Review: Crime and Punishment — Virtue and Vice
Just recently, I finished reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Without revealing too much, let me introduce you to the general scope of the book. Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov (known affectionately as Rodya by his neurotic mother) is an impoverished ex-law student, who believes he is above the law. After many days of feverish pondering, he decides to kill the pawnbroker that dealt with him, whom he viewed as sort of base and useless. The pawnbroker’s sister unfortunately returns home and is brutally murdered as well. Raskolnikov escapes the house with surprisingly little hindrance, and returns to his ‘home’. In the coming days, he is perpetually sick, and constantly worries about being discovered before eventually turning himself in and going to Siberia (we all know what that means).
Throughout the book, the reader meets many different characters from different social standings — for that is what the book is really about: is poverty a vice? can someone be virtuous and moral in poverty? do riches allow someone to be more virtuous? And many of these characters serve to answer these questions.
Svidrigailov, a villainous, gross, sneaky man first appears in a letter addressed to Raskolnikov, and in the latter half of the book, the reader discovers his great fortune. He tends to be willing to fork out great sums of money for various impoverished and unfortunate characters, but always with a hint of some dark, ulterior motive. However virtuous Svidrigailov’s intentions appear, they cannot be reconciled with his questionable past deeds. He admits to never really loving his wife, and he murdered her (potentially) to pursue Raskolnikov’s sister, Dounia. Svidrigailov ended up dramatically killing himself after his equally — if not more — dramatic rejection from Dounia. Dostoevsky wants the reader to see that riches do not make anyone virtuous; riches will not make anyone conform to your desires, no matter the virtuous mask that is put on.
Perhaps that is obvious. But the other fact is that poverty provides no means for covering up crimes, either. Petty crime and even murder will eat at your soul.
The fact of poverty not being a vice is mentioned as well: “Honoured sir, poverty is not a vice, that’s a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkeness is not a virtue, and that’s even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary — never — no one.” This is where I refute part of the claim. One can never retain their “innate nobility of soul” after murder, rape, or theft, unless one believes it truly beneficial. One must discover their “nobility of soul”, and can only do so through some kind of suffering. Consequence of crime just happened to be the circumstance. True virtuous people are the ones who suffer, and end up better, happier, reconciled. Poverty is a source of suffering, and is only not a vice when one can develop nobility and virtuousness through it.
Riches provide only corruption for people. Their whole trust is invested in the ability to pay things off. This is what drove Svidrigailov to kill himself: he trusted his immense fortune so greatly, but Dounia knew she never needed it and rejected his advances. Fortune will always fail to develop nobility and virtue. It only allows one to indulge in vice.
