#and Dostoievsky isn’t my first rodeo

[therealrichardpapen]

To shed some light on the topic of "Crime and punishment doesn't make any sense, I didn't understand it, therefore it's a bad book", I've decided to point out some topics of the novel. (Because certain people called me a pretentious fuck and became aggressive when I tried explaining that the book isn't badly written, but their tastes are on other lands. I have two russian friends, one of them hates this book because he was forced to read it in school at a young age, not because it was bad!!!! The second one told me they enjoyed it, and it was kinda good).

The actual topics behind the plot are definitely not murder or the criminal desire, but the torment and guilt that affect the murderer. We discover that after the murder (crime part of the title), the torment follows shortly (the punishment part of the title, lol). It's extremely visible, we can say hidden in plain sight even, that for Raskolnikov, the guilt in itself is the punishment, and he deeply desires to liberate himself from it. He achieves this by going back and forth between a dreamlike state and reality while acting as though he has gone insane. Because there is so much more going on in the novel, we frequently become disconnected from him, which makes us more curious about what will ultimately happen to our tormented hero.

This is a fragment from my review, and now, I get why this book can be very unappealing to readers, the amount of characters, the names, the relations between each of them, the PLOTLINES (because there are many). I must admit that I personally felt completely disoriented (at times). The perspective contributed to the confusion without a doubt. The narration is not first person, but a rather weirdly put third person with a focus on Raskolnikov (our main character). And to top this, the novel is clownish at times! It's memeable, Tumblr worthy. Yes, it's tough to get through if you don't have any support (friends that likes it and help you understand the plot when you get lost) or desire to read it.

I am not stating this is a book for everyone or that if you read it, you must like it. I'm simply saying it has a specific tone and aesthetic that you have to be in yourself at the right time in order to comprehend. I read this book for months, when I was alone, abroad, studying, and yet, I kept returning to it. Maybe I wanted to please my beloved, maybe i wanted to show myself I can and I will read it. I still don't know, but I know I read it, and I liked it. And I won't stand people telling me it's a bad book because they don't understand it. You just don't like it, and this doesn't make the book bad.

Thank for coming to my Ted talk