Psychosocial Criminality in Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

Abstract

In this research article, we have described the Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky is an in-depth study of the psychosocial nature of criminality based on the psychological conflict and the social environment that causes the emergence of crime. The novel revolves around Rodion Raskolnikov, the former student of law who is in absolute poverty and in deplorable circumstances in a nineteenth century St. Petersburg. Feeling alienated, starving, and unjust in the society, Raskolnikov forms an extraordinary man theory, separating human species into ordinary people who are forced by moral law and extraordinary people who have a higher cause to break it violently. He kills the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna under the influence of radical ideology of nihilism and utilitarian rationalism in which he seeks to prove himself a superior intellectual. Dostoevsky depicts the crime committed by Raskolnikov as both an intellectual arrogance and the storm of feelings, he shows that there is a dualistic soul of the man in which the mind and conscience clash. The novel stresses that psychological punishment such as guilt, fear, and alienation is actually more severe than legal punishment. The process of redemption is based on suffering, human bond, and moral awakening especially with the force of Sonya who is humble and spiritually faithful. This work has highlighted the indivisible connection between social background, ideological delusion and inner mental agony in the development of deviant conduct.