Reading Novels Like A Professor: Chapter 18 – What’s the Big Idea—or Even the Small...

Reading Novels Like A Professor: Chapter 18 – What’s the Big Idea—or Even the Small...: Part 1: What is the theme of the novel? (Theme should be more than a word. “Death” is not a theme. “The inevitability of death” is a theme. ...


In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, the main theme that is shown throughout the work is Alienation from Society. This theme runs fluidly throughout the entire book, seeming to be what causes pretty much all of the conflict throughout the story. At the beginning of the novel the protagonist, Raskolnikov, alienates himself not because he is any different from society, but because he thinks that he is truly better than everyone else. Raskolnikov, “had become so completely absorbed in himself and isolated from everyone else that he dreaded meeting not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but even the anxieties of his position had recently ceased to weigh upon him” (5). The alienation from society theme carries on in the story. It appears that after Raskolnikov has committed the two murders, his intense guilt and sorrow becomes the fuel that causes the alienation of him. He is so guilty and mentally tormented that he cannot even stand to be in contact with anyone. It isn’t until the end of the story that Raskolnikov realizes his true love for Sonya, and immerges from his alienated state. “He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale, thin little face. But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love he would repay all her sufferings” (521). The theme of the novel is genuinely based on the state of humanity and what it means to be human. The human mind can only last so long on its own before it needs to be helped by someone. Through the theme the reader finds that no one can last forever on their own. As humans, people need compassion and connection, to be able to rely on someone else besides their own emotions. The reader finds that they must not be scared of something as normal as everyday society. They must not just throw their social acceptance away just for the sake of it.
-Conner Furr