Crime And Punishment By Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1708 Words

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, great attention is paid to Raskolnikov’s inner life, yet it is equally important to attend to those outside forces that affect him. A significant but overlooked part of the novel, then, is how the city of St. Petersburg affects Raskolnikov. Through my reading, I found it interesting that Raskolnikov regularly traverses the city’s bridges and uses them as a place for reflection. Overall, there are twenty-five appearances of the word â€Å"bridge† in the novel, and so they appear in many different situations, holding many different purposes. First and foremost, they serve as an important narrative device: they provide geographical context, split up scenes, and provide scenes with emphasis by†¦show more content†¦Psychologically, however, this scene is significant because it establishes the bridge as a place of introspection. In this case, it highlights Raskolnikov’s confusion, which only furt her contextualizes his frail emotional and mental state after the murder. Thus, this bridge-scene serves as a simple yet concrete way to advance the plot while conveying Raskolnikov’s mental state. Another scene exemplifying this dual role of bridges occurs during Part Two when Raskolnikov watches a woman attempt to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. Notably, this scene begins with descriptive imagery of Raskolnikov’s surroundings: he notices â€Å"the last pink gleams of the sunset† on some houses, â€Å"blazing as if aflame†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (168-169). This provides a contrast to the more depressing descriptions of the city found regularly; earlier in the chapter, for example, Raskolnikov is described to inhale â€Å"the stinking, dusty, city-infected air† (154). Thus, in a sense, the bridge can be a place of life and beauty. This mood changes, however, after the woman attempts to take her life. In the aftermath, the narrator reports that Raskolnikov â€Å"looks upon it all with a strange feeling of indifference and detachment. It was disgusting to him† (170). Narratively, this scene is significant as it contains the sub-story of the woman, made possible by the bridge, but there is more to this scene than that. The narratorShow MoreRelatedCrime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky1025 Words   |  4 PagesCrime and Punishment, written by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky; is a philosophical crime fiction novel. The story is very powerful in that it goes beyond the book and into the lives of the audience; making the audience feel some type of relation between themselves and the story. Dostoevsky was brilliant in creating a fictional world where the characters seem to be found within the audience, transitioning from a fictional story to a self-help book. 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