360 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
all, but the redemptive suffering of one person is
the redemptive suffering of all. This concept, com-
bined with spirituality, makes for a very closeknit
community.
One of the gifts that Dostoyevsky was given
was a New Testament, which he read many times.
Crime and Punishment contains many allusions
to the story of Lazarus in the Gospel of John.
Lazarus is a man from Bethany who is sick and
then dies. His sister Martha and her friend Mary
are friends of Jesus, who comes to Bethany with
them. He goes to Lazarus’s tomb, prays, then says,
“Lazarus, come out”—and the dead man is alive
again. The story serves as a metaphor for Rodion
Raskolnikov’s life.
Raskolnikov, when he murders the pawnbroker
and Lizaveta, metaphorically dies in the eyes of
Russian society. In other words, he is not a fel-
low citizen—he has set himself apart and cannot
be reintegrated until he makes amends for what
he has done. He enjoys the story of Lazarus—at
one point he asks Sonia to read it aloud to him—
because he identifies with the dead man in the
tomb. Sonia, of course, wants him to identify him-
self with the resurrected Lazarus. Unfortunately,
this cannot occur as long as Raskolnikov lacks the
capacity for compassion. In the epilogue, he dreams
about a plague of microbes, which cause everyone
to believe that his or her way is the only way. No
one is able to see anyone else’s point of view, and
therefore everyone is incapable of being compas-
sionate. The dream torments him; he becomes ill
and spends Lent and Easter in the infirmary. Lent
is the 40 days preceding Easter, which is the day
of Jesus’ resurrection. When Raskolnikov’s fever
breaks, he has paralleled the life of Lazarus. He
does not die physically, but his understanding of
spirituality changes drastically—his old way of life
has died, just as Lazarus died.
When he comes to, Raskolnikov realizes that
he has taken the sacrifices of Sonia for granted.
She had willingly come to Siberia with him for his
eight-year sentence, but he still felt no remorse for
the murders because he felt no compassion for his
victims. When Sonia becomes ill, and Raskolnikov
is faced with the prospect of not having her to help
him, he begins to think of others besides himself.
At this moment, he sees nomads in the distance—
nomads who live the same life that the biblical
Abraham must have lived. Raskolnikov realizes that
not only is he a descendant of Abraham, but Sonia
is as well. In fact, everyone is. When he fully under-
stands this, he falls at Sonia’s feet and weeps. He is
compassionate once again, and just like Lazarus, the
man who was dead is now alive.
Dutton KearneysuFFerinG in Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky—like his contemporary 19th-
century Russians—viewed suffering as an important
aspect of life. Such a thought may seem strange to
our ears in the 21st century, especially considering
that so much effort has been devoted to eliminating
suffering rather than accepting it. More than any
of his novels, Crime and Punishment explores the
restorative nature of suffering.
Criminals who served sentences in jail had a
special status in Dostoyevsky’s time. Everyone was
presumed to be guilty; the only difference between
a criminal and a citizen was that the criminal hap-
pened to have been caught. Thus, when a criminal
was sent to Siberia (the Russian equivalent of
our penitentiaries), the criminal suffered on behalf
of everyone in society. When criminals traveled
by horse carriage through the countryside, they
were often greeted by citizens who presented the
criminals with items such as clothes and books.
Dostoyevsky himself spent some time in Siberia as
a criminal, and one of the gifts that he was given
was a New Testament. Undoubtedly, aspects of his
understanding of the redemptive nature of suffering
can be traced back to that text.
Rodion Raskolnikov suffers in two distinctive
ways: physically and metaphysically. Physical suf-
fering is the suffering of the body, and because of
poverty, St. Petersburg is rife with such suffering.
Raskolnikov does not have sufficient clothing nor
food. Some, like Marmeladov, turn to drinking to
escape their problems (Dostoyevsky is one of the
first writers to examine the consequences of alcohol-
ism). Sonia feels that she must turn to prostitution
in order to support her younger siblings.
Far more important to Dostoyevsky, however,
is metaphysical suffering, which is the suffering of