Dostoevsky is able to beautifully depict the life of the extremely poor because he was around it at an early age. I also think he will be able to accurately portray a madman (he's already started, hasn't he?) because he has lived near a lunatic asylum so has seen firsthand the behavior typical of madmen. Also, as said in another blog, the inclusion of military and ex-military personnel in the novel most likely stems from Dostoevsky's own experience from attending a military engineering institute. From all this, and more, we can infer a few things about Raskolnikov, the main character of Crime and Punishment. First, that Raskolnikov may be an existentialist (I think we are seeing hints of this already)since Dostoevsky is one himself. And second, that Raskolnikov may suffer from horrible mental torture since Dostoevsky had gone through some of it when he was exiled and imprisoned. Now to...
Is a crime still a crime if no one finds out?
Depends. Crime is defined as "an unlawful act", right? If so, lets take away all laws (momentarily in our minds, of course). Imagine that we are neanderthals, lawless, with very primitive thoughts. Lets say I killed one of my fellow neanderthal's woman. Maybe she was mean to me; maybe she was mean to everyone and I just did us all a HUGE favor (Why I ever did it, its justified in my mind, so no one elses opinion matters to me). Anyway I did what I wanted to do and got what I wanted to get. But guess what? Caveman is mad. Caveman want justice (yet he doesn't know what the word means...). He doesn't know I did it, no one does. Even if he did, whats he gonna do? Call the cops on me? No. There is no law, thus no law protector. Now lets get back from our time traveling trip. In today's world (and Raskolnikov's), there are laws, there are law protectors. And I'm screwed if I do something "unlawful", Raskolnikov too, if someone sees. So... even if the before mentioned scenario does not apply to many situations, it applies to something, to someplace that has little or no laws, and that's why the answer depends.
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