Comment on Luisa Maggioni’s Reaction to Crime and Punishment

Overall we perceived the same thing about the first two chapters of Crime and Punishment. We both witnessed the terrible physical state of St. Petersburg and how all the characters are living in extreme poverty but more likely even worse than that of the main character. One of those that you mentioned and that we are firstly introduced to in the second chapter is Marmeladov. As you said he is in a terrible situation where he lost his job due to his drunkenness and one of his four children, Sonya, was forced into prostitution. Marmeladov could be one of the examples that author, Dostoevsky included to demonstrate the damaging effects of alcoholism and urban deprivation in the city of St. Petersburg. I personally do see that when  Raskolnikov leaves money at the home before leaving that this is a moment of compassion and possibly an awakening of a hidden compassionate side like you said. I do not think that the compassion is directed toward Marmeladov or his wife, but mainly toward Sonya because he seems to focus disgust at the family for forcing her to sell her body and believes that they will ultimately pay for this. Personally, I think that the author created Marmeladov and his unfortunate situation in order to possibly illustrate this hidden side of Raskolnikov. In this chapter though his moment of compassion was short and his pride almost immediately extinguished those feelings and instead led him to criticize the family.