Crime and Punishment and Notes from the UndergroundCrime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground The stories of Fyodor Dostoyevsky are stories of a kind of rebirth. It tells the story of severe human suffering and how each character tries to escape this misery. In the novel Crime and Punishment, he tells the story of Raskolnikov, a former student who murders an old pawnbroker in an attempt to prove a theory. In Notes from the Underground we have the opportunity to explore Dostoyevsky's views on human beings. Dostoyevsky's characters are very similar, as are his stories. It places strong emphasis on the estrangement and isolation felt by its characters. His characters are both brilliant and “sick” as every novel says, poisoned by their intelligence. In Notes from the Underground, the character, who is never given a name, writes his diary in solitude. He is spoiled by his intelligence, which gives him a fierce vanity with which he attacks the world and justifies the malicious acts he does. But at the same time he speaks of the doubt he feels about the value of human thought and purpose and, later, of human life. He believes that intelligence, which constantly questions itself and "drifts unfaithfully" between ideas, is a curse. Damn yourself to seeing everything, clearly as a window (and that includes things that are not meant to be seen, like the corruption in the world) or to constantly searching for the meaning of elusive things. Dostoyevsky believed that humans are evil, destructive and irrational. In Crime and Punishment we see Raskolnikov caught between reason and will, the human need for personal freedom and the need to submit to authority. He spends most of the first two parts stuck between wanting to act and wanting to observe. After he acts and murders the old woman, he spends a lot of time thinking about the confession. Raskolnikov seems trapped in his world even though nothing really holds him back; he chooses not to run and not confess, but still acts as if he is being choked (perhaps out of guilt?). In both novels, defeat seems inevitable. Both characters believe that the normal man is stupid, unsatisfied and confused. Perhaps they are right, but both characters fail to see the positive aspects of humans; the closest scene was the scene between the narrator of Notes from the Underground and Liza. In this scene, he almost lets the human side appear, rather than the uncertain and closed person he normally is...