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Macbeth Similarities Between Crime And Punishment

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In 1606 William Shakespeare published one of his best known tragedies; Macbeth. Macbeth is set in Scotland in the 11th century. It begins with the main character, Macbeth, being a heroic, upstanding man. Macbeth is the talk of the Kingdom following the war. But, through a few dramatic twists and turns, it shows his gruesome fall from grace and eventually his death. More recently, a Russian author by the name of Fyodor Dostoevsky published a novel titled Crime and Punishment. The novel was originally written in Russian and then translated to English by many different people. Much like Macbeth, Crime and Punishment tells the story of one man’s fall from goodness. Raskolnikov is the main character of the novel. Raskolnikov begins the story as …show more content…

And this begs the question: What is the good life? Humanity is not boundless. Humanity is bounded by the forces of the natural world: things like food and water, shelter, or sickness. Humans must remain in homeostasis in order to thrive. Humanity is bounded by society: the ideas, words, and actions of the members of a society all effect the direction in which humanity, as a whole, will move. Above both of these, though, every member of the human race is bounded by themselves: the clarity of conscious and subconscious minds, the freedom of thought, and the state of being unencumbered by guilt. For the sake of simplicity, we will call the aforementioned topics “institutions.” The Institution of Nature, the Institution of Society, and the Institution of Self. Now to answer the question, the good life for the men of these stories is one where the institution of self is taken into consideration by the character, and on top of that it is one where the institution of self is lived in accordance to. One must “know thy self,” and live by that knowledge. By these criteria Raskolnikov gets much closer to the good …show more content…

Contrary to Macbeth, Raskolnikov begins his story in poverty and shame. Raskolnikov is too poor to support himself as a student, and too poor to even support himself as a human. The difficulty that begins the story is Raskolnikov will be unable to pay his rent, and will be kicked out onto the streets. Raskolnikov cannot let this happen. He devises a plan to make some money and pay his rent. Raskolnikov plans to murder the pawn broker of his town. He is dead set on following through with this plan until one night, he has a dream that makes him reconsider his position. He dreams, very vividly, of a cart full of drunken peasants beating a cart horse to death. The dream accounts all of the beatings that the mare suffers and the young Raskolnikov flying in fury to try to rescue her. “He ran beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming.” Raskolnikov could not believe the violence before him. He could not hold himself together. And this was merely a dream! Raskolnikov was then swayed. He could not commit the murder. He wasn’t capable. Despite this though, he does go through with the murder. He kills the pawn broker and her innocent sister. After this he becomes violently ill. He is not ill due to natural causes though, his mind created the illness. Raskolnikov did not

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