Crime and Punishment 2

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2007.
1. Point of view- the perspective that the story is told from.
"Good God!" he cried, "can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open... that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood, blood... with the axe... Good God, can it be?" (p. 60)
• Crime and Punishment is written from a third-person omniscient point of view. Primarily, the book is told from Raskolnikov’s perspective, but it does switch to the different perspectives of Svidrigailov, Razumikhin, Peter Petrovich, or Dunya. These different points of view change how the story is viewed, perhaps the different ways that people see the current situation.
2. Symbolism- using something to explain a greater idea.
"We will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our cross!" (p. 401)
• This image of a cross is used periodically throughout the book, used of course as a symbol of Christianity. Shown by the exclamation point at the end of the quote (spoken by Sonia to Raskolnikov), this conveys a sense of near excitement toward suffering to stop sinning (Sonia is a prostitute.)
3. Irony- The humorous or frustrating difference between what you expect to happen, and what actually happens.
“‘But if there is no one, if there is nowhere left to go? I mean, everyone must have at least somewhere to go. For there comes a time in every man’s life when he simply must have somewhere he can go! When my only daughter when on the yellow card for the first time, I went then too … (for my daughter lives by the yellow card, sir…)’” (p. 16)
• The daughter that is spoken of within this quote is Sonia, a prostitute. The yellow card, was a system that began during the mid- 1800’s in Russia, as a measure to combat diseases spread by sex. The yellow ticket replaced all other means of identification for a prostitute, a yellow ticket pointing one out in a crowd. Although prostitution isn’t...