Christianity In Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment: An Overview

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life and read The New Testament (the only book he was allowed).
However, it was not until his compulsory army service that Dostoyevsky's
faith began to blossom. In the army, Dostoyevsky met a fellow officer and
devout Christian named Baron von Vrangel, who befriended the still young
Dostoevesky and helped him re-discover the Christian faith (Frank 4).
Although a professing Christian for the rest of his life,
Dostoyevsky was not a “plaster saint.” (Until he died, he was plagued by
doubts and a passion for gambling.) Instead, Dostoyevsky understood,
perhaps better than any other great Christian author, that his faith was
created and sustained by one thing only: the grace of God.
It is of such grace that Dostoyevsky writes in Crime and Punishment.
Although most critics agree that Crime and Punishment's theme is not as
deliberately Christian as Dostoyevsky's latter works, the novel's voice is
still authentically Christian. Written in 1864, shortly after ...

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sich den rechten weges wohl
bewusst.Translated loosely, the statement means that “A good man, in his
dark impulses, is still conscious of the right way.” Although he tries to
convince himself that he is not subject to moral law, Raskalnikov cannot
avoid the fact that he is subject to natural law. He believes that he is a
superman, one who do anything to assure his success, and he murders an old .
pawnbroker to prove this theory. As such, Raskalnikov's greatest sin is not
his murder of Aliona Ivanovna or of Litzeveta, but rather that, in his
arrogance, he severs himself from humanity. Although Raskalnikov
sucessfully commits the crime, he is unable to live with himself. In an
1879 letter ...

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