In Thomas Foster’s book, How to Read Novels like a Professor, he states that, “It’s the ending that is our reward for plugging on, giving us the satisfying wrap-up, but also the hint of what-if, of what-then. Because the worst thing an ending can be is ended” (277). The outlook that Foster has on the endings of novels is very intriguing and also very accurate. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, the author does a very good job of tying up all of the loose ends of the main story, but also forces the reader to ask several questions about the true outcome of the protagonist. In some editions of the novel, there is no epilogue. In other editions, the epilogue is of course very much there. The reader finds themselves drawn to the epilogue as soon as they finish reading the last chapter. The epilogue is used only to allow the reader to see what has become of the protagonist while he has spent the past few months in a Siberian prison. The last paragraph of the epilogue also gives the reader a detailed explanation about what the author wanted the reader to take away from the novel, and what the story was truly about. While Roskolnikov is in his prison cell, he begins to read a copy of the New Testament. The narrator states, “ But that is the beginning of a new story- the story of the gradual renewal of man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his transition from one world into another, of his initiation into a new, unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is over” (521).
-Conner Furr
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