Book Group- Week Thirteen (Part 6, vii-The End)

Overview--

-Raskolnikov farewells his mother. She is still deluded about him one day becoming 'a leading light'.

-He farewells Dunya. He has apparently been to the river several times, contemplating suicide but unable to follow through.

-He farewells Sonya.. but it is less a farewell then an 'I'm going now' with an unspoken knowledge that she will follow him.

-Raskolnikov returns to the police bureau and turns himself in.

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-In the epilogue we find Raskolnikov imprisoned in Siberia. Razumikhin and Dunya get married. R's mother is sick, and while denying R's true fate, deep down she suspects what has become of her beloved son.

-Sonya has followed Raskolnikov, and visits frequently. She has gained much respect fro the other prisoners, while they despise R.

-R has a telling nightmare where everybody is doing their own thing, killing each other in 'senseless anger'. This suggests a changing of his heart.

-The book climaxes with Raskolnikv's redemption. Sonya meets him on a riverbank. He looks to the far side of the bank, seeing distant people living their own quiet lives. This seems to stand for a new hope for his future, and the river seems to be his current predicament, the time in prison that he must get through.

He crumples at Sonyas feet, finally sorry, finally showing his love and gratitude for her completely undeserved love towards him. Finally he has humility and a future.

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Painfully Mediocre--

Right until the very end Raskolnikov was unwilling to view his actions as criminal. To him the only mistake he made was thinking he was 'extraordinary' enough to truly cross over. Disturbingly, he is far more troubled about being mediocre than about being a murderer.

'Crime? What crime?' he exclaimed in a sudden fit of fury. 'My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman who brought no good to anyone, to murder whom would pardon forty sins...and you call that a crime?... Only now do I see clearly the whole absurdity of my cowardice, now, when I've already taken the resolve to go to this needless shame! It's merely because of my own baseness and mediocrity that I'm taking this step..'

Redemption--

In a sense, in the end it is not a big step to take from his anger at his own baseness and mediocrity, to his final sorrowful humility. In both states he sees himself not as 'extraordinary', but as the pitiful creature he really is. The step that he takes is admitting shame, not just seeing his baseness, but feeling sorry for it, feeling ashamed of it.

The End--

Well, that brings me to the end of this pretty amazing book. There is enough to warrant another ten posts, to go deeper in to the characters, the overall meaning of the novel, the cultural significance etc etc. But I will leave it there. I am happy that I made it through this book, and recommend it highly, as a means to think about our own faith, our own secret pride, and our place in society.

Thankyou and goodnight.