Crime And Punishment: Protagonist And Antagonist Essay

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Term Paper Title	Crime And Punishment: Protagonist And Antagonist Essay
# of Words	1580
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	6.32

Crime and Punishment: Protagonist and Antagonist Essay

Crime and Punishment: Protagonist and Antagonist Essay

     Crime and Punishment is considered by many to be the first of Fyodor
Dostoevsky's great books.  Crime and Punishment  is a psychological account of a
crime.  The crime is double murder.  A book about such a broad subject can be
made powerful and appealing to our intellectual interests if there is a link
between the reader, the action, and the characters.  Doestoevsky makes all these
links at the right places.  The action takes place between the protagonists and
the antagonists.  The protagonists include Dounia, the Marmeladovs, Sonia,
Razumhin, Porfiry Petrovich, and Nastaya.  The antagonists of the story are
Luzhin, Ilya Petrovich, and the landlady.  Raskolnikov could be considered to be
the primary protagonist, while Svidrigailov could be thought of as the primary
antagonist.
     In every story the protagonist is the character that the reader cares
most about.  In Crime and Punishment the reader cares about Rodion Raskolnikov.
He is the primary and most significant character in the novel. We are introduced
to this complex character in Part 1.  We get to know the poverty stricken
condition that he resides in, and we get to know his family situation as we read
the long letter from Raskolnikov's mother.  Then we witness the murder as it is
graphically described by Doestoevsky.  After reading this graphic description of
the murder, how can the reader be sympathetic towards Raskolnikov?  How can the
reader believe that a murderer is the protagonist?  It is, in fact,  not hard to
accept this murderer as the protagonist.  Raskolnikov believed that by murdering
the pawnbroker, he rid society of a pest.  We realize that if the victim would
have been someone other than an evil old pawnbroker the crime would never had
taken place.  He could never have found the courage to kill an innocent person.
It would not prove anything to him.  So, Raskolnikov was not a criminal. He does
not repent because he does not feel that he had sinned.  All he did was violate
laws that were made by society.  Raskolnikov definition of crime was evil will
in action.  Raskolnikov knows that he possesses no evil will, and so he does not
consider himself a criminal.  He is capable of justifying his crime.  He
murdered a pawnbroker that was of no use to society and wanted to use her money
to improve his life and career.  Not only was he helping himself by attempting
to improve his ca...

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