Good bye.

I write my final response to thing novel in somewhat disbelief at how this book ended. I have been waiting, essentially since Raskolnikov committed the murder, for some sort of “punishment to occur.” This reading began with Svidrigailov and his strange dreams. His dreams of the city flooding seemed to me to be a representation of how he was feeling inside, like he was drowning. The part about the young “seductive” girl did not make a whole lot of sense to me other than the fact that he must be harboring some guilt for having done something so heinous to lead to a dream like this. All of these thoughts seem to have been proved in Svidrigailov’s suicide, he was obviously incapable of dealing with the guilt that he possessed as well as Raskolnikov was. I was incredibly surprised with how the book ended in terms of Raskolnikov’s situation. At the beginning of this book, I assumed that Raskolnikov would go to prison, and that part of the story would make up the “punishment” portion of the story. We are left completely out of the loop in terms of Raskolnikov’s fait. We know that he has decided to admit to the guilt, but in a fashion that is only suiting Raskolnikov, he debates whether or not to do in for several pages. In the end, Raskolnikov admits his guilt to Ilya. This final action in the story solidifies my growing opinion about the “Punishment” that followed the “Crime” in this novel. This is the theme that I plan on discussing in my term paper. I think that the entire novel was a discussion on the various ways that people deal with guilt. At some points, Raskolnikov is driven mad by his guilt, at some points he seems to have no remorse at all, and throughout the book, he is torn in his decision between owning up to the crime, and staying in the hell that he has created for himself from this guilt. I thought the author has communicating to us that this book is a demonstration of the various ways that people deal with feeling culpable for a crime they know they committed, but that, in the end, the only method that is truly relieving, is admitting to the crime. Overall, I thought that this book had an interesting premise with strange, but provoking ideas. I thought that the story moved, for the most part, far slower than it needed to in order to convey the message it seemed to have been trying to convey. I also recognize that there are an insane amount of side parts to this story, like the story of Marmeladov, that can be dissected and studied by themselves, and that it is almost impossible to detect all of the meanings that this story discusses. I am happy to have finished this book, but somewhat bothered that there was no judicial punishment for Raskolnikov, just his mental anguish.