Rhetoric in Crime and Punishment

Abstract

Crime and Punishment Is Another Great Masterpiece of psychological literature. Like “Notes from Underground,” it has been approached from both thematic and psychological perspectives, with thematic approaches dominating. In “Notes from Underground,” the first person narration makes it difficult to determine where the author stands; the work’s thematic import can be established only by placing it in its historical context and appreciating its parodistic and satiric characteristics. If we attend to the work by itself, it seems above all a brilliant psychological portrait in which the underground man’s philosophic concerns are expressions of his personality and inner conflicts. The situation is different with Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov’s ideas are also psychologically motivated, but the implied author’s attitudes are much more in evidence, and Raskolnikov exists within formal and thematic structures in terms of which we are invited to view his behavior.