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Recommended: Understanding suffering

In Feodor Dosteoevsky's, Crime and Punishment, one of the main themes is the value of suffering. Suffering in context to this novel can be defined as the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. Throughout the novel, some characters experience emotional and physical pain and suffering. But the main portrayal of suffering is the main character, Raskolnikov, since he feels that suffering can be a means to achieve moral redemption of the extraordinary man, and ultimately he wants to be forgiven of sin. Raskolnikov murders an old pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, with the purpose of using her richness for good causes with his foundation of the extraordinary man theory. According to Raskolnikov, people are split up into two groups; some people are ordinary and some are extraordinary. Ordinary people are the common population while extraordinary people are those do not have to follow the ethical codes that others have to follow because they are meant to be superior men. He saw himself as an extraordinary man which justified why he thought he is allowed to commit the murder of Ivanovna. Before being able to leave Ivanovna’s apartment, her half sister, Lizaveta, comes in and sees the dead body of Alyona. At this point, Raskolnikov’s plan is ruined so without any thought, he kills Lizaveta and her unborn child which he by no means wants to be responsible for. The actual act of bringing the axe down on Lizaveta’s innocent head never seems to distress Raskolnikov, but what did cause him pain was that he was not able to be the extraordinary man that he envisioned. Right after this crime, Raskolnikov experiences illness and emotional sufferings as he deals with a variety of people and families up until his confession.
Dostoevsky portrays Raskolnikov’s ability to suffer right after the murder when he states: “The conviction that everything, even memory, even the simple power

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