Final Comment on the Reading of the Book

Now that I have finished reading Crime and Punishment, I have no idea what to make of Dostoyevsky’s sanity or insanity or just how much of Raskolnikov character is representative of Dostoyevsky or how much of it is representative of his ideas. Personally, I have a hunch towards the idea that Raskolnikov is either somewhat or majorly a segment of Dostoyevsky’s personality in that I could easily seeing Dostoyevsky as an extreme outcast and that he could think similarly to Raskolnikov in that same sort of insane way. Also, the fact that Raskolnikov embodies many of Dostoyevsky’s ideals is relatively consistent with the way that he writes in most of his other books, seeing as they are mostly responses to or original forms of ideas of general philosophy. If I were to choose a single theme that this book is commenting on is the existence or role that guilt plays in both society and the individuals mind and different situations. The main comment that I have on the book as a whole is that I really hated the ending, the fact that Dostoyevsky starts hinting that Raskolnikov is finally getting better and realizing his insanity, then he goes and just ends the book before giving any sort of sense of a real ending to what happened to Raskolnikov. Also the fact that the book ended on a somewhat happy note really kind of annoys me, because I had been expecting the book to go out with a bang and end horribly, that way there would be an actual ending, as opposed to this feeling of incompleteness that you finally want to know more about Raskolnikov, but the book suddenly ends. To be honest, I can see a lot of parallels between Raskolnikov and the underground man, not only in the ways that they act, but the theories that they have, and I feel that it would be interesting to try to extract the general thoughts that Dostoyevsky have on the different subjects that he talks about. Therefore, I am probably going to write my thesis on the general concept of “Dostoyevsky-ism” or what defines his general philosophical perspective. With that I will try to relate the themes and events in the book to the different ideas that Dostoyevsky might have had, whether or not they are at all logical. Personally, I think that the whole idea of contemplating the truth of meaning and many of the things that Dostoyevsky talks about are almost entirely purposeless and lack any semblance of sense. I mean it makes sense in some of the assumptions he makes, but many of the conclusions he tries to draw really don’t make any good conclusions, but I would like to try to bring as much of a complete idea as I can form Dostoyevsky’s writings.