The city of
Saint Petersburg is an important main character throughout Crime and Punishment. It not only provides the setting and sets the
mood for the novel, but it also is a comprehensibly everyday symbol of Raskolnikov’s
state of mind. Saint Petersburg, as we read, is rarely portrayed as a pleasant
and healthy city to live in, rather as hot, musty, sickening, dirty, crowded,
full of different scum and egoistic people. In a way it symbolizes
Raskolnikov’s mental stability, we can see this when he gets lost in the city
or forgets which streets he takes to make to one of his destinations. I think
it is meant to show that he doesn’t understand or remember how he arrived at
his conclusions about life and to show that his head, his mind is not a
pleasant thing to live with, but rather life with it is pain and a punishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment