Gunnar Stoddard
Ms. Spicer
AP Materials and Structure
27 May well 2011
Were Not So Different, You and I
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment can be described as psychologically charged novel where the primary element that effects the protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, is not a person but rather an idea; his own idea. Raskolnikov has an detrimental obsession with rendering him self into what he perceives as the perfect, supreme individual, an übermensch. Raskolnikov forms for himself a theory in which he may live solely according to his own will and transcend the social norms and moralities that master society. Raskolnikov suggests that serves commonly considered to be immoral are to be reserved for some rank of " extraordinary” men. Raskolnikov's faith in his theory is put to test when he meets a man that is certainly utterly nonmoral, seemingly unrepentant, and the very epitome of his " extraordinary” man, Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov. Svidrigaïlov is a man seen as his defenses to meaning responsibility. Superficially he is a man with a quiet and gathered demeanor having a certain refined nature about him. Raskolnikov him self refers to Svidrigaïlov as a " man of very very good breeding at least know[s] how on occasion to behave just like one” (p. 256, Part 4, Section 1). Svidrigaïlov's " very good breeding” is but a skinny veil that enshrouds his true persona; that of a hedonist soaked up in his very own pursuits of private pleasure for the point of complete and total licentiousness. However , he is a patient person and this individual uses this kind of fact to his benefits in order to better disguise his various and building plots and peripetie. His attempts have proven to be incredibly successful with regards to the several killers that he committed over time; including the suggestion that he poisoned his own better half. While any normal individual's psyche can be torn to shreds in the tireless work of keeping a lifestyle structured around is situated to cover up their internal hedonist, Svidrigaïlov fails to display any amount of...