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Raskolnikov's Dual Nature Essay

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Raskolnikov’s split nature is the cause of his mental suicide because it encourages him to do something extraordinary, while it also torments him about his extraordinary act, proving that man cannot be completely rational. Richard Peace, in An Examination of the Major Novels, asserts that “man’s rational faculties constitute a mere twentieth part of his whole being: the error of Raskolnikov is that he mistakes the part for the whole” (Peace 34). It is this slight mistake that is the demise of Raskolnikov. Believing himself to be capable of complete rationality, Raskolnikov plan’s out every detail of his murder, knowing that “it’s these details that ruin everything always” (Dostoyevsky 5). With this intricate planning, readers see someone who may not necessarily be rational in their act itself, but someone who is as rational in the completion of their act. However, Dostoyevsky does not make it that simple. In the first two paragraphs of the novel, readers glimpse a man who is torn in half. Raskolnikov “was over his head in debt to the landlady and was afraid of meeting her” yet moments later “he was not afraid of any landlady, whatever she might be plotting against him” (3). Even though his split is first shown through something so trivial, it serves as a platform for later crucial …show more content…

He believes that killing Alyona is morally acceptable because he is an extraordinary person, giving him the right to commit certain acts that are, in the moment, seen as wrong, but in the future will be recognized as great acts done for the benefit of mankind. However, “the mere fact that the had to prove himself [by killing Alyona] shows that he secretly had doubts about his being a Napoleonic man, and this alone shows that he was not entitles to commit the crime” (Peace 48). It is the meek and doubtful side of Raskolnikov that pushes him to prove himself as an aggressive

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