Presented by Dr Derek Allan as part of the SLLL Literary Studies Seminar Series

Rodion Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is one of the best-known characters in the world of the novel but one who continues to pose interpretive problems. Why exactly does he murder the old pawnbroker and her sister? Why does he believe he is committing no crime? And why, despite this belief, does he suffer a psychological breakdown and eventually surrender to the police? This paper argues that Raskolnikov, a harbinger of Albert Camus’s “virtuous assassins”, murders to implement a “magnificent idea” that will demonstrate his merit as a human being. His collapse results not, as sometimes suggested, from remorse but from an outcome he had not foreseen…

Dr Derek Allan is a Visiting Fellow in the SLLL at ANU. He has published on André Malraux, Choderlos de Laclos, Dostoevsky and Goya.