Crime and Punishment; Raskolnikovs Crime Essay

Crime and Punishment; Raskolnikovs Crime

Part one of Crime and Punishment goes into a lot of detail about Raskolnikovs crime. In chapter one Dostoevsky shows how Raskolnikov envisions this crime that he is about to commit. Raskolnikov has a plan to murder an old, mean pawnbroker. Throughout part one Raskolnikov has second guesses about going through with the murder. He doesnt believe that he has enough will power to do such a terrible thing. Although, it is a terrible thing to murder someone, Raskolnikov is set on believing that no one will miss this woman if she is dead. At the bar one night Raskolnikov hears a student talking about the old pawnbroker. The student said, I could kill that damned old woman and make off with her money, I assure you, without the faintest conscience-prick (Dostoevsky 68). This made Raskolnikov feel as though he was destined to kill the old woman, so he would wait for her sister to leave and then do the deed.

When the night comes that Raskolnikov is going to kill the old woman he still has second thoughts about the crime. Its when he gathers all the supplies that he becomes more motivated than ever. He makes his way to the pawnbrokers house, to finally go through with the crime. He arrives to just the old pawnbroker at home, just as he had planned. Raskolnikov kills the old woman but then her sister comes through the door. Without hesitation he kills her as well. This is not at all how he had envisioned the crime. All he wanted to do was kill the old pawnbroker, take some of her things, and leave. Now he had completely failed what he had came to do. He had killed someone with purpose that was actually somewhat liked in the town. His crime was a failure.

Raskolnikovs failure to commit the crime as he envisioned it is a failure to his entire philosophy. By killing the old woman he felt as though he was doing the town a favor. No one would miss her because no one liked her anyway, but by killing her sister as well, his whole theory had been ruined. His objective was to kill the old woman and have no one talk about the crime because no one cared about her. This philosophy of his is now completely corrupt because he has killed someone else. By killing the old womans sister a lot more attention will be drawn to the murder. Raskolnikov had failed himself by killing her; his philosophy of how his murder would affect everyone is now completely disregarded. His philosophy behind all of the madness is now thrown away, and now Raskolnikov has to live with his failure and terrible actions for the rest of his life.