My Favorite Book
My Favorite Book
My favorite book is one of the most famous novels in
world literature, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment from 1866. It is a
stressful tale about one man’s attempt to escape the implication of a single
terrible act of murder.
Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov - known as Rodya - is a
handsome young student who, in an attempt to save his sister Dounia from
marrying just to provide for him, kills a careless sixty-year old pawnbroker
with a porter’s axe. During the killing, her sister Lizaveta enters and he
murders her too, burying the spoils.
The story follows Rodya as he tries to avoid detection
at a police summons (he faints) and, while another man, Nikolay, the painter,
is accused. Various other characters come into the equation, such as Rodya’s
student friend Razumihin, who fears his mental collapse and Zametov, the police
clerk who is mistrustful of the fainting incident. Episodes that follow,
include Rodya’s return to the department of investigation under Porfiry
Petrovitch, who tries to trap him psychologically, and later makes a
conversation with him, using an individual approach, on the criminal mind.
I fear for Rodya and his indefensible situation especially
after his family receives something of a small fortune from Svidrigailov. Into
this fight of strange circumstances comes Sonia - a pale girl from the streets
- to whom Rodya confesses his crime. It is then a question of whether he should
give himself up and if Dounia will forgive his act of foolishness. The path of
Rodya’s life leads through these adventures to an acceptance of religion over
individualism (even some kind of egoism).
Of course, it is actually hard to read this kind of
books, however not all the things in our life are going so well – there are
also the bad edges of it: dreadfully realistic and tragedy like. I recommend
this novel to the people, who have “an opened eyes vision on the world’s life”,
who are not frightened of considering poor existence of many people on the
Earth.