When we say world classics, one of the first novels that comes to mind is Crime and Punishment. Its author is the world-famous Russian writer Fyoder Dostoyevsky.
Who is Dostoyevsky?
The author, who was born in Moscow in 1821, died in St. Petersburg in 1881. When he died, tens of thousands of people walked behind his coffin. The author's childhood and youth were spent torn between a drunken father and a sickly mother. This unhealthy situation between his mother and father affected his life as well as his novel writing style. Although Dostoyevsky was once sentenced to death on the pretext that he criticized the state, this sentence was overturned at the last moment and Dostoyevsky's sentence was commuted to four years in prison. He served his sentence as a galley slave by staying in Siberia.
The author's life has been revealed in his novels, as if what is inside the jug leaks out. The author turned to gambling at a young age, and one of his books is called The Gambler. His book, which tells about his relationships with his brothers, is called Kromozovbrothers. He named his novel, which is a reflection of his youth, Young Man. He says 'it was so strange, I couldn't cry, but my soul was torn apart' and tells about the reflection of his soul in the novel, Little People. Again, since he himself suffered from epilepsy, the hero in his work called The Idiot is an honest person who suffers from epilepsy. In other words, whatever the author experienced in his life, he wrote about these experiences as a novel.
The author has made a worldwide impact in almost all of his novels. He wrote his novels in a perfect language and on a universal level and did not experience any literary anxiety while writing them. Dostoyevsky was sick like his mother. He had Osara. This sickly structure caused him to write in a state of mental and psychological turmoil. Although he was an epileptic, his death occurred in his lungs. He died of a lung hemorrhage in 1881. The author was known in his own country at the time, but after his death and for decades after, his books became world-famous novels. The novel that made him a world-famous novelist is undoubtedly Crime and Punishment.
Dostoyevsky wrote the novel Crime and Punishment in his mature period. If we analyze the subject of the novel with the state of conscience, the most important character of the story is Raskolnikov, a well-intentioned and intelligent young man studying law at university. This young man lives in misery due to lack of money. The place he lives is a dark, one-room, one-windowed place on the attic of a building, which we call a hizbe, which smells of damp, mold, and humidity. His living conditions are difficult for him. Because he is separated from his family and struggles to survive in another city, and his family is too poor to send him money.
Raskolnikov's Conscience
The novel's hero, Raskolnikov, is essentially a good boy. Raskolnikov has a well-intentioned, moral, and virtuous personality. Despite these qualities, he has seen many people in life who are not like him. One of these bad people he sees is a moneylender woman. As the name suggests, a moneylender woman is a woman who uses people's victimization and exploits them. Raskolnikov is hostile to this woman. Because he thinks that such bad people should not live in the world. Because his mind, ideas and conscience think that such moneylender people spoil the world in a way that it cannot be lived in. This spoilage affects the entire society. Raskolnikov wants such people to disappear from society and for this reason he decides to kill the moneylender woman.
The protagonist of the novel, Raskolnikov, has asked himself this act of murder many times in the novel. In other words, this question is undoubtedly his conscience. His own answer to the question he asks himself is interesting. For Raskolnikov, are these answers the voice of conscience or reason? It is unclear at first. However, the voice inside him is that there is no place for evil in the world. He thinks that societies are damaged as long as there are evil people. While Raskolnikov acts with reason, he also guides his conscience. Here, Raskolnikov uses his own conscience as a judge in addition to reason. The judge of his conscience also advised him to be a murderer at first, or so he thought. Although his conscience tells him that he will become a murderer by killing that moneylender woman, the same conscience wants that moneylender to be killed because it will be for the benefit of humanity. There is a duality in Raskolnikov's conscience. This duality is the struggle between reason and conscience, good and evil, harm and benefit.
Raskolnikov's conscience has worked on humanity beyond his good and bad actions. According to him, even if a person is a murderer, if he does something beneficial to humanity, his conscience is at ease. Because when someone who harms humanity is killed, he will not be able to upset other conscientious people. While his mind says to kill the woman, a part of his conscience also says to him: what are you doing, even if the person is bad, it would not be right for you to kill a person, besides, it is a crime and you are not a murderer and again, you are not a judge who will order someone's death. Raskolnikov; Although the hesitations and doubts in his soul make him work hard, Raskolnikov's conscience ultimately moves him to the point that it will be the result of a good action for humanity and as a result, his conscience decides to kill the moneylender woman, saying that the result of the action is good, not the action itself.
Raskolnikov leaves his house to kill the moneylender woman and until he reaches the woman's house, his conscience goes back and forth between the act of killing and the benefit of the killing. Finally, he arrives at the moneylender woman's house, knocks on the door, and kills the woman with an axe he takes out of his coat while talking to her. While Raskolnikov is killing the moneylender woman, the moneylender woman's innocent sister also comes to the scene. Raskolnikov kills her right there. While Raskolnikov's conscience kills the moneylender woman because she is guilty, he also kills the moneylender woman's innocent sister. However, this sister is not a moneylender, she is a calm, honest and kind girl. However, Raskolnikov killed her too. Why did he kill this girl? If he is right about the moneylender woman he killed in the name of humanity as a result of his conscience, how can his conscience be right in killing the innocent girl? This is where the examination of conscience begins in the novel.
For Raskolnikov, the hesitations, doubts, and pity that are questions of conscience; the fractures in the range of a person's soul, the darkness surrounding his soul, and the conscientious feelings that narrow his soul as time passes, surround him. Now, throughout the entire novel, conscience goes back and forth between hesitation and doubt, right and wrong, benefit and result. Everyone who really reads the novel enters Raskolnikov's spiritual integrity in the novel and finds himself in the flow of delirium between conscience, hesitation, doubt, good, bad, benefit, and result. This is why the novel is world famous.
The hero of the novel goes home after the act of killing and gets sick and lies sick for days or weeks. This illness (this is a guilty conscience) suffocates him and leads him to annihilation. Because his conscience, by killing an innocent girl, and as time goes by, puts him into a mental depression. He sleeps to get rid of this guilty conscience, that is, to extinguish the fire of his conscience, but every time he wakes up, his conscience enters his soul like a knife.
The mind comforts the person in the short term, but the conscience takes the person in its hands starting from a short time and ending with a long time, which is until death, and drowns the person in great regrets. This is the case with Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov. His conscience increases his illness as time passes. It imprisons his soul. Raskolnikov's conscience is always disturbed. In order to ease his conscience, he does not even spend what he takes from the moneylender woman, he buries it in the ground. At the same time, the hero constantly goes to the place where the incident took place. His conscience is always busy with this moment of murder. He cannot forget the incident. Because his conscience always asks why he killed that innocent girl. In the meantime, a detective suspects Raskolnikov in this murder and talks to Raskolnikov. Although Raskolnikov wants to confess to committing the murder, he does not confess to the murder. The reason he does not confess is because he thinks about his mother and sister who are in poverty. In addition, since he believes that the moneylender he killed killed for the sake of society, his mind seems to convince him to confess to the murder. But his conscience is not like that. He tries not to be alone in order to forget the voice and cries of his conscience, because loneliness activates the human conscience.
The hero of the novel also loves a girl in the novel, this girl is a woman who sells herself to provide for her poor family. This woman is religious, decent, moral, but she has to sell her own body for her family. Raskolnikov knows that this girl is an example of goodness. While Raskolnikov is happy with this sacrifice the girl makes for her family, he also hates the people who take advantage of the girl's poverty. Because this situation is taking advantage of a girl in poverty. This moneylender woman was like that, she was exploiting the poor people. Here, Raskolnikov has used his chain of reason and at one point, he has brought the killing to a reasonable level, but there is no explanation in terms of reason for killing the innocent girl. He has always had a bad conscience because of this. Raskolnikov trusts this girl over time. He confesses to the girl his delusions, his bad conscience, and that he killed the moneylender woman. His conscience has always provoked him to confess the murder. The hero feels relieved when he confesses to the girl he loves. So, the conscience somehow reveals the wrong that has been done. The conscience cannot be cornered. If that conscience is not there today, it will definitely appear at another time. As a result, conscience walks and finally voices the truth. The hero of the novel listens to the voice of conscience and confesses that he committed the murder and is convicted, and the girl he loves does not leave him alone, and stays by his side throughout his conviction, waiting for him. Raskolnikov feels relieved and calms down when he confesses his crime and is convicted.
It is Raskolnikov's conscience that calms down and his soul is at ease. His conscience has led him to the truth. If a person is good and his behavior is proper, his conscience leads him to the truth and enables him to choose the right things. However, if a person is bad-tempered and his behavior is ugly, his conscience may initially comfort the person, but it is only a shadow comfort. Because, as stated above, conscience walks and cries out the truth.
What the novel says about conscience:
Conscience walks and the truth emerges
Even though reason overshadows conscience for a while, conscience eventually wins.
The mind acts within a chain of logic, while conscience is an internal judge, taking reason along with it.
Conscience is an internal dynamic movement to lead a person to the right path even if he suffers punishment. Conscience always tries to lead to the good. It tries to save the soul in terms of justice.
Conscience does not proceed according to the result, but rather by taking the cause and effect as its basis.
Even if a wrong deed is as small as a straw, conscience can make a mountain out of that straw.
Even if a person can deceive himself with his mind, he cannot deceive himself with his conscience.
Is it thought that I am a wise man, yet conscience is wiser than reason?
Being conscientious is a virtuous behavior.
There is always a mechanism of conscience that accumulates and fills up in some corner.
See what the human mind is, see what the human conscience is.
Court of reason, court of conscience
A man without a conscience is doomed to unhappiness.
Don't fight with your conscience, because sooner or later your conscience wins.
Being a conscientious person is not something to be proud of, on the contrary, it is an inner judge that one must have.
Conscience anxiety is the first sign of being strong.
SUMMARY
Conscience reveals the spiritual depressions of the hero throughout the novel. A crime or a mistake committed will never go away like that. Conscience never leaves the crime committed. A person cannot escape from his conscience no matter what. Because conscience is included as a control mechanism in the human body.
Conscience does not allow killing an innocent person even if it is for the benefit of society. Although such a thought is initially entertained, this feeling soon collapses and introduces the person to remorse while he is alive. In this respect, a crime committed, regardless of its nature, is a burden that is too heavy to be lifted. Conscience triumphs by making the person confess his crime. This gain is actually the triumph of the person who committed the crime. Because the triumph of conscience means that the person's conscience is relieved.
The ultimate salvation and virtue of human beings comes through conscience and moral awareness. We see this in our novel hero. Although the novel hero receives physical punishment by confessing his crime, he is saved from the pangs of conscience and wins.
Comments