Redemptive Suffering in Crime and Punishment

     “By going to suffer, haven’t you already washed away half the crime?”[1] Dostoevsky’s answer to Dunya’s question is no. Raskolnikov must not only suffer to be redeemed, but must receive God’s grace offered him in the midst of and through his suffering. For Dostoevsky’s characters, to suffer is an inevitable and necessary element of purgation that must be embraced. For some characters, to suffer is to be cleansed, regardless of man’s response to suffering. But Dostoevsky believes suffering for suffering’s sake is not inherently productive.

         In a conversation with Porfiry, Raskolnikov tries to plead innocent by pointing to Nikola’s murder confession. Porfiry rejects his confession as legitimate and explains why a man would claim as his own a crime he is innocent of: “Do you know…what ‘suffering’ means for some of them? Not for the sake of someone, but simply ‘the need for suffering’; to embrace suffering, that is, and if it comes from the authorities—so much the better.”[2]

Nikolai’s desire to embrace suffering did not come from a sacrificial instinct of substitutionary suffering—he does not even know Raskolnikov committed the crime. Rather, the reader is led to believe that Nikolai sees the suffering that would come from confessing to the murder as necessary to his general purgation and thus should be embraced. Dmitri, one of the Brothers Karamazov, endorses a similar view. After his conviction of his father’s murder, despite his sworn innocence, he says, “I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!”[3] He sees suffering as expiative not for the particular crime he is innocent of, but for his many sins for which he is guilty. Profiry scoffs, but Dostoevsky perhaps admires the (overly zealous) humility required.

         Likewise, Raskolnikov suffers mightily after his crime. “Oh, how tormented you are!”[4] cries Sonya. His response to Dunya’s inquisition (“By going to suffer, haven’t you already washed away half the crime?”), he snarls and asks, “Crime? What crime?”[5] Until he completely acknowledges his wrongdoing, his sufferings are not retroactively redemptive. Instead, they eat away at him, wearing him down.

         Svidrigailov is a prime example of suffering not as redemptive but as reductive. Beneath his suffering, he wastes away, eventually taking his own life. But differently than Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov responds to the divine grace shown him in the midst of his suffering. His relationships take on a sacramental nature: God’s grace communicated through the people around him. Though he is by no means perfect, he responds as he is able. He makes Razumikhin the head of his household because of his inability to care for his mother and sister. He offers to put Marmeladov up in his house before he dies, even paying for a doctor and giving the man’s family rubles he cannot spare. In perhaps the most touching instance, Raskolnikov treats kindly with little Polenka, daughter of Marmeladov, and asks her to pray for him.

         Svidrigailov does not respond to grace at all, but it seems he has little grace shown him. God is under no obligation to show grace to anyone, and Svidrigailov condemns himself in his hedonistic lifestyle. It is almost as if Raskolnikov is pursued by God’s grace as embodied in the people around him, while Svidrigailov is not. Dostoevsky invites the reader into God’s pursuit of Raskolnikov, calling the reader to love him as God does. In the epilogue, when he finally gives in to the tide of overwhelming, mighty grace, the narrator describes his response as involuntary, caused by an external agent who can be no one but God: “How it happened he himself did not know, but suddenly it was as if something lifted him and flung him down at her feet. He wept and embraced her knees.”[6]

It is fitting the true beginning to his regeneration occurs with Sonya. She is the main impetus of his change, his redemption, and the main vehicle of God’s grace. Raskolnikov recognizes this when he kneels before her during one conversation, “bowing to all human suffering.”[7] Sonya acts as an icon representing suffering, and a priestess conveying divine grace unto Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov knows he does not deserve Sonya. He is included in those who are not worth her pinky.[8] But God chooses Raskolnikov through Sonya, and through her uses his suffering to purify and redeem him.

Übermensch feel no remorse; they do not suffer but impose suffering. Raskolnikov tries to intellectually justify his action, but to no avail. The collapse of his superman ideal drives his agony.[9] Devoted Sonya shows him what true human suffering looks like. “He is saved, because he has defeated the Superman in him, he has become human again.”[10] The suffering caused by inflicting suffering humbles Raskolnikov to the very core of his worldview, and in humility he finds God’s grace.

Special thanks to my professor, Dr. Grewell, and to many of my classmates who helped form both my thoughts on this topic in Crime and Punishment and, by extension, this paper.

Bibliography

[1] Fydor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 546.

[2] Ibid., 480.

[3] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York,

NY: Everyman’s Library, 1992), 509.

[4] Ibid., 431.

[5] Ibid., 546.

[6] Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, 578 (emphasis added).

[7] Ibid., 337.

[8] Ibid., 338.

[9] George G. Strem, “The Moral World of Dostoevsky,” The Russian Review 16, no. 3 (1957): 15–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/125940.

[10] Ibid., 22.