Skip to main content

Reading journal: Crime and Punishment by Fjodor Dostojevski. Entry 2.

I will make this short, since I don’t have many comments on this part of the book.

  • This part of the novel is an emotional roller-coaster. It starts with Raskolnikov’s wild attempts to destroy all evidence of the crime and his feverish panic when called in to the police station for an interview (over an unrelated matter), descends into pathos when his fever is described, although whether it is caused by real illness or is merely a psychosomatic effect of his shock and guilt after the murder is left up to the reader to decide (probably a mixture of both). Then there is a comic interlude when his prospective brother-in-law Lusjin arrives and both the reader and Raskolnikov discover him to be vain and pompous, both of which Raskolnikov mocks loudly but the man either does not understand or pretends not to. There follows another slip into almost mad despair with suicidal thoughts, followed by a very sad and pathetic scene which nevertheless lifts Raskolnikov’s spirits. Raskolnikov’s despair and guilt are never far away, however, so that one feels almost guilty for laughing at the funny parts. All of this is brilliantly done and never feels overdramatic.

  • That another man’s death should make Raskolnikov decide not to give himself up to the police creates a great opportunity for a dramatic twist in the narrative. It seems to me that his apparent decision to do something for the dead man's family could either lead to his redemption or his doom.

  • Marmeladof has resurfaced, if only briefly. His daughter Sonja has been introduced, and in a way that makes me think she will play some part in what is to come, either as Raskolnikov's love interest or his conscience made flesh.

  • I also have a feeling about Dunja, Raskolnikov’s sister, and his friend Rasumikhin – that there might be a romance in the cards, or at least unrequited love.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more