In this blog post, I’ll explore how Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ can help us rediscover the meaning of human relationships and the value of existence during those moments when we lose sight of life’s purpose amid a monotonous and repetitive daily routine.
A person’s life is too long to spend simply looking ahead and running at full speed. That is why everyone inevitably experiences a slump at some point. The sense of emptiness when a goal you’ve been chasing disappears; the vagueness that sets in when it takes too long to achieve a goal; the despair that arises when you feel you’ll never be able to reach it—slumps generally stem from these emotions. Among the countless types of slumps, there is one that, in a way, may seem the most trivial, yet is also the hardest to escape. It is the slump that sets in when we simply get buried in our daily routines—either without having set a goal at all or having forgotten the one we once had—and just go through the motions day by day.
I was stuck in exactly this kind of slump while reading Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’. During high school, I had been racing toward the finish line of college. During my first semester after enrollment, while I was adjusting to the new environment, I was running at a fairly fast pace, but that pace gradually slowed down. After the break, time passed, and the second semester began; the hustle and bustle of the new semester was short-lived, and before I knew it, I found myself walking slowly through the same old scenery. My daily routine consisted of a repetitive class schedule, meeting similar friends to share similar conversations, and when I got home, always doing similar homework before falling asleep at the same time. Since I’m timid by nature, I don’t know how to really break out of the routine, and with so much to do, the stress just keeps piling up.
I’m sure I’m not the only one going through this. I imagine countless college students—those in that ambiguous phase where it’s been a while since they were freshmen, yet it’s still a bit too early to be thinking about jobs or future careers—are having similar thoughts. Of course, nothing terrible will happen if I just let this slump go unaddressed. As time goes on, most students will become preoccupied with other major concerns—like the job market—and will likely look back on this period, when they spent their days without a care in the world, as a happy time before moving on with their lives. To suggest Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’—widely regarded as a masterpiece of the century—as a solution to such a trivial slump might seem as ridiculous as using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. But so what? Here, I’ll share my own interpretation of ‘Crime and Punishment’ to help make this ambiguous period a little more vibrant.
Dostoevsky’s novel ‘Crime and Punishment’ is set in 19th-century St. Petersburg, Russia. Life for Russians in the 19th century was miserable. Following the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, rapid social and economic changes took place, and St. Petersburg, in particular, as a densely populated metropolis, was plagued by various social problems. Such extreme circumstances inevitably had a profound impact on individuals’ psychology, ideology, and behavior. Dostoevsky wrote this novel by meticulously depicting the inner workings of the human mind and the state of society against the backdrop of St. Petersburg’s small rooms and streets.
Raskolnikov, the protagonist of ‘Crime and Punishment’, is one of the countless young men lying in one-room apartments hidden throughout St. Petersburg at the time, pursuing their ideals. Expelled from university for failing to pay tuition, Raskolnikov—immature as an intellectual—becomes ensnared in his own clumsy and dangerous ideas, ultimately committing the unforgivable crime of murder. This novel delicately portrays Raskolnikov’s psychological journey from the moment he commits the murder until he eventually turns himself in and faces punishment.
My conclusion is that Raskolnikov’s murder of the old pawnbroker was almost an act of impulse. Admittedly, he continues to reel off theories justifying his murder, speaking as if his act had been carried out under the control of reason. However, the plan to kill the old woman was nothing more than one of the gloomy fantasies he entertained while lying in a cramped room filled with stale air, and at first, he himself considered it a ridiculous plan. Even after devising a concrete plan of his own, he remained half-convinced, half-doubtful about whether he would actually carry it out. Then, on his way home, he happened to overhear the time when Lizaveta, the old woman’s sole housemate, would be away from the house, and he simply put his murder plan into action—as if the hem of his coat had caught in the wheel of a machine and been dragged inside.
Raskolnikov was not the only one suffering because of the old woman’s unjust gains. There must have been many others who hated her as well. Unlike Raskolnikov, who at least had the support of his family, there were surely people whose lives had been driven to the brink of ruin because of her. But why did Raskolnikov so easily succumb to the urge to kill? What, exactly, was the force that drove him to commit murder?
After being expelled from university, Raskolnikov lives day by day in a coffin-like room, trapped in a miserable reality. He has no connections to others and engages in no particularly meaningful activities. He simply lets time slip away, lost in daydreams, without any real purpose. Although there is an overwhelming difference in scale, there are quite a few similarities between Raskolnikov’s situation and my own. Therefore, in order to find the root of Raskolnikov’s murderous impulse, I gently placed myself in his shoes and, piecing together clues from the novel, imagined his unconscious mind—aspects not explicitly revealed in the text.
Amid a seemingly meaningless daily routine and extreme circumstances, he must have gradually lost his sense of self-worth. When he realized through his mother’s letter that not only his mother but especially his younger sister, Dunya, was sacrificing herself for him, his sense of loss of self-worth must have reached its peak. Living each day meaninglessly while living off the money his mother and sister had painstakingly earned, he must have felt like a louse. Ultimately, invoking the specious logic that it is justifiable for an “extraordinary person” to kill a single louse to save 100 suffering people, he took “action” to prove that he was a special being. Raskolnikov committed a massive transgression that I, being timid, could never carry out—and he did so in the worst possible way. However, through the murder of the old woman, he comes to the agonizing realization that he cannot become an “extraordinary person.” Afterward, he comes to prove his existence in a different way.
As the proverb “A man is known by the company he keeps” suggests, human relationships are a very useful tool for proving one’s existence. Raskolnikov, who was naturally awkward in social situations, did not intellectually grasp this fact, but as he lost his sense of self-worth, he seemed to instinctively crave human connection.
Just before committing the crime that stripped him of his sense of self-worth, Raskolnikov feels a particularly strong longing for human connection. He takes an interest in Marmeladov, whom he meets for the first time in a tavern; he helps a young woman in distress on the street; and he suddenly recalls his college classmate, Razumikhin. After the crime—which failed to prove his existence—he initially rejects people out of fear of being discovered, yet he displays a contradictory behavior: he wanders through crowded places and eventually even visits Razumikhin’s home, revealing his deep longing for human connection. I believe this was the second approach Raskolnikov unconsciously sought to prove his existence.
Ultimately, this second method proved successful. When he witnessed Marmeladov’s death, he helped ensure that Marmeladov could die surrounded by his family and paid for the funeral expenses for Marmeladov’s family. It was only when Marmeladov’s young daughter, Polya, tried to kiss and embrace him that he regained some sense of his own worth and felt a sense of joy. Before witnessing Marmeladov’s death, he returns to the bridge where a woman had thrown herself to her death and speaks as if defying some invisible force:
“I’ve already resolved to live, even if it’s in a space no larger than one arshin on all sides!”
Raskolnikov, who until just moments before had been watching the woman jump to her death with a gloomy gaze, suddenly declares his will to live. This is precisely the power of positive human relationships.
His falling in love with Sonya—who had continuously helped him regain his sense of self-worth from the day he witnessed Marmeladov’s death—is also part of this same trajectory. When Raskolnikov needed a human connection, he found it in Sonya. In this way, Sonya became an indispensable presence in Raskolnikov’s life, leading him—who refused to admit his guilt until the very end—to choose to turn himself in rather than commit suicide or flee. By the epilogue, Sonya and Raskolnikov, loving one another and reaffirming each other’s worth, ultimately become “an inexhaustible fountain of life that nourishes each other’s hearts.”
Compared to the anguish of Raskolnikov, who lived in Russia during such a bleak era, the slumps experienced by most college students—myself included—are truly nothing. Even so, Raskolnikov’s story offers a clue to resolving our minor worries. Many college students choose to engage in reckless behavior to escape boredom. They seek to regain their vitality by having new experiences that are difficult to pursue in their daily lives. While this is a good approach, the experiences available during a busy semester are inevitably limited, so the novelty wears off quickly. Ultimately, if a slump drags on, students find themselves buried in routine once again, and some even commit the error of resorting to moral transgressions.
‘Crime and Punishment’ offers us another solution for overcoming a slump. Just as Raskolnikov regained his sense of worth by forming new relationships and exchanging positive influences with others, we too can rediscover the meaning of life even within a daily routine that seems monotonous—by meeting new people, gaining fresh perspectives on those we already know, and transforming ourselves into sources of mutual support. Even if only two people existed in this world, those two could become, like Raskolnikov and Sonia, an “endless fountain of life that moistens each other’s hearts.” Given that there are so many people in this world that one could never meet them all even with a lifetime of effort, this approach felt like the ultimate solution to me.
Even after reading ‘Crime and Punishment’, my daily life hasn’t changed. However, my mindset and behavior have gradually shifted. I’ve started greeting a neighbor I often run into in the elevator but had never even exchanged a nod with; I’ve confided worries I’d kept bottled up inside to a close friend; and I’ve exchanged private messages for the first time with a classmate I used to feel a bit awkward around. These small efforts have brought me simple joys in and of themselves, and as a result, my broader and deeper relationships have become a source of vitality that enriches my life.
This essay connects the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ with the author’s own situation and explains how this helped the author overcome a personal slump. The slump the author experienced upon entering college and the situation of Raskolnikov in ‘Crime and Punishment’ are well explained through the author’s narrative. However, the connection between these two stories is unclear. It seems a bit of an exaggeration to say that Raskolnikov’s situation and the author’s own are similar. I can’t help but think that the frustration Raskolnikov experienced and the shocking crime he committed are of a far greater intensity than the mild wanderings of daily life, a temporary loss of direction, or mere routine. Being cast out of the group that constituted a large part of his identity (expulsion from college), his guilt toward his family, and the suffering caused by the structure of social exploitation are akin to the frustration of being driven to the “brink of a cliff.” This seems to be on a completely different level from the “boredom” one inevitably feels in a stable but monotonous daily routine. So, while it’s understandable that the author used ‘Crime and Punishment’ to escape his own slump, this approach has made the novel itself feel rather ordinary.
This essay draws a parallel between the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ and the author’s own situation, and explains how the author used this connection to overcome his slump. The slump the author experienced upon becoming a college student and Raskolnikov’s situation in ‘Crime and Punishment’ are well explained through the author’s narrative. However, the connection between these two stories is unclear. It seems a bit of an exaggeration to say that Raskolnikov’s situation and the author’s own are similar. I can’t help but feel that the frustration Raskolnikov experienced and the shocking crime he committed are of a far greater intensity than the mild wanderings of daily life, a temporary loss of direction, or mere complacency. Being expelled from the group that constituted a large part of his identity (expulsion from college), his guilt toward his family, and the suffering inflicted by the structure of social exploitation are akin to the frustration of being driven to the “brink of a cliff.” This seems to be on a completely different level from the “boredom” that is inevitable in a stable yet monotonous daily routine. Therefore, while it is understandable that the author used ‘Crime and Punishment’ to escape his own slump, this approach has left me with the impression that the work itself has become too ordinary.
