Crime and punishment: Confession as a path to forgiveness
Uploaded by Sean.58 on May 19, 2002
Dostoevsky used confession as a path to forgiveness throughout the novel. From his first thought after the murders to the time that he actually confessed to the crimes. Whether it be from Raskolnikov to Nikolay, the act of confession made then feel better about themselves removing the weight that they had placed upon their shoulders.
Confession is to the ordinary man the first step to forgiveness. Through confession, the ordinary man can share his burdens with others. Moreover, let known the dark secrets what he has been harboring, trying desperately to keep away from everyone else. In contrast, the extraordinary man would never have the need to confess his sins. Because he would not have, thought twice about what it was that he did, and therefore would have no need to tell others of his sins. Or even to then that what it was he did were even sins, after all the extraordinary man would have looked at it in the fact that he saved many people from the old “louse” and that he had, because he was extraordinary, the right to kill any one who he though deserved it. In the moments after the crime itself, Raskolnikov considers confessing everything. Only to have the pressure and sickness build up until the need to confess to someone is so great that he cannot contain it anymore.
Confession is the one thing that Raskolnikov needs to do through out the novel but cannot. Instead of confessing to the crimes that he committed and suffer punishment from authority, he chooses to try to keep his secret and ended up punishing himself.
The first thought of confession first appeared in part one chapter seven when his first thought was to give “up everything, and would have gone to give himself up, and not from fear, but from simple horror and loathing of what he had done. The feeling of loathing especially surged up within him and grew stronger every minute.” (Dostoyevsky 77) This scene starts how to show that Raskolnikov realized that his theory was flawed and that he was in fact not the extraordinary man that he thought that he was.
The second thought of confession is when the porter hands him the summons to report to the police station. He completely forgot about how Nastasya had told him about how the landlady was suing for back rent. On his way to the police...