Crime and Punishment
Space and Place in Crime and Punishment
Petersburg had been the capital of Russia for more than a century and a half when Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment. The capital had been established in the early part of the 18th century by Tsar Peter the Great, who, like his descendents (Catherine the Great especially), was influenced by trends in European style and philosophical thought. With the liberation of the serfs in 1861, St. Petersburg went from cultural hub to the type of over-populated city full of all manner and class of people described by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. The influx of people not only reflected the social and moral atmosphere of Russia as a whole, it also reflected the deteriorating condition of the spiritual and psychological state of Dostoevsky's hero/anti-hero Raskolnikov -- a man whose name is literally inspired by the Russian term for "split" or "schismatic." Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov is indeed a man splitting apart at the seams: he is at war within himself spiritually, at war psychologically with the landlord of his cramped and claustrophobic apartment, at war with his stifling surroundings in Petersburg, and at war with the natural and divine law of old world Russia. This paper will examine how Dostoevsky uses ideas of space and place in Crime and Punishment to reflect these various states of conflict.
St. Petersburg sets the tone of the novel with its extremes in terms of weather. At the beginning of the novel, the city is suffering from a terrible heat wave that mirrors the terrible fever rising in Raskolnikov's brain. Raskolnikov tries to beat the heat by getting outdoors, out of the confines of his room, but he encounters such characters within the city that his spiritual and mental condition is aggravated all the more. For example, he meets the predator whom he recognizes as trying to take advantage of an intoxicated young girl. Raskolnikov righteously calls...
A major concern regarding crime today that exists within prisons as well as on the streets is the formation of gangs. "Prison gangs are flourishing across the country. Organized, stealthy and deadly, they are reaching out from their cells to organize and control crime in America's streets.... prison disturbances soared by about 400% in the early nineties, which authorities say indicated that gangs were becoming more active... As much as
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Similarly, Green (2000) cites the reclassification of rape as a crime against the person as a good example of changing social views about acceptable behaviors and the consequences of unacceptable behaviors that involve violence. According to Green: For example, the fact that rape is now generally classified as a crime against the person rather than as a morals offense (as was once common) is indicative of the evolution in society's
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