Within my previous blog I examined how Raskolinkov's guilt affect him as a character while trying to understand why is able to accomplish all he murdered the old women. Moving through part 3 i discovered a passage that in a nutshell explains the entire book. Raskolinkov has written an article and Porfirty Petrovich a person interested in the old women case and is interged of his thought process while writing the article. his history interrogates him about it.
"The Whole point of his article is that the human race is divided into the "ordinary" and the "extraordinary" The ordinary must live in obedience and do not have the right to break the law, because, well, because they're ordinary, you see. The extraordinar, on the other hand, have the right to commit all sorts of crimes and break the law in all sorts of ways precisely because they're extraordinary.' p.308 |
Wow! This passage explains Raskolinkov's state of mind. He believes he is an extraordinary being, so he has an excuse to kill the old women. Now knowing this the story has opened up through multiple dimensions. Raskolinkov is living through thematic register taking facts and means and uses them as the justify the means for why he does it. He being clever tries to make himself not guilty.
"The people of the first category, the raw material, that is, are in general conservative by nature, sedate, live lives of obedience and like to be obeyed. In my view, they have a duty to be obedient, as that is their function, and there really nothing about this that is degrading to them. |
Raskolinkov is trying to explain more reasons why killing the old women is beneficial. The fact he uses words like likes to be obeyed, shows that he thinks her death wasn't even tragic it helped everyone of the city. He makes the situation worse by explaining the second category through his words.
"The second category all break the law, are destroyers, or have a tendency that way, depending on their abilities. The crimes of these people are, of course, relative and multifarious; for the most part what they are demanding, in highly varied forms, is the destruction of the present reality in the name of lone better." p.310 |
What Raskolilov is attempting to do it misdirect any attempt at blaming himself towards someone else while giving credit towards why these people are committing crimes. He is persuading him that actions of these Extraordinary people are justified in taking. What he is doing subconsciously is creating ways for why a revolution could take place. He really is calling ordinary people inferior. What this represented is raskolkov is trying to convince himself that killing the old women wasn't a crime it was necessary for the function of the city.