Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment: A Reader's Guide - Hardcover
by Deborah a. Martinsen (Author)
Crime and Punishment: A Reader's Guide focuses on narrative strategy, psychology,
and ideology. Martinsen demonstrates how Dostoevsky fi rst plunges the reader
into Raskolnikov's fevered brain, creating sympathy for him, and she explains why
most readers root for him to get away from the scene of the crime. Dostoevsky
subsequently provides outsider perspectives on Raskolnikov's thinking, effecting a
conversion in reader sympathy. By examining the multiple justifi cations for murder
Raskolnikov gives as he confesses to Sonya, Dostoevsky debunks rationality-based
theories. Finally, the question of why Raskolnikov and others, including the reader,
focus on the murder of the pawnbroker and forget the unintended murder of
Lizaveta reveals a narrative strategy based on shame and guilt.
Deborah A. Martinsen was Associate Dean of Alumni Education and Adjunct Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Columbia University. Past president of the International Dostoevsky Society and former executive secretary of the North American Dostoevsky Society, Martinsen is the author of Surprised by Shame: Dostoevsky's Liars and Narrative Exposure (Ohio, 2003) and co-editor of Dostoevsky in Context (Oxford, 2015).
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