Crime and Punishment

Acutely aware of and deeply concerned about Russia's social, political, and economic problems, Fedor Dostoevsky infused his literature with realism and philosophical commentary. Crime and Punishment, besides being a superbly crafted novel, captures the economic despair that characterized life in Russia before the revolution. Dosteovsky's novel serves as a historical marker that delineates the social, political, and economic motivators for the Russian Revolution. Through the minds of the novel's main characters, modern readers perceive the various changes that swept through Russian society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky focuses primarily on the economic despair that caused widespread social and psychological problems in pre-Revolutionary Russia. However, the author denounces radicalism as a viable solution to social and economic woes. Instead, Dostoevsky proposes humanitarian ideals such as love, compassion, and friendship, as the only real means to creating...
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