hurt or killed, his goals would most likely not be met. In the same way, Raskolnikov, in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, tries to do what he knows to be logical and ignores his emotions, throwing away his own morals for the sake of a mere idea. Raskolnikov's struggle to listen to his mind and not his heart is portrayed through his thoughts and monologues that occur as he faces many hardships. Thoughts about the strangers he meets, the people close to him, and himself, in particular, illustrate his struggle most clearly, and demonstrate Dostoevsky's idea that people sometimes adhere to logic to avoid their true feelings. Raskolnikov's reactions to the people that he meets in Petersburg shows how he tries to listen only to his own reasoning rather than his emotions. For instance, when he meets Marmeladov and leaves money on their windowsill, he suggests that he has done " a stupid thing"...since "they have Sonia and
The fact that he later visits Razumihin but decides to leave right away shows this conflict of mind. Raskolnikov has many thoughts about his friends and loved ones, and chooses to be intellectual and uncaring to hide his feelings towards them. Before he commits the murder of Alyona and Lizaveta, he asks himself "how could such atrocious things come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. His differing conflict of logic and emotion is also shown when Rasko meets a man who calls him a murderer. Also, after he sees the girl attempting to drown herself, he displays apathy towards himself, saying "I'll make an end, for I want to. His first feeling was that he was "chilled all over", but later he laughs to himself, saying "Napoleon, the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker. And why did I want to interfere?" Once again, he is torn between his true feelings and how he thinks he should be reacting to such situations. He is too proud to admit that he is afraid, so he puts on his superior attitude to fool himself into thinking differently. He is trying to avoid his feelings of misery that he actually has over his life and his inability to get what he wants from it by being haughty. It is safe to say that each of us has lied to ourselves at one point or another. But is it a way out? What does it matter? Shall I tell them or not?" He is attempting to be uncaring about his own life, even considering turning himself in, but in actuality it is just him trying to act like his whole situation is not a big deal, that all the events that have happened to him are annoyances that he wants to end once and for all. Although not to the same extent, we are acting in a similar manner to Raskolnikov in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, as he also hid his emotions by resorting to his intellectual ideas. Part of what he says he knows to be true, but a part of it is also just him trying to avoid how he feels.
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