Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T09:38:16.084Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Crime and Punishment: driving other people crazy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2009

Get access

Summary

In spite of the length of Crime and Punishment this chapter will be a relatively short one. My aim is not to offer a reading of the novel as a whole but to explore a number of the strategies which it exemplifies. Dostoyevsky's first major novel provides the opportunity for extending the study of his psychology into new areas, specifically into the areas of personal interaction and coexistence on which Bakhtin writes so eloquently. As a result of the choice of a third person narrative technique which permitted the narrator to focus on more than one character at once and, more important, to give them something approaching equal weight in accordance with the principle of ‘polyphony’, this novel exemplifies and clarifies a number of issues which were depicted only one-sidedly in the earlier works I have discussed. It shows, for example, what may happen when people attempt mutually to objectify and classify each other, seek to impose two or more incompatible images on another person at the same time, and deploy emotionally disturbing strategies on each other. This is an area into which Bakhtin declines to venture.

In the person of the protagonist, Raskolnikov, the novel exemplifies an inner conflict between emotional demands for objectification (particularly of other people, but not exclusively) and (inter)subjectivity.

Type
Chapter
Information
Dostoyevsky after Bakhtin
Readings in Dostoyevsky's Fantastic Realism
, pp. 77 - 95
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×