Discussion Topic
The impact of the setting and historical background in Crime and Punishment
Summary:
The setting and historical background of Crime and Punishment significantly impact the plot, theme, and tone. The novel's St. Petersburg setting during a period of social upheaval highlights themes of poverty, desperation, and moral conflict. This grim environment shapes the protagonist's actions and the novel's dark, oppressive tone, underscoring the psychological and philosophical struggles central to the narrative.
What is the significance of the setting in Crime and Punishment?
Most of the action in Crime and Punishment takes place in St. Petersburg, at that time the capital city of Russia. The city had been founded by Tsar Peter the Great with the express intention of emulating the Europeans. He brought in some of Europe's finest artists, engineers, and architects to construct a whole new city from scratch, one that would show to the world that Russia was a civilized country that could now take its rightful place among the international community of nations.
As with all cities, however, St. Petersburg had its dark underbelly of crime, poverty, and disease. And it's this seamy underside of the gilded capital that Dostoyevsky explores in minute, unerring detail. St. Petersburg stands almost as a metaphor for humanity. On the surface, all appears calm and civilized. But not far beneath lies a different world, a world in which darkness prevails. Raskolnikov's tortured psychological...
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state mirrors the grim reality of the poor and underprivileged and their daily struggle for existence. The drama of life played out in the filthy, narrow streets of St. Petersburg's slums is inseparable from the inner conflict raging within Raskolnikov's soul.
St. Petersburg doesn't just provide the backdrop to the story; it enters into the very thoughts and actions of each character. St. Petersburg and its environs dominate and control their lives, almost oppressing them along with the coruscating heat of July. This isn't simply a city; it's an idea, a conscious attempt by a Tsar to drag Russia into the modern world. Yet this idea and its representations in the physical urban landscape—the churches, the palaces, the cathedrals, museums, and boulevards—contrast sharply with the foul, stinking underbelly inhabited by the characters in the story.
So, for example, the gilded splendor of the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral is offset by Dostoyevsky's detailed descriptions of the sheer unadulterated squalor of Haymarket Square, sordid epicenter of the novel and its main action. Poverty was widespread in Russia at that time, but there's something especially striking about poverty in such an outwardly elegant and beautiful city as St. Petersburg. Just as the psychological makeup of each individual is bewilderingly complex, so too is the real life of the city.