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  • Essay / The Importance of Minor Characters in Crime and Punishment

    Anyone who has been exposed to theater has heard at least once the colloquial expression "there are no small roles, only small actors." Some might scoff at this platitude, pointing out the fact that, of course, there are small parts; Most literary works contain several “small parts.” But the gist of this statement is true: no matter how “small” a character’s role is, that character makes a contribution, large or small, to the story. And in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's classic work Crime and Punishment, a central character who constitutes a key turning point appears only twice briefly. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Alyona Ivanovna is a pawnbroker and pawnbroker. This acceptable existence, vaguely embarrassing for a woman, leads at the beginning of the novel to initially want to neglect her as a simple superficial character. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Alyona Ivanovna and her despicable character are both an essential part of Raskolnikov's plot to achieve extraordinary status. To begin with, Alyona Ivanovna initially poses a problem for Raskolnikov during his murder, albeit in a rather indirect way. As he bludgeons Alyona Ivanovna with the butt of an axe, her sister Lizaveta returns from an errand and stumbles upon a horrific scene. Surprised by her arrival, Raskolnikov turns to her and murders her as well. This event presents Raskolnikov with two dilemmas: he not only killed one woman, but two, the second of whom he had no intention of harming, and the fact that he murdered Lizaveta could spoil his theory of Man extraordinary, the Ubermensch. Because of this possibility, Raskolnikov more or less comes to ignore Lizaveta's murder. Through the progression of Raskolnikov's experiment, several flaws in his theory lead the reader to believe that Raskolnikov is not, in fact, an extraordinary man. These may be directly linked to Alyona Ivanovna or her murder. It becomes apparent that perhaps Alyona Ivanovna was not quite the despicable and evil character she first appeared to Raskolnikov, or at the very least she was not worth murdering . While in her mind she was a mean miser who withheld money from the have-nots of St. Petersburg, she too was among the have-nots. She was not a big money collector who stole from the poor who needed to be destroyed. She was just a “louse”. A second example of Raskolnikov's unworthiness of the title of Ubermensch is that he first tackles this crime with the intention of taking the money that Alyona Ivanovna has hoarded from the poor masses and the used to save dozens of families and individuals. from starvation, or perhaps to further his own education, thereby improving the lives of many others. But in his panic after the murders, he grabs almost no money and doesn't even see how much he took or the value of the items he took. Instead, he hides them under a rock in an alley. In this way, it fails to achieve its initial objective. Finally, Raskolnikov destroys his possibility of being extraordinary at the very scene of the murder of Alyona Ivanovna by directly violating one of the limits that he himself imposed on the Ubermensch: the Extraordinary Man must not make a mistake in his behavior. putting its mission into practice. Unlike his Ubermensch, Raskolnikov forgets several things in the implementation of his “valiant” act. From the very beginning he is behind his time and arrives at Alyona Ivanovna's apartment well..