Crime and Punishment Character Analysis

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Crime and Punishment Characters More often than none readers don’t take into account the fact that the traits of characters are what establish a story. There names, personality, where there from, and other things all are influential to the course the book takes. Dostoevsky takes into account all these things in Crime and Punishment to create a story with many themes through out the course of the reading. Not only do his characters have personality traits that give clues but the names themselves of the characters give further meaning to themselves and the story. He also provides each character with some symbolic meaning and a major function in the novel for which is given to the reader to understand more about each character. When reading this Russian novel, you will notice the characters have names not at all familiar to us. What you may not think of though is that these names have a deeper meaning than what meets the eye. Raskolnikov, for example, is the main character of the story and his name comes from the root word Raskolnik which means “Schismatic”. This connects to the story because Schismatic comes from the root word schism which is to be divided from or apart from which is exactly what Raskolnikov does by choosing to alienate him self from society. Let’s look at another character, for example, Sonya Marmeladov, a quiet, suffering, prostitute who is very sweet and also becomes Raskolnikov’s person for advice. Now Marmelad, is root for a sweet or candy which correctly describes the way Sonya is with others. With Dostoevsky giving all his characters names that have meanings, it gives the reader the insight to the characters behavior and a new feeling of reading with the book. This in turn often allows the reader to understand more and more the feelings and thoughts that occur to each character and the things that are occurring. This also helps readers

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