Crime and Punishment

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT ENG 112 Final Draft BY: TASHEILA SNEED 5-5-12 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a crime novel based in St. Petersburg, Russia in the 19th century. Fyodor raises questions about the influence of social structure on the psyche. The book tells the story of a young man in poverty, who murders a selfish woman of wealth. The young man struggles with his psyche and his class in society, which influences his behavior throughout the book. The story is narrated in third person about a young man, a protagonist poor college student named Rodion Romanovitch Roskolnikov. Roskolnikov suffered from a mental illness. This is told to the reader in the scanza “young men had fallen into a state of nervous depression akin to hypochondria.”(Crime and Punishment) This analysis will be focused on the following characters: Roskolnikov, Alyona Ivanovna, Marmeladov, and Sonya. Roskolnikov murders a pawnbroker named, Alyona Ivanovna, who he, and many people in the town, felt preyed on the poor and less fortune. This belief helps Roskolnikov justify his behavior for eliminating her from society. First Roskolnikov plots his murderous act by going to Ivanovna’s apartment, which was also a pawnshop. Roskolnikov went there scoping the safety box where the items of monetary value were kept. While there he asked Alyona Ivanovna if her younger sister was always there. After scoping the pawnbrokers daily environment he went to a tavern to think more aggressively about the murder plan that he was not even sure he could commit. At the tavern he met a man named Marmeladov, who was married and had escaped to the tavern to drink away his inability to provide for his family. Marmeladov also had a daughter named Sonya. Through conversation Roskolnikov learned that Marmeladov’s daughter Sonya had took the role of

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