Mrs. McConkey
ENG 3UE
5 December 2011
Personal Reflection
Throughout the course of this blog, and through my time spent with Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, I feel as though I have evolved personally, and as a reader, in that my patience has increased, as has my understanding for good literature.
The first way I have grown as a reader is through my increase in patience for literature. In the past, I have had difficulty reading classic novels because I found them to be overly descriptive, and to have a plot that was too slow, making them tedious to read. I usually got bored with them, and either worked my way through them like it was some difficult chore, like with Pride and Prejudice and The Lord of the Rings, or I put them aside, like with Sense and Sensibility and Romeo and Juliet, in which case, the bookmarks are still where I left them. However, after reading Crime and Punishment, I've realized that a lot of description is sometimes necessary in a novel to develop the authors thoughts, like when Dostoevsky used description to describe Raskolnikov and his thought processes. I learned that i need to simply sit back and appreciate the art of literature rather than trying to rush through it. The main focus of Crime and Punishment is on the theme of psychology, not the plot, as I'm used to, so I've also come to realize that plot is not as essential an element as I once thought. Although it is still important in a novel, it doesn't always have to be the main focus, and the book can be just as good if the focus is on theme or character as it can be if the focus is on plot.
Another thing I have learned from this book is the ability to distinguish between something I like, and something that's 'good'. When I began reading Crime and Punishment, not only did I find it slow and tedious, and all of the things mentioned above, I was also extremely irritated with the main character. In my first reading response, I mentioned how unpredictable Raskolnikov's character is. This was a great source of frustration for me at first, and I didn't like that I couldn't feel a connection to, or understand him. One passage that particularly annoyed me me was when Raskolikov begins to help a raped girl, but then changes his mind.
"'Look how her dress is torn, look how it's put on; she's been dressed, she didn't
do it herself, and it was clumsy male hands that dressed her...and now look over
there: that dandy I was going to fight with is a stranger to me...but he too noticed her
on the way just now, drunk, out of her senses, and he's dying to come intercept her -
seeing what state she's in - and take her somewhere'...
At that moment it was as if something stung Raskolnikov, as if he had been turned
about in an instant.
'Hey wait!' he shouted after the moustached policeman.
The man looked back
'Forget it! What do you care? Leave her alone! Let him have fun' (he pointed to the
dandy)..." (Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 48-49).
At first, when I read this section, I thought I was finally going to be able to figure out Raskolnikov's personality. However, my hopes were quickly dashed when he changes his mind and tells the police officer to leave the girl alone. As I got further into the novel, I am happy to say that I began to understand Raskolnikov more, and therefore enjoy the book more. However, I still didn't actually like the book (though I can't pinpoint the reason; it was simply my personal feelings about the book). However, as I read more, I did begin to appreciate it more. I began to recognize that, although I didn't necessarily like it, it was still a good book. It had a universally appealing theme, and an interesting and unique character. It was also an interesting read, as it presented a murder from the point of view of the killer, instead of the victim or the investigator, as I'm more used to reading, or seeing in crime shows such as Criminal Minds. Although I didn't like the book, I found it intellictually stimulating (which was a good thing), interesting, and worthy of my respect.
