Question by Sa Akat: Why does Dostoevsky make Raskolnikov able to rationalize murder?
What does it add to the story?
How does being able to rationalize help Raskolnikov’s character?
In Crime and Punishment
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Answer by H. Poirot
Human Beings are able to rationalize anything. But often they cannot deal with their own actions once they have committed them.
Raskolnikov fancies himself one of the elect, a superior human. He is learning new and exciting facts in college, and sees the rest of the dirty peasants just struggling to make a worthless life for themselves. He adopts the theory that some, extraordinary people are exempt from the common laws of morality, but only if their actions are helpful for the greater good.
You see, Raskolnikov is not precisely evil. He would not commit a murder for selfish reasons, at least that is what his pride tells him. But to rationalize a deed, on the consideration that it is a muder of a worthless and vile person to bring about greater good by redistributing her wealth to those in need, makes the deed not one of selfish desires, but of noble ideals.
Thus he turns a distasteful act of crime into the first actions of a Napoleon or an Alexander.
Perhaps, in his heart, there are feelings of hate towards the woman he intends to slay.
Perhaps, somewhere in his mind, there is greed motivating the theft. But by rationalizing the crime, Raskolnikov is able to maintain his ability to see himself as better than his peers. He is an ideal that he has created for himself, and to bow to any lesser whims would be to destroy his self image.
For the story, the rationalizing helps to draw in the reader, because it is hard for anyone to deny that his logic is sound. We do not feel for the woman who gouges her customers and intends only to bury the money upon her death. We rather accept his rationalization, thus leading to our own introspection of morality. This is a profound method of tieing us emotionally to the story. We thus relate to Raskolnikov, and enjoy the book because of this fact.
Ultimately, he finds that he has not the superhuman fortitude to justify his crime, and the deed effects him deeply. He ends up deciding that suffering and penitence are necessary to define the human soul, rather than just puffing up a vision of yourself that cannot be realized.
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