& Punishment

Dostoevsky wrote about crime, but not only crime: He also wrote about punishment. As Wasoliek suggests, Raskolnikov doesn’t flee the crime, or try to cover it. He seems instead to flee toward it, regularly leaving clues, nearly confessing, reviving Porfiry’s investigation when it is flagging.

Is this masochism? Is it repentance? Wasoliek argues that Rasknikov needs to fail in order to succeed. He murders to prove himself a bronze man, a Napoleon who transcends the normal rules. With that motivation, he needs society as a foil; he needs society to oppose him, or else there is nothing to which he can prove himself superior. But if he gets away with it, then he loses that contrast. The criminal needs society, the very society whose norms he violates.

Wasoliek puts it this way: “He provokes pursuit so as to show his strength in bearing the punishment, but he also provokes it – and this is perhaps more important – so that they will be the pursuers and he, the pursued; they, the victimizers, and he the victimized; they, the oppressors, and he, the oppressed. By its pursuit of him, society confirms what Raskolnikov has made of it. If he can sustain the image of society against which he has revolted, he can sustain his believe in the rightness of his crime. By failing he makes the kind of world and the kind of Raskolnikov he wants.”