Crime and Punishment - Part V-END

[Alana]

Please discuss the final section and your overall thoughts. What is your overall rating? Worth reading?

[Alana]

Just finished. I liked everything up until the end of Part V, although I wasn't sure it was really believable that he would turn himself in.

I did NOT care for the Epilogue, however. It's like Dostoevsky felt there were too many loose ends that needed wrapped up and he was trying to change his mind and turn it into a happy ending after all. It just didn't fit.

I loved the internal turmoil, the "chase" of the investigator, realizing that his secret was revealed, and what to do with himself.... All of that was great.

This was a much better read for me than Brothers Karamozov. That story was interesting, but it was SO full of monologue of this or that philosophy that it felt like I was being preached at the entire time. This felt more mature, like Dost. allowed the story to do the philosophizing for him, rather than him having to go into so much of a rant about it himself.

Query: What do you think Dostoevsky thinks of crime in general, and various punishments? Do you think he thought R was right in what he did? He makes him very sympathetic. Do we root for him by the end? What about his whole article? Frankly, I thought he had delusions of grandeur (Napoleon complex indeed!) and just went crazy. I didn't feel like any useful purpose was served in the killing of the old woman, even if he DID have more justifiable reasons, which he didn't. Of course, the book wasn't about that, more about the internal workings of the human mind, but still.

What about the portrayal of women in this story? Granted, all of the characters are horribly flawed, male and female, but frankly, I didn't really see any of the female characters as being much more than an emotional wreck the entire time, except maybe Donya. Your thoughts?

[Alana]

I didn't fully understand the draw to her either. Maybe because she has a profession that is disreputable and he feels it gives them a connection? That she's doing it for someone else's benefit, as he feels he's doing?

[Pallavi]

The most tragic part in this story was Katerina's , I think. I just couldn't take that part where she tries to get money from street singing and dancing. The kids were the most suffered. So terrible it was. And in one occasion even the young 2 kids ran away from their own mother. That was point where her madness had reached the heights.
The story is more about how can one redeem oneself, even though the crime was committed in the brink of madness/illness. Raskalnikov murdered a pawnbroker lady, (god knows why) and killed her sister too as she saw him. And the whole story on to or not-to confess and Raskolnikov's guilty conscience.
Yes, i guess only Dunya was the one who didn't much of drama. The women were not treated that badly as some other books of that time.

And finally I got to finish this book ! I too didn't like the Epilogue part. Much better book that The Brothers Karamazov.

[Alana]

Did you like it overall? Glad you read it?

[Pallavi]

yes.... absolutely.... I liked it.

[Mike]

A tad overlong. I found it to be somewhat transparent & overly melodramatic. There was never any good explanation or motivation for the original murders and thus the book rings a bit hollow today.

[Alana]

It does drag a bit at the end, especially the unnecessary epilogue.