Crime and Punishment

In Crime and Punishment, many characters feel alienated from society, cut off or isolated from other people. Raskolnikov is the central embodiment of this alienation. He physically separates himself from people by staying in his room, refusing to engage with friends and family, and retreating into his own thoughts. Trapped like this, Raskolnikov festers with rage. To explain his disconnection, he concocts a complex theory separating people into the ordinary and the extraordinary, to whom everything is permitted. Desperate to believe that he is extraordinary, he commits murder. But this action only isolates him more.

Other characters experience alienation in Crime and Punishment because of shame. Marmeladov’s alcoholism makes him a self-hating pariah, too ashamed to go home to his wife. The shame of Sonia’s profession dehumanizes her as an immoral fallen woman. Raskolnikov witnesses an attempted suicide, and several young women reportedly killed themselves after Svidrigailov raped them—the shame of premarital sex, even when coerced, is enough for them to consider their lives ruined.

However, shame works in the other direction as well. The novel posits that public shaming is necessary to reclaim those alienated from society—after being mortified like this, the alienated can be restored through love and social connections.