On more than one occasion, he literally gives away all the money he has to help meet the needs of others. What’s more, Raskolnikov is portrayed as one of the more generous characters in the novel. Ironically, while the murders are partly committed with the idea of taking the old pawnbroker’s money to advance Raskolnikov’s plans, he never attempts to use the money, but merely buries it under a stone.

In fear and trembling he commits two murders, partly out of a confused desire to thereby benefit the rest of humanity, and partly out of a seemingly genuine concern to really live in accordance with his theories.

He often appears to be a sensitive, though confused, young intellectual, who’s been led to entertain his wild ideas more as a result of dire poverty and self-imposed isolation from his fellow man, rather than from sheer malice or selfish ambition. The portrait Dostoevsky paints of him is really quite complex. But in fact, he’s actually just a conscientious ordinary man. This inner battle suggests that Raskolnikov has mistaken himself for an extraordinary man, a man bound neither by the rules of society, nor the higher moral law.

Under the unfortunate influence of a particularly pernicious theory of society and human nature, he exalts himself above the moral law, grievously transgresses it by committing two murders, “and plunges into a hell of persecution, madness and terror.” It tells the story of an intelligent, but impoverished, young Russian intellectual named Raskolnikov. It’s a penetrating study of the psychology of sin, guilt, and redemption, and it haunts the reader long after the final page has been read. In 1866 the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky published Crime and Punishment, one of his greatest novels. We learn that this great novel records the fall of man into a degraded state but ends with the beginning of his restoration through the ministry of a selfless, Christian woman. Michael Gleghorn looks at the famous novel through a Christian worldview lens to see what truths Dostoevsky may have for us.

Joseph frank dostoyevsky