Crime and Punishment Review

Raskolnikov is exhausting and compelling because his intelligence builds arguments that his body and conscience refuse to accept. The person on the page is allowed to be inconsistent about guilt, which made the choices easier to trust. I was most attentive during the feverish psychological pressure, cramped city, and verbal duels with investigator Porfiry. The attention paid to the feverish psychological pressure gives the larger question of guilt a human scale.

For me, the real argument concerns guilt and pride. The plot matters because it forces guilt and pride into practical choices, where a clean belief becomes harder to maintain.

I did lose confidence when the melodrama and coincidences can be heavy, while several secondary women are treated symbolically. A little more patience would have made the material around guilt easier to believe.

The pace is uneven, but the shifts usually follow a change in how the characters understand guilt through the feverish psychological pressure.

The experience of Crime and Punishment was uneven, but never empty. I am still caught on the question of guilt and who gets to define it.