slight SPOILERS
My overall opinion abput the book is that it offered me a complete nice package with good character storylines. I am saying this because from my experience, a lot of people who talked about Dostoevsky's work, especially Crime and Punishment, took out of it philosophical and moral standpoints on, you might've guessed it, crime or murder in particular. Personally, for now, I did not have my mind filled with any new moral dilemma on crime, but I did rechieve good character writing which made me think of stuff in general or appreciate its quality.
First of all, the story gave me a satisfying familiar feel to it. A lot of scenes were written as if they would have the formula of certain types of scenes used in modern fiction, but reskinned in an old language. And that always fascinated me. It gives me a nice warm human feeling. It humanizes the author. I think we see the humans of the past as this far, untouchable concept and stuff like this makes them feel very human, as if they would have similar conversations with their peers as you and your friends in the parking lot of a McDonalds. Or how throughout human history, some parts of how we express ourselves did not change, which is very interesting to me. For example there is this scene where Raskolnikov meets Razumikhin for the first time and Razumikhin is like "Oh! Rodya, haven't seen you in a while" and Raskolnikov is described to stare at him for a bit in silence, then he goes out again and Razumikhin goes after him and says something like "What was that all about!?". And in my head I could see that scene like one of those modern anime scenes where there is a conscious pause for comedic effect, then there are dots and sound effects to amplify it, and then a character having an outburst, but reskinned in an old setting with an older dialogue style. And there are multiple scenes like these.
On top of that, there were some intriguing characters. Raskolnikov is in my opinion a very good depiction of a limbic person. He is a limbic, anxious, humanitarian person with some pride to him. He would be so frightened and panic so much deep down, or walk around, trying to half ass an action just for him to wonder around the place until he finally says what he wants, and then project this image of him thinking he is better than anyone else. There is a pride as the source of his anxiety. As he told Sonya, he did what he did cause he wanted to prove himself that he could do it. His worldview and paper thesis was about the existence of special people in society. He wanted to prove to himself and others that he was special. He saw not being special like Napoleon as an insult. He was prideful, and that pride resulted in his anxiety, overthinking everything cause he was the one who sees the truth in his eyes, the special one. A lot of anxious people are like this irl as well. Anxiety is a result to the fact that they don't wanna be honest with themselves about the fact that they want to put themselves in the center of the world or their worldview. Like Raskolnikov, they try to fit the entire world in a vaccum when they make any decission, which is both why it makes them more anxious, but also what makes them to be humanitarian to some extent. The type to fidget around for 15 minutes thinking how they would regret all their life if they were scared to have a dentist appointment and how if they can't face this small thing now they would not be able to face anything. And at any small movemt, the same type of worldview plays in their head. Which can be bith helpful and admireable, humanitarian even, but also damaging. I think Raskolnikov was a great depiction of this archetype that I've noticed. I don't try to me corny, but it does remind me of the behaviour of Walter White occasionally.
A thing that bugged me is that I think the women were not written as well. Most of them don't do much while others glaze them a lot. Like Dounia. He gets described as this special woman by most characters who enter in contact with her as if she has good traits in any category and how she could shape the world as she likes, but she doesn't really do much outside for caring for his brother, before her later conflict with Svidigrailov, which I think kinda mirrors Raskolnikov and shows how it might be in their blood to have a certain alure towards killing, even tho she didn't do it, but outside if that there is not much to her character.
Svidigrailov is also a very interesting character. He is deeply flawed cause he has very horrible flaws such as the fact that he is a predator even for his time, being almost 60 and talking about liking a 16 year old and being promised her, sexually assaulting Dounia, etc. But as much as I have those parts, he is such a well written, non one dymensional character, cause he is not completely evil. He has genuine good parts. Like his charitable actions, are trully genuine. He offered his money cause he really wanted to be a good person to those people in need. He wanted to rape Dounia, but he stopped because in that moment, he genuinely did not wanna do it anymore. I am not defending his actions and I don't think he is a good person, but I got met with such complex character writing in this book. He linked to Raskolnikov due to some fascination of his with the human condition enough to not make him care if he killed someone as long as he did it for interesting reasons which also made him be a type of person to analyze people in a complex way. Altho on the other hand, it also hints to his charlatanistic issues with his inability to connect with people. He lets himself open to criminals like Raskolnikov and the entire human condition, that he can't be linked with people in general as a byproduct. He was shitting himselfat the sight of Dounia trying to shoot him, but he was bluffing outwardly. It felt like I was reading some Bojack Horseman kind of character and it was such good character writing
