Blog about the ways in which Dostoyevsky uses 1) mood, 2) point-of-view and 3) characterization in the early chapters in his novel.
The mood is very depressing and through his descriptions of the surrounding and it seems to have a lot of criminal activity or at least activities frowned about society. First with the distinction between Raskolnikov's and the people around him, which makes him looks much more decent than they are. Secondly, with the drunk man, Marmeladov.
The point-of-view seems to change through the first three chapters, each focusing on a particularly different character. First, with Raskolnikov. Second, with Marmeladov and his family. And third, with his mother and sister, Pulcheria and Dunya. We can still glance at Raskolnikov's thoughts though which would also reflect our mood because of his antisocial behavior and murderous thoughts of his landlady.
Dostoyevsky characterizes this novel very uniquely. It seems that he describes his characters through their families and also makes us give some sympathy towards them because we know why have to do certain things, like prostitution and being a maid. Usually, if we're presented with those two topics, we generalize them to be lazy and foul people, but because we know their stories, we feel sympathy towards them. Sonya has to prostitute to support her family and Dunya has to be a maid to support our main character, Raskolnikov. Because of this, we feel a sort of digust where it is due (Marmeladov and Raskolnikov). More so for Marmeladov because he's drunk when we met him. I wonder how excited the class must be with the amount of depressing reading we have to do, haha.
No comments:
Post a Comment