The motif of suffering plays a large role in Fyodor Dostoyevky's Crime and Punishment. The motif of the need of suffering is used throughout the novel to produce the book's theme: great suffering leads to salvation and the expiation of man's sins. In Crime and Punishment, several characters undergo much pain and personal anguish. Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov and Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov are two characters in the novel that undergo suffering and inner turmoil. Both these characters suffer throughout the novel in many different fashions but the effects of their suffering are the same.
Raskolnikov's suffering has a direct relationship with his guilt over his crime. It is also an indirect result of his dual personality and his obsession to prove his "Extraordinary Man" theory. He is represented as being either cold, intellectual and isolated from society, or as being warm and compassionate. In the novel, he is shown as warm and compassionate when he tries to help a prostitute being solicited by an older man and when he gives most of his money to the Marmeladovs, The murder of the pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, is the result of his intellectual side's need to determine whether or not he fits his "Extraordinary Man" theory. The humane and compassionate side of his personality was forced to suffer because of the actions of his cold and isolated side. After committing the murder, Raskolnikov's body turns on him, mentally and physically. He become very ill and his personality is not what it was before. His personality changing is shown when he tells his family and also Razumihin to stay away. Dostoyevsky writes, "The conviction that all his faculties, even memory, and the simplest power of reflection were failing him began to be an insufferable torture"(81). This personal anguish that Rodya has.
to suffer with is part of his theory because the theory requires the "extraordinary man" to suffer greatly.
