Thank you very much, Dana, for guiding everyone through this novel with such kindness and knowledge. Your ability to lead a reading group is truly outstanding! Keep in touch!
Thank you for taking this journey with me: I don't remember which chapter you stopped at, but I had the feeling you had already finished reading. I really enjoyed our discussions about polyphony and a bit about Kafka, and I believe our collaboration still lies ahead.
Absolutely! If I remember correctly, we agreed to exchange 'guest posts' on C&P and The Trial, right? (I think 'guest posting' will be better than 'cross-posting' since we recommend each other and, I suspect, have a bit of an overlapping audience--I suppose people might not appreciate receiving the same content twice... Check out https://on.substack.com/p/collaboration). I'm still a few months away from tackling the Trial, so I'll send you a piece when I get there. But if you want to go first and have something for me to publish to my subscribers, by all means, let me know whenever you're ready!
I loved how in the epilogue Dostoevsky turned the bleak story of the novel into a message of redemption and hope through love. The epilogue made the novel for me! Contrast it to Tolstoy’s rather perfunctory first epilogue to my other Russian big read, War and Peace. To use the current colloquialisms, Tolstoy “phoned it in” in his epilogue while Dostoevsky “stuck the landing” in his.
Congratulations on completing the novel! It was not an easy journey. The epilogue in War and Peace is, of course, grander and longer, which may be why it feels unfinished. Sometimes Tolstoy lacks conciseness. Dostoevsky, in this sense, doesn't waste words - he was always working against deadlines.
Thank you for all your work on this! Reading with a group and seeing your notes and illustrations made the book so much more enjoyable. Excited for TBK!
What an amazing journey. Thank you for this. And thank you to our merry band of fellow readers. The epilogue was very important, as your essay reveals. Somebody, somewhere wrote that there was not a wasted word in this novel. So very true. Raskolnikov has a valid truth to ponder—Why do we honor as Great Men those who started wars, or finished them and now how statues and monuments and history lessons to their further glory.? Why do some get away with this and others do not? The man who drove his truck into New Orleans revelers probably was a modern day Rodion. The reading is over but experience has changed me in some inexplicable way, and that will continue. See you inside TBK.
Paula, my deepest gratitude to you - you went through this entire journey with me, commenting right under each chapter, and I don't think you missed a single one! This was incredibly supportive.
The idea of crime, or more precisely, the ideological unpunished crime of Raskolnikov seems to stir the minds of everyone who contemplates evil deeds. In December, people often compared the Healthcare CEO's killer to Rodion, all these people who are bitter at life, like in New Orleans - they all come from the same source. After all, Raskolnikov didn't do anything good; he destroyed lives while pursuing his idea. And the fact that enlightenment descended upon him - should such a price have been paid? But even in the structure of the novel, you can see that the punishment is 5 times longer and more complex than the actual crime itself.
Thanks again for taking us on this wonderful journey. It was truly fun and enlightening. I am in your debt and feel lucky to have discovered your substack. Looking forward to continuing the adventure with Brothers Karamazov in 2025.
What a fascinating journey that was! Thank you for the insightful articles. The cultural context is priceless. When you're not a part of the culture the book is written about, it's just so endlessly fascinating to read about it - from the way they celebrate holidays and drink tea, to the way they handle money to how the court system is run.
I remember reading Don Quixote a long time ago, and while I found the novel itself quite interesting, the notes at the end of the book that explained the context were bizarrely my favorite part, as it was like a fun dive into history and made the book itself that much more visceral and real rather than just a flat thing about the time and the place I know very little about.
Again, thank you! Lookin forward to that K-bros (I'm so so sorry for this).
Congratulations on finishing the novel! It was quite a journey indeed, and now it's time to enjoy a cup of strong tea with jam. I'll be waiting for you in our journey through the worlds of K-bros, which sounds quite amusing.
Dana, thank you so much for guiding us through an incredibly deep book. I’m late to the party but just finished the novel after receiving it for Christmas and appreciated it so much more with your commentary.
I’m sorry if I have missed these points being discussed -
I’m conflicted on whether the Epilogue was necessary. Do you think there was a reason why Dostoyevsky felt the need to wrap the story up with a ‘happy’ ending rather than leaving the reader to imagine what happened next, which often lives longer in the memory?
And, Dostoyevsky left us with final words that sounded like the story was to be continued. Did he follow through with that?
Finally, this is a very minor one, but I was intrigued by the reference to time in C&P. Frequently, Dostoyevsky would tell us that character looked at something for a minute, two minutes, five minutes. Often these time references are a little absurd - I think there was one reference where two characters looked into each other’s eyes for three minutes during a tense moment. This seems unbelievable so I wonder if it is a translation interpretation (Oliver Ready)? Or was there symbolism with this too?
Hello Daniel! I'm delighted that the guide was helpful and that you enjoyed the novel. It truly deserves its beloved status.
Dostoevsky never wrote sequels to his stories. Though themes overlap across his works, Raskolnikov's story appears to have been complete in Dostoevsky's mind. However, rumors suggest he considered writing about Raskolnikov's time in prison or his life afterward. Since Dostoevsky "sent" other convicted characters to Omsk as well, they theoretically could have met there—which would have made for a fascinating sequel.
Perhaps Dostoevsky himself was uncertain about or deliberately avoided giving the story a definitive ending.
As for the minutes you mentioned, I can't speak with certainty since I don't recall that specific detail. Could you share the quote and its chapter location? This would allow me to compare it with the original text and determine whether it appears there or was added in Oliver Ready's translation. It's worth noting that in Russian, phrases like "a couple of minutes" or "few minutes" are abstract time expressions, equivalent to "soon" or "shortly."
Thanks Dana for your (always) detailed response. Fascinating.
On the repeated mention of time (a quick search showed 53 mentions of ‘minutes’), it may be nothing, it may be my translation, but I just couldn’t help but notice them after the first few times (pun intended).
I’ve copied some examples below.
Some don’t sound realistic -
“They both, Svidrigaïlov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking.”
“As far as Raskolnikov could make out from his
stolen glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a full, fair, almost whitish beard.
Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to get dusk. There was complete stillness in the room.”
“Five minutes passed. He still paced up and down the room in silence, not looking at her.”
“Here her laugh turned again to an insufferable fit of coughing that lasted five minutes”
“She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed.”
Some are more easily explained but still oddly specific -
“after two minutes’ hurried effort, he cut the string and took it off without touching the body with the axe”
“When they were clean, he took out the axe, washed the blade and spent a long time, about three minutes, washing the wood”
“But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state themselves that they knocked and the door was
locked; yet three minutes later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the door was unfastened.”
“Then with the same de-
liberation he scrutinised the uncouth, unkempt figure and unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked him boldly and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A con-
strained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might be expected, some scene-shifting took place.”
“Exactly twenty minutes after Razumihin’s departure”
“Then in senseless terror he rushed to the corner, to that hole under the paper where he had put the things; put his hand in, and for some minutes felt carefully in the hole, in every crack and fold of the paper.”
“The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed.”
“Svidrigaïlov remained three minutes standing at the window”
This is an interesting detail you've noticed. In the original text, it's less striking because expressions involving minutes are commonly used as synonyms for "soon" or "quickly"—they aren't meant as precise measurements of time. Even "5 minutes" is just a colloquial way of saying "a brief moment." Dostoevsky wasn't keeping exact time.
Time throughout the novel is highly subjective. While you've focused on these minutes, what I found also remarkable was how his days seem to stretch to 40 hours—an enormous amount of action somehow fits into a single morning. These specific minute counts were likely used arbitrarily, simply to suggest whether a short or long time had passed.
But this still means something, perhaps it relates specifically to his perception of time. It's hard to say now whether he had some kind of obsession with counting minutes. One possibility is that he always wrote his texts in a hurry and under the pressure of deadlines, maybe this indicates that the text isn't relaxed, but rather somewhat mechanized, counting every second.
Wowza what a trip this has been in the last few weeks!!! This is such a heavy book, and I don’t recommend reading it like I did, finishing in a couple of weeks - sometimes I could only read 1 or 2 chapters a day only, as it required so much reflection and frankly recovery!
Thank you Dana for your expertly guidance through this journey, it wouldn’t have been as meaningful and enjoyable without it! I am psyched for TBK!! I will also be finishing the TV series as only 1hr or so left, but I need a bit of a break before I relive those final chapters again 😮💨
Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉! Reading the novel at such a quick pace is quite an achievement. While the book typically calls for a measured reading pace, many readers find themselves devouring it—the adventurous, detective-like plot makes you eager to discover what happens next. If the novel has captivated you, I'm certain you'll return to it or specific chapters later, discovering new layers with each reading.
If you're watching the series I'm thinking of, how do you find Svidrigailov's portrayal? People have been particularly critical of the rushed epilogue.
I think I'll need to reread this book at some point in the future and explore the themes that I struggled with. I'm really looking forward to explore The Brothers Karamazov with you and hopefully understand Dostoevsky's philosophy more intimately. Thank you for all your hard work, Dana!
Thank you for being by my side on this journey, for writing interesting comments and questions! We have many interesting things ahead of us this year, I'm already ready for Pirandello 👌🏼
I was torn about the epilogue, as part of me felt that it was an afterthought, but it was also needed in a way. It got me to thinking about what makes an "epilogue" in general vs inclusion as a last chapter? Obviously different writers have different takes on this, but that's a topic for a different day. Overall, I feel like I didn't give this novel the proper attention it deserved (it was the third concurrent book I was going through) and will definitely revisit it soon. I loved all the context and inside-knowledge Dana brought forth.
Thank you for reading with me, and for your humor, Chris!
For me, without the epilogue, the novel wouldn't have felt less complete - we wouldn't have understood anything about what happened to Rodion after his confession, and then interpretations of his fate could have been numerous. I always expect an epilogue to provide a quick summary of what happened after the main novel if the writer doesn't plan to write a sequel. And in this sense, Tolstoy's epilogues are more difficult for me to understand in terms of War and Peace's completeness.
What a spectacular conclusion! I am most solidly in the pro-epilogue camp. I felt like it gave me everything I needed to step away from the novel unscathed. I do believe I was sitting on the log next to Rodion breathing that same fresh air.
Thinking back, I remember that I started reading the novel a week before you announced the group read. I know I would have enjoyed it, because it’s a spectacular work, but when I think of how less rich the experience would have been on my own, I am so incredibly thankful that our paths crossed. This will be one of those reading experiences that I will remember my entire life with very fond memories.
Thank you, Dana, for the countless hours you spent preparing your articles to provide us with the crucial historical and literary background that made this reading what it was.
I couldn’t hold myself back any longer and had to introduce myself to the Brothers Karamazov…just a quick hello and nice to meet you… and now I am eagerly awaiting what you and Dostoyevsky have in store for us.
Thank you, Heather! I'm delighted that such a coincidence brought you to my reading club when I hadn't published any articles yet. My decision to begin the club with Crime and Punishment was spontaneous—I had considered Master and Margarita as well. Things would have been quite different had I chosen that path.
I am intrigued by the way that Dostoyevsky subverts the conventional redemption narrative. In such a narrative, Raskolnikov would commit the crime, feel remorse, repent, confess and submit himself to punishment and thus be reformed. (This could be the “Hallmark Channel version of Crime and Punishment” though in that case the crime would need to be less gruesome than splitting heads with an axe – maybe theft or embezzlement of public funds.) Instead, Raskolnikov is tormented by something after committing the crime, but it’s not guilt. He doesn’t repent – as you point out he doesn’t even reconsider his core beliefs that led to the crime. He is tormented after committing the crime, but not by guilt, at least not by conscious guilt. The torment leads him to confess, and to accept punishment, but even then, even after a year or so of hard labor, he still does not repent. Only at the end some kind of psychic change finally takes place. Sonya’s love is a major part of this, a necessary part, but it cannot be the whole story (otherwise he would have repented before turning himself in.) Some kind of internal transformation interacts with Sonya’s love and effects the change. Something related to the Christian concept of grace. Perhaps Dostoyevsky had seen this sort of thing happen to prisoners during his own confinement.
Yes, Dostoevsky was truly brilliant here. Those who need that Hallmark film version find it here: and they lived happily ever after with Sonya.
And those who don't believe in Rodion's reformation are also satisfied, as he never truly repented. He just fell in love with Sonya - how is that repentance?
And the Epilogue sparks heated debates, which is why some don't acknowledge it at all, believing that the novel ended with Rodion's arrival at the police station. Beyond that - decide for yourself what happened. In essence, it's like having multiple endings in a computer game, even though there aren't actually different options.
Thank you so much for this incredible guided reading of C&P. I am re-reading this book over 40yrs since my first reading in college. The depth of your knowledge and your shared insights have truly been greatly appreciated and instrumental in my deeper understanding of this book! I can’t wait to read it AGAIN, but not in another 40 years. Looking forward to re-reading the Brothers K with you too, though I tend to fall behind the group! Thank you again!
Thank you very much, Dana, for guiding everyone through this novel with such kindness and knowledge. Your ability to lead a reading group is truly outstanding! Keep in touch!
Thank you for taking this journey with me: I don't remember which chapter you stopped at, but I had the feeling you had already finished reading. I really enjoyed our discussions about polyphony and a bit about Kafka, and I believe our collaboration still lies ahead.
Absolutely! If I remember correctly, we agreed to exchange 'guest posts' on C&P and The Trial, right? (I think 'guest posting' will be better than 'cross-posting' since we recommend each other and, I suspect, have a bit of an overlapping audience--I suppose people might not appreciate receiving the same content twice... Check out https://on.substack.com/p/collaboration). I'm still a few months away from tackling the Trial, so I'll send you a piece when I get there. But if you want to go first and have something for me to publish to my subscribers, by all means, let me know whenever you're ready!
I haven't used guest posts here, but the concept is exactly what we need, yes!
I need a couple of days to remember what I wanted to write, and I'll let you know then about the timing.
Sure! Take all the time you need. I am happy to proceed whenever you're ready.
I loved how in the epilogue Dostoevsky turned the bleak story of the novel into a message of redemption and hope through love. The epilogue made the novel for me! Contrast it to Tolstoy’s rather perfunctory first epilogue to my other Russian big read, War and Peace. To use the current colloquialisms, Tolstoy “phoned it in” in his epilogue while Dostoevsky “stuck the landing” in his.
Congratulations on completing the novel! It was not an easy journey. The epilogue in War and Peace is, of course, grander and longer, which may be why it feels unfinished. Sometimes Tolstoy lacks conciseness. Dostoevsky, in this sense, doesn't waste words - he was always working against deadlines.
Congrats for reaching the end of Crime and Punishment, and thank you for your effort!
Thank you for sharing this journey with me! I hope The Brothers Karamazov proves even more engaging for our book club.
Thank you for all your work on this! Reading with a group and seeing your notes and illustrations made the book so much more enjoyable. Excited for TBK!
Thank you for taking this journey with me! I hope that The Brothers Karamazov will be even more engaging for the book club.
What an amazing journey. Thank you for this. And thank you to our merry band of fellow readers. The epilogue was very important, as your essay reveals. Somebody, somewhere wrote that there was not a wasted word in this novel. So very true. Raskolnikov has a valid truth to ponder—Why do we honor as Great Men those who started wars, or finished them and now how statues and monuments and history lessons to their further glory.? Why do some get away with this and others do not? The man who drove his truck into New Orleans revelers probably was a modern day Rodion. The reading is over but experience has changed me in some inexplicable way, and that will continue. See you inside TBK.
Paula, my deepest gratitude to you - you went through this entire journey with me, commenting right under each chapter, and I don't think you missed a single one! This was incredibly supportive.
The idea of crime, or more precisely, the ideological unpunished crime of Raskolnikov seems to stir the minds of everyone who contemplates evil deeds. In December, people often compared the Healthcare CEO's killer to Rodion, all these people who are bitter at life, like in New Orleans - they all come from the same source. After all, Raskolnikov didn't do anything good; he destroyed lives while pursuing his idea. And the fact that enlightenment descended upon him - should such a price have been paid? But even in the structure of the novel, you can see that the punishment is 5 times longer and more complex than the actual crime itself.
Brava, Dana, brava. I am with you for TBK!
Thank you so much, Kathy! I'm very glad that you're joining our big reading of The Brothers!
Thanks again for taking us on this wonderful journey. It was truly fun and enlightening. I am in your debt and feel lucky to have discovered your substack. Looking forward to continuing the adventure with Brothers Karamazov in 2025.
This journey would not have been completed without your support, Paúl. The fact that you've taken this path with me means a lot!
What a fascinating journey that was! Thank you for the insightful articles. The cultural context is priceless. When you're not a part of the culture the book is written about, it's just so endlessly fascinating to read about it - from the way they celebrate holidays and drink tea, to the way they handle money to how the court system is run.
I remember reading Don Quixote a long time ago, and while I found the novel itself quite interesting, the notes at the end of the book that explained the context were bizarrely my favorite part, as it was like a fun dive into history and made the book itself that much more visceral and real rather than just a flat thing about the time and the place I know very little about.
Again, thank you! Lookin forward to that K-bros (I'm so so sorry for this).
Congratulations on finishing the novel! It was quite a journey indeed, and now it's time to enjoy a cup of strong tea with jam. I'll be waiting for you in our journey through the worlds of K-bros, which sounds quite amusing.
Dana, thank you so much for guiding us through an incredibly deep book. I’m late to the party but just finished the novel after receiving it for Christmas and appreciated it so much more with your commentary.
I’m sorry if I have missed these points being discussed -
I’m conflicted on whether the Epilogue was necessary. Do you think there was a reason why Dostoyevsky felt the need to wrap the story up with a ‘happy’ ending rather than leaving the reader to imagine what happened next, which often lives longer in the memory?
And, Dostoyevsky left us with final words that sounded like the story was to be continued. Did he follow through with that?
Finally, this is a very minor one, but I was intrigued by the reference to time in C&P. Frequently, Dostoyevsky would tell us that character looked at something for a minute, two minutes, five minutes. Often these time references are a little absurd - I think there was one reference where two characters looked into each other’s eyes for three minutes during a tense moment. This seems unbelievable so I wonder if it is a translation interpretation (Oliver Ready)? Or was there symbolism with this too?
Hello Daniel! I'm delighted that the guide was helpful and that you enjoyed the novel. It truly deserves its beloved status.
Dostoevsky never wrote sequels to his stories. Though themes overlap across his works, Raskolnikov's story appears to have been complete in Dostoevsky's mind. However, rumors suggest he considered writing about Raskolnikov's time in prison or his life afterward. Since Dostoevsky "sent" other convicted characters to Omsk as well, they theoretically could have met there—which would have made for a fascinating sequel.
Perhaps Dostoevsky himself was uncertain about or deliberately avoided giving the story a definitive ending.
As for the minutes you mentioned, I can't speak with certainty since I don't recall that specific detail. Could you share the quote and its chapter location? This would allow me to compare it with the original text and determine whether it appears there or was added in Oliver Ready's translation. It's worth noting that in Russian, phrases like "a couple of minutes" or "few minutes" are abstract time expressions, equivalent to "soon" or "shortly."
Thanks Dana for your (always) detailed response. Fascinating.
On the repeated mention of time (a quick search showed 53 mentions of ‘minutes’), it may be nothing, it may be my translation, but I just couldn’t help but notice them after the first few times (pun intended).
I’ve copied some examples below.
Some don’t sound realistic -
“They both, Svidrigaïlov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking.”
“As far as Raskolnikov could make out from his
stolen glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a full, fair, almost whitish beard.
Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to get dusk. There was complete stillness in the room.”
“Five minutes passed. He still paced up and down the room in silence, not looking at her.”
“Here her laugh turned again to an insufferable fit of coughing that lasted five minutes”
“She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed.”
Some are more easily explained but still oddly specific -
“after two minutes’ hurried effort, he cut the string and took it off without touching the body with the axe”
“When they were clean, he took out the axe, washed the blade and spent a long time, about three minutes, washing the wood”
“But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state themselves that they knocked and the door was
locked; yet three minutes later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the door was unfastened.”
“Then with the same de-
liberation he scrutinised the uncouth, unkempt figure and unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked him boldly and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A con-
strained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might be expected, some scene-shifting took place.”
“Exactly twenty minutes after Razumihin’s departure”
“Then in senseless terror he rushed to the corner, to that hole under the paper where he had put the things; put his hand in, and for some minutes felt carefully in the hole, in every crack and fold of the paper.”
“The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed.”
“Svidrigaïlov remained three minutes standing at the window”
This is an interesting detail you've noticed. In the original text, it's less striking because expressions involving minutes are commonly used as synonyms for "soon" or "quickly"—they aren't meant as precise measurements of time. Even "5 minutes" is just a colloquial way of saying "a brief moment." Dostoevsky wasn't keeping exact time.
Time throughout the novel is highly subjective. While you've focused on these minutes, what I found also remarkable was how his days seem to stretch to 40 hours—an enormous amount of action somehow fits into a single morning. These specific minute counts were likely used arbitrarily, simply to suggest whether a short or long time had passed.
But this still means something, perhaps it relates specifically to his perception of time. It's hard to say now whether he had some kind of obsession with counting minutes. One possibility is that he always wrote his texts in a hurry and under the pressure of deadlines, maybe this indicates that the text isn't relaxed, but rather somewhat mechanized, counting every second.
Wowza what a trip this has been in the last few weeks!!! This is such a heavy book, and I don’t recommend reading it like I did, finishing in a couple of weeks - sometimes I could only read 1 or 2 chapters a day only, as it required so much reflection and frankly recovery!
Thank you Dana for your expertly guidance through this journey, it wouldn’t have been as meaningful and enjoyable without it! I am psyched for TBK!! I will also be finishing the TV series as only 1hr or so left, but I need a bit of a break before I relive those final chapters again 😮💨
Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉! Reading the novel at such a quick pace is quite an achievement. While the book typically calls for a measured reading pace, many readers find themselves devouring it—the adventurous, detective-like plot makes you eager to discover what happens next. If the novel has captivated you, I'm certain you'll return to it or specific chapters later, discovering new layers with each reading.
If you're watching the series I'm thinking of, how do you find Svidrigailov's portrayal? People have been particularly critical of the rushed epilogue.
Still haven’t finished the series but will let you know!
I think I'll need to reread this book at some point in the future and explore the themes that I struggled with. I'm really looking forward to explore The Brothers Karamazov with you and hopefully understand Dostoevsky's philosophy more intimately. Thank you for all your hard work, Dana!
Thank you for being by my side on this journey, for writing interesting comments and questions! We have many interesting things ahead of us this year, I'm already ready for Pirandello 👌🏼
I was torn about the epilogue, as part of me felt that it was an afterthought, but it was also needed in a way. It got me to thinking about what makes an "epilogue" in general vs inclusion as a last chapter? Obviously different writers have different takes on this, but that's a topic for a different day. Overall, I feel like I didn't give this novel the proper attention it deserved (it was the third concurrent book I was going through) and will definitely revisit it soon. I loved all the context and inside-knowledge Dana brought forth.
Thank you for reading with me, and for your humor, Chris!
For me, without the epilogue, the novel wouldn't have felt less complete - we wouldn't have understood anything about what happened to Rodion after his confession, and then interpretations of his fate could have been numerous. I always expect an epilogue to provide a quick summary of what happened after the main novel if the writer doesn't plan to write a sequel. And in this sense, Tolstoy's epilogues are more difficult for me to understand in terms of War and Peace's completeness.
What a spectacular conclusion! I am most solidly in the pro-epilogue camp. I felt like it gave me everything I needed to step away from the novel unscathed. I do believe I was sitting on the log next to Rodion breathing that same fresh air.
Thinking back, I remember that I started reading the novel a week before you announced the group read. I know I would have enjoyed it, because it’s a spectacular work, but when I think of how less rich the experience would have been on my own, I am so incredibly thankful that our paths crossed. This will be one of those reading experiences that I will remember my entire life with very fond memories.
Thank you, Dana, for the countless hours you spent preparing your articles to provide us with the crucial historical and literary background that made this reading what it was.
I couldn’t hold myself back any longer and had to introduce myself to the Brothers Karamazov…just a quick hello and nice to meet you… and now I am eagerly awaiting what you and Dostoyevsky have in store for us.
Until then!
Thank you, Heather! I'm delighted that such a coincidence brought you to my reading club when I hadn't published any articles yet. My decision to begin the club with Crime and Punishment was spontaneous—I had considered Master and Margarita as well. Things would have been quite different had I chosen that path.
I am intrigued by the way that Dostoyevsky subverts the conventional redemption narrative. In such a narrative, Raskolnikov would commit the crime, feel remorse, repent, confess and submit himself to punishment and thus be reformed. (This could be the “Hallmark Channel version of Crime and Punishment” though in that case the crime would need to be less gruesome than splitting heads with an axe – maybe theft or embezzlement of public funds.) Instead, Raskolnikov is tormented by something after committing the crime, but it’s not guilt. He doesn’t repent – as you point out he doesn’t even reconsider his core beliefs that led to the crime. He is tormented after committing the crime, but not by guilt, at least not by conscious guilt. The torment leads him to confess, and to accept punishment, but even then, even after a year or so of hard labor, he still does not repent. Only at the end some kind of psychic change finally takes place. Sonya’s love is a major part of this, a necessary part, but it cannot be the whole story (otherwise he would have repented before turning himself in.) Some kind of internal transformation interacts with Sonya’s love and effects the change. Something related to the Christian concept of grace. Perhaps Dostoyevsky had seen this sort of thing happen to prisoners during his own confinement.
Yes, Dostoevsky was truly brilliant here. Those who need that Hallmark film version find it here: and they lived happily ever after with Sonya.
And those who don't believe in Rodion's reformation are also satisfied, as he never truly repented. He just fell in love with Sonya - how is that repentance?
And the Epilogue sparks heated debates, which is why some don't acknowledge it at all, believing that the novel ended with Rodion's arrival at the police station. Beyond that - decide for yourself what happened. In essence, it's like having multiple endings in a computer game, even though there aren't actually different options.
Thank you so much for this incredible guided reading of C&P. I am re-reading this book over 40yrs since my first reading in college. The depth of your knowledge and your shared insights have truly been greatly appreciated and instrumental in my deeper understanding of this book! I can’t wait to read it AGAIN, but not in another 40 years. Looking forward to re-reading the Brothers K with you too, though I tend to fall behind the group! Thank you again!