Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind - then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.”
Raskolnikov, Part 1, Chapter 2.
Raskolnikov, Part 1, Chapter 2.
AP Guiding Questions Crime and Punishment - Part I
- Select a character that has an experience such as a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.
- Choose a character from a novel or play who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Analyze the character’s understanding of justice, the degree to which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the significance of this search for the work as a whole.
- Analyze the motives for the character’s deception and discuss how the deception contributes the meaning of the work as a whole.
- Discuss how a character in a novel or drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be certain to discuss how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.
- A symbol is an abject, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In a literary work a symbol can express and idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Focus on one symbol and analyze how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters, or themes of the work as a whole.