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 Dostoyevsky ...

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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 to ...

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