Day One Hundred and One

7/11

The Book: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

ISBN: 978-1-59308-081-5

Suggested By: Patrick Garcia

Where: The STC Library

When: 3-4P

Music: None

Company: Sissy

Pages: 482- 521(55)

The Lead In: I finish this book today. Wow, my first completed Dostoevsky. More in the 20/20.

The 411 on the 55: Rodion caves in and submits to the police. His mother is heartbroken and ends up dying. His sister marries his old friend and is marginally happy. Sonia follows him to Siberia to be around him.

I leave Rodion’s fate to its own paragraph because I was super thrilled with the way he had gone. There is much internal thought process revealed by the author and we know R is completely unrepentant. He feels he did nothing wrong and is irritated to be locked up. This is in line with everything else he has theorized concerning human nature. He views himself as being above the rules.

But Dostoevsky chickens out in the last two pages of the epilogue. Why? I’m not sure but he caves in and R grovels at Sonya’s feet, pouring out his love and even reading the Bible. Really Fyoder? Really? You chicken.

The 20/20: The book was great. Brutal in the murder scene and excellent in the philosophy and dialogue. Overall a great read, but I am horribly disappointed with the ending.

Line of the Day: “And if only fate would have sent him repentance - burning repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life. But he did not repent of his crime.” pg 515

Fact on the Fiction: “Then we get this one line telling us Raskolnikov will suffer, as if the narrator is trying to convince us that it's OK for Raskolnikov to be happy because he earns it by suffering. Do we buy this? In the beginning of the epilogue, we hear that Raskolnikov likes the prison atmosphere. He gets sick because of his mind, and because a bunch of guys tried to kill him, not due to the conditions. “ Shmoop