Dostoyevsky

’s Use Of Characters In Crime And Punis Essay, Research Paper

Socialism means that everyone in society works for the benefit of the whole, rather than for separate individuals, and no matter how much you work, you get an equal share of the outcome. During the course of the novel Crime and Punishment, we may notice that Fyodor Dostoyevsky uses some of the characters to reveal his own ideas about socialism. For example, he uses Alyona Ivanovna as one of these characters and Razumikhin as another. These revelations are not very apparent, but if we analyze the thought process and actions of these characters we can see how Dostoyevsky shows us his ideas through them. Alyona Ivanovna, the pawnbroker, appears early in the novel and we see the way she works is completely non-socialistic. She works for herself, supposedly having a lot of money, but still accepting every offer, even if it is only worth one ruble. This could tell us that she is afraid of what could happen the next day or next month and wants to make sure she has money to survive. All the profits she makes (not counting the money that is given to the owner of the object) belong to her. She works alone and doesn t share her profits with anyone. However, that money is, obviously, helpful to her, just like it would be to any other individual. We do not know for sure just how she uses the money, but it is definitely not for the benefit of others, it is herself only. Through her, Dostoyevsky is perhaps trying to show that in a society where a great deal of people is poor, socialism is very needed and fair. People try to get money any way they can, such as selling their body. It is horrifying in the beginning, but when they see that there is nothing else possible, they get used to it. However, if socialism was present, everyone would work for the benefit of everyone else, no one would starve, and no one would be extremely rich. Razumikhin is also used by Dostoyevsky to show the same idea. There is not enough money and without socialism, without working together, you didn t stand a chance of having much if you didn t try to earn it for yourself by private means. Razumikhin tries to get some money by translating books from one language to another and then selling them. Unless you were of a high rank, you did not have any money and were very poor. But everyone needs to live! Everyone needs food and some kind of shelter and to have those things you have to pay for them. Dostoyevsky shows us how horrible life is when so many people are poor, for example Katherine Ivanovna, who has so many children and is sick herself. He tries to show us how poor people lived so heart hurts when you think that this is the way people actually lived. He tries to make us understand how children have to go hungry in a terribly poor family with a dying mother and a deceased father. Again, if socialism was present, then everyone would get an equal share and things would be improved.

Dostoyevsky shows us some individuals that would absolutely despise socialism, and those are the rich people, such as Luzhin. He has a lot of money so he would definitely abhor the idea of getting the same amount of money and other resources as, say Raskolnikov would. He is an egoist, as we saw earlier in the novel, because he said that a person should care about him/her self first. Luzhin and Raskolnikov had an aggressive argument earlier about this matter. Luzhin kept telling his theory on how an individual should care for his business first and not about others, and Raskolnikov was against this, which is why the argument occurred. This makes Raskolnikov a socialist, because even though he doesn t say it, he does care about others. Also, he is poor, and naturally, a poor person would want to get the same amount of money as everyone else, so that he never has to be poor and starving again.Dostoyevsky is telling us that if everyone worked together, then there might not be such incredible poverty and pain. If everyone worked for the benefit of the whole , then life may have been fairer for everyone not having 300 people very rich and 30,000 extremely poor. Perhaps Dostoyevsky is trying to show us the negative part about living in a non-socialistic society.