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Reader discussion: Crime and Punishment

Public reader discussion about Crime and Punishment in the WeRead Catalog by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

I did not like Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, am I reading it wrong? Advices.

By aqua_sparrow4801

I keep hearing people say Crime and Punishment is a masterpiece and that everyone should read it, so I finally gave it a shot. Honestly, I found it pretty hard to get through and I didn’t really feel like I understood it the way I was supposed to. A lot of what the main character does felt off to me—like it wasn’t really based on common sense or good judgment. By the time I was reading, his choices and attitude toward his friends, family, and basically everyone around him just made me dislike him a lot. So now I’m wondering if I’m reading it wrong or missing something. Is there a better way to approach novels like this? I’d really appreciate any suggestions.

In how many days does Crime and Punishment plot takes place?

By Clear_Brush

I’m thinking it happens over the course of a week, but I could be totally wrong. I’m rereading it right now and I’m around the V chapter of the fourth part, and Raskolnikov talks about that whole incident with the person who followed him and called him a “killer,” like it was the day before. It just feels like Dosto’s taking his time with the plot, because it’s moving pretty slowly from place to place. What do you think?

Is crime and punishment meant to be comical?

By Jar_Rapid9

I’m only about a quarter in, but honestly I’ve found basically all of Raskolnikov’s inner thoughts pretty hilarious. He comes off as this nihilistic, paranoid, self-involved, kind of useless “intellectual” who can barely finish one thought before he flips and contradicts himself. And weirdly, I find him relatable too. He’s spiraling so dramatically that it ends up being funny, at least to me. Like there are moments where his “insane” thinking somehow clicks, even when I don’t want it to—like after the deed when the guys were pounding on the door and he felt like he was about to break, and then this urge to mess with them. I was just like, “yeah… of course he’d think to do something like that,” lol. Now I’m reading with a smile like, everything he does is kind of funny. And I can relate to a bunch of his vibes, which makes it even worse/better, depending on how you look at it. But then I kept seeing people online say it’s actually super serious and not funny at all, and I’m just sitting here like… no way. If it’s that serious, then it’s serious in such an absurd situation that you almost have to laugh a little. Right? Please tell me I’m not missing something. Anyway, I was worried this book wouldn’t live up to the huge pedestal everyone puts it on, but so far it’s definitely killing it. (hehe)

Help with Fyodor Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment"

By Clear_Brush

Can someone break down what Marmeladov is getting at in chapter 2 for me? I can follow the words and what he’s basically saying, but I’m not sure I’m seeing the bigger point or how it all connects. Like, why does he keep bringing up the idea that people always need somewhere to go? And what’s he talking about when he says “God will forgive him,” or when he mentions spitting on it? I feel like I’m missing something.

On this day in 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death by a Russian court for his allegedly antigovernment activities linked to a radical intellectual group.

By cosmicDraft

I guess it’s worth remembering it wasn’t an actual death sentence—more like something meant to freak him and his friends out.

Crime and Punishment Discussion

By TGrand8

Honestly, this is probably one of the hardest books I’ve read so far. It really drained me mentally trying to get through it, and I’m still not sure it was worth it. I did have some genuinely great moments, but I feel like most of it was filler. I really liked hearing Raskolnikov’s thoughts about right and wrong, and I’m always into books that dig into philosophy—though I wish it had spent more time showing what other characters believe too. The ending was good, and I ended up finishing with a smile, but there were a lot of times I almost quit. Curious what other people think about it.

Thoughts after reading Crime and Punishment

By HannahInMontreal1988

Just wrapped up Crime and Punishment. This is only the second “big” Russian novel I’ve read (the first was Anna Karenina). I’m honestly glad I picked Dostoevsky after Tolstoy and didn’t just jump into another Tolstoy right away—felt like a nice change in vibe. The start was rough. It took some getting used to all that grimy, miserable detail, especially after all the fancy finery in Anna Karenina. But once the whole crime part is done and the “punishment” starts, it hooked me more and the story started to move in a way I could actually enjoy. I also watched a bunch of YouTube stuff before digging in, and yeah—C&P really does come off like a psychological thriller. A few thoughts, marked as spoilers: [SPOILER] The back-and-forth between Porfiry and Raskolnikov felt like those quiet mental sparring matches I’ve seen in the Foundation series by Asimov (I think it was The Second Foundation?). [SPOILER] When Svidrigailov first shows up with Dunya, I didn’t expect him to matter as much as he ends up doing. By the end, he reminded me a bit of Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities. I know that’s kind of a shaky comparison, but that’s the first thing my brain latched onto. [SPOILER] I also couldn’t quite pin down what the big crushing weight was on Svidrigailov, other than Dunya stuff. Did I miss something in the descriptions? Was he tied up in something really bad? I even briefly wondered if he was the one involved with “deceiving” that girl Raskolnikov meets early on—but the timing probably wouldn’t fit. I wish I knew more about Razumikhin’s life too. He seemed like such a good guy. And the epilogue was a really satisfying read. I keep wondering if Dostoevsky ever actually followed through on whatever that last-sentence idea was, because it made me think about it even after I finished.

Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment

By teashore

I finally read Crime and Punishment last year and honestly I was kinda let down, mostly because of the epilogue. Raskolnikov goes from this wild, broken “I’m totally above everyone” murderer vibe to basically acting like a kid begging for salvation, and it feels both super sudden and just not that believable to me. To be fair, Dostoevsky is one of my favorite authors (I really love The Idiot), so I’m wondering if maybe his own religious or political shifts in real life messed with the pacing or direction of the story somehow. Anyway, I’m curious what everyone else thinks—how do you feel about Raskolnikov and the book overall?

Don't read Crime and Punishment in your early 20s

By ticket_carries28

If you bounced off Crime and Punishment the first time, don’t stress too much. Maybe just come back to it later when you’re more ready for it. I first tried it when I was 21 because the idea of it sounded amazing to me. I got the book and started with a lot of excitement, but after like 50 pages I was so bored I quit. That bugged me for years since I always meant to finish it. Then almost ten years later I tried again. I think part of it was that I was reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, which people say is a lot better than Garnett, but honestly it hit me hard either way. By then I’d been through enough stuff, and had that constant feeling of “wow, I’ve done nothing with my life,” and the book felt kind of like a mirror you want to look into even though you know it’s going to mess with you. The philosophy, psychology, and all the weird spiritual stuff just kept pulling things out of me I didn’t really want to see. It was way more of a page-turner for me than any thriller or mystery. Some parts made me cry, some parts actually made me feel a little better about my own existence, some bits made me sit up in my chair, and by the end it really felt like I’d been living alongside Raskolnikov and sharing his misery. I know that sounds dramatic, but that’s how it felt. If you’re still a teen or in your early 20s and you’re into Dostoevsky, maybe wait a few years before reading this one. I’m not saying young people can’t suffer or understand it, but I do think the maturity you get closer to your 30s makes it land harder. It just seems like the kind of book that works best when life has already roughed you up a bit, but there’s still some sensitive part of you that gets hit by even the smallest sign that something’s wrong. Edit: just my personal take, obviously. Not saying this is true for everyone. If you’re young and want to read it, don’t let this put you off. Plenty of teens and young adults seem to love it too. Edit 2: I wish I could rename the post, because the title kind of makes it sound like something else. What I really mean is that this book feels different once you’ve gone through some real trials in life. Edit 3: alternate title

was Crime and Punishment as a book written for a certain personality?

By pencil_lone30

Reading Crime and Punishment felt kind of weirdly personal, like Dostoevsky basically wrote it for me specifically. I’m an 18-year-old from a third world country, and I know I’ve got that “I’m the next Napoleon” mindset. I’ve even read a near-1k page Napoleon biography cover to cover like three times, so yeah… I’m definitely the type who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and kinda blames bad circumstances when stuff doesn’t go my way. I’m also usually resentful and on edge. Then I look at it and it’s not even the same situation for me, since I’ve got my own room, no debt, no real responsibilities, and I’m eating regularly. Still though, I feel like I’m pretty close to Raskolnikov in attitude, just with way smaller “crimes” (underage driving, stealing books/movies, getting into fights to prove something dumb about masculinity). I don’t think I’d ever do anything like what he does, because in my head the long jail time and reputation damage just wouldn’t be worth it. But after the book, I genuinely feel different. I’m more positive now, less bitter, more open to God (not Christian, but still), and I’m way more respectful to the people around me. So it makes me wonder—did he mean to target a specific type of guy with this? Like was he trying to speak directly to people like this on purpose?

Does anybody want to buddy read Crime and Punishment? This book has been on my shelf for a long time, and I'm finally going to start reading it.

By white_paper

I can’t read it yet, but I’m waiting on my copy. I’ll probably get it tomorrow.

I started reading Crime and Punishment because I thought it would be challenging but it was just too good

By notebookLunar61

I don’t really know how to put this into better words right now, and sorry if it sounds a bit messy, english isn’t my first language. Even if it was, I still think I’d have trouble explaining exactly how this felt, so I’m just gonna try to say it a little more fully. I’m 23. I finished high school in my country when I was 20, and since then I hadn’t read a single book until now. It’s not that I hated reading at school or anything, I just never managed to actually do the homework, so most of the time I took the lazy route and used Sparknotes just to get the gist. Kinda funny, but after a while I started thinking maybe it wasn’t only laziness, maybe I just wasn’t smart enough for books and literature and all that. Then a couple months ago I was talking with a friend and she was reading Crime and Punishment. I think I said something like, “oh wow, look at you being all fancy with the russian literature,” because even though I’ve never been a big reader, I’d seen enough people act super pretentious about Dostojevskij that I just assumed it was way above me. But she just laughed and talked about how fun it was and how Raskolnikov’s name was actually pretty cool, super normal about it. Then she asked if I wanted to read it, and I said sure. At first I mostly just wanted to see if I could actually get through it. Everything I’d ever heard about russian literature was that it’s all philosophy and depression and stuff, so I kind of expected I’d have to drag myself through boring pages just to be able to say I read Dostojevskij. But weirdly that wasn’t really the case. The start was a little hard to get used to, since it’s old and the style took me a minute, but the story pulled me in pretty fast. I really liked Raskolnikov’s constant paranoia and self-hatred, and how everyone around him keeps trying to get through to this selfish asshole. Porfiry was great too, always somehow making Raskolnikov think the worst. I wouldn’t say I loved reading about Marmeladov’s family and Katerina Ivanovna exactly, but it was interesting watching them keep falling deeper into misery like a car crash you can’t look away from. And I also liked the short part with Lebeziatnikov, because it really shows how some things barely changed even after 150+ years. The best part is that it was actually easy for me to keep going, mostly because the book was just so good that I wanted to continue. It stopped being this test I set for myself and turned into something I genuinely wanted to read because I needed to know what happened next. I know it’s kind of a “well duh” thing to say like “good book is actually good????”, but I feel like a lot of people probably feel the way I did, where they doubt themselves and think they can’t really handle the classics. One of my friends even saw me reading and said he didn’t think he could do that and that I was “smarter than him” or whatever, which surprised me because I realized I’d been thinking the exact same thing when I talked to the friend who gave me the book. Maybe I should tell him about Raskolnikov’s cool ass name too, maybe that’ll get him to try it. TLDR: I picked Crime and Punishment to challenge myself because it had this reputation of being super hard, but the more I read the more hooked I got because, surprise, it’s actually a really good book, and I think it gave me a lot more confidence in myself and in reading books.

Tolstoy vs Dostoevsky?

By marten-bright

Tolstoy vs Dostoevsky—who’s your pick? Both feel like total giants to me, and they kind of obsess over the same big stuff: people being a mess, the whole good vs evil thing, and what’s really going on inside someone’s head. And yeah, they’re both incredible at telling a story. But I gotta ask—who do you end up leaning toward more? Like, do you go with *The Death of Ivan Ilyich* or *Notes from Underground*? *Anna Karenina* or *Crime and Punishment*? *War and Peace* or *The Brothers Karamazov*? I started with Dostoevsky first, and he pretty much grabbed me right away. *Crime and Punishment* blew me away, and *The Idiot* was amazing too. I also liked *Notes from Underground* and *House of the Dead* a lot. And honestly, *The Brothers Karamazov* was the best novel I’d read up to that point. I only got into Tolstoy a few years later. I began with *The Death of Ivan Ilyich* and it genuinely messed with how I think about life and death. After that, *Anna Karenina* and *War and Peace* won me over completely, and I ended up putting him on the same level as *Karamazov*. So if I’m being honest, I think I enjoy Tolstoy more. Dostoevsky really is the king when it comes to the psyche and the darker corners of the mind, but I feel like Tolstoy is the better storyteller overall. I read for the story, character stuff, and just getting pulled into it—so yeah, for this one, I’m going with Tolstoy. What about you?

About Dostoyevsky's writing style

By rain-saddle4

I’m working on my first Dostoyevsky right now (The Idiot) and I’m really enjoying it, but I can’t help feeling like the writing doesn’t glide the way a lot of other classics do. I’m guessing it’s partly just the style, but it feels kind of clunky compared to what I’m used to. Also, I’m reading a translation, though everything I’ve heard is that this one is pretty solid. I saw some stuff online saying that in Russian his prose is supposed to be pretty rough too, like he wrote pretty fast back when he was trying to get his debts handled, so he didn’t always focus on polish. I’m not trying to knock his genius at all—I’m honestly hooked enough that this might end up being my favorite book. I just wanted to ask: is the writing style in The Idiot like this throughout, and is it basically the same thing in his other novels?

currently reading crime and punishment what do you think about the book?

By juniper-kettle

I’m currently reading *Crime and Punishment* by Dostoevsky, and I honestly think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read (maybe the best). I’m really into how you get pulled right into the characters’ heads, and the whole story feels super harsh and real. The way everyone in the book feels so fully “alive” is kind of blowing my mind. Also, I like that the plot keeps circling around the main character, and he’s kind of the villain in more than one way—both in the story and to himself. I could keep going for hours about how much I love it, but I don’t want to spoil anything for people who haven’t read it yet. So yeah, this is only the second Russian lit book I’ve read, and I’m loving it. I’d really like to hear what you think about the book or Dostoevsky—if you’re reading it too, how’s it been going for you so far?

Crime and Punishment Reading - Introduction Thread

By oliveticket5917

Before we start our Crime and Punishment read on January 1, I figured it’d be nice if we all introduced ourselves a bit and got to know the people here better. You can answer any of these if you want: What format are you reading Crime and Punishment in: ebook, audiobook, or a physical copy? Which translation are you using? (you can put that in your user flair for this community) How did you come across this subreddit? Have you read any other classics? What genres/authors/books do you usually like? If you want, you can also share a pic of your book, the cover, or your favorite reading spot. And thanks to everyone here for helping us get past 500 subscribers in just over two weeks. Pretty wild how fast this is growing!

Readability of Crime and Punishment

By Orbit_Harmony

I was looking at getting C & P and kept running into reviews that said the language is really hard. But what does “hard” actually mean? Like, what’s so impenetrable about it to some people? I don’t mean that in a snobby way—I’ve only read one other Russian classic before (Nabokov’s Lolita). Yeah, the names take a second, but you adjust to the different versions pretty fast. To me the wording doesn’t seem that complicated. The main thing I’m running into is that I’m not super familiar with a bunch of the Russian terms. And I don’t have much experience with the whole aristocrat/debt kind of talk either. Also, I’m only around 43% in—somewhere around Raskolnivok’s first meeting with his mother and sister. No spoilers, please!

crime and punishment

By hidden_duck

Just wrapped this up after like three long months. It was honestly one of the most hyped books I was waiting for, so I’m glad I finally got to it, but I’m still kinda unsure how I feel. The idea itself is really cool, but I don’t totally get why it’s talked about so much. It felt way longer than it needed to be to get the point across, and I feel like there are shorter books that hit harder psychologically. Also the ending confused me a bit—it feels a little too out of step with how everything started, like it doesn’t quite match the vibe. I’m wondering if the fact that it took me so long to read made me appreciate it less, because parts of it were kind of dull. Still, I did enjoy the reading journey, and I’ve got a ton of tabs and highlighted bits I want to go back to, but somehow I expected this to be a 5-star read and it just wasn’t. Curious what other people think.

I have started crime and punishment. always wanted to read Dostoevsky.

By wintercarrot

I’m not totally sure what I’m looking at, but it feels like one of those covers where the vibe is there even if the details are a little confusing. The first pic gives me one impression, and then the second one kind of makes me question it. Still, I get why people like it.

Thoughts on Better Than Food’s review of “Crime and Punishment”?

By ValleyKeeps

Better Than Food is one of those smaller book review channels (at least to me), so I’m not super tuned in to that whole scene. Not sure if it’s even fair to call it “smallish,” but anyway—he put out a pretty unimpressed review of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and that felt like a decent way to kick off a discussion. Curious what everyone thinks. I dropped the link so people can check it out themselves, since it’s all just one opinion. Also, I feel like he did like TBK and Notes from the Underground, so it doesn’t seem like he’s just an anti-Dostoyevsky contrarian for the sake of it.