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Freedom is Boring - An analysis of Svidrigailov in Crime & Punishment
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Patrick Henry once famously cried, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” But, in his novel, Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky serves up both on a platter to minor character Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov in order to communicate his theme that freedom is empty or of little value if not governed by a guiding principle. Svidrigailov has plenty of freedom, but no such guiding principle. For most of the novel, Svidrigailov lives outside of all moral and societal boundaries. He commits terrible crimes and brings darkness wherever he goes, but then floats through guilt, and anguish, and hardship like a ghost floats through walls. He seems to feel no consequence for any of his actions, and even charms those around him with forwardness and candor, but ultimately his hedonistic ambivalence towards life results in his cessation of his own.
The reader first learns about Svidrigailov indirectly, through the letter that Pulcheria writes to her son in Part One. In the letter, Svidrigailov is described “with great heat and indignation for the baseness of his behavior in regard to Marfa Petrovna [and Dunia]”(Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment, 33). Later, when Pulcheria and Dunia come to town, they carry news about Svidrigailov, informing Raskolnikov about the suspicious death of Marfa Petrovna as Pulcheria exclaims, “Would you believe it, that terrible man seems to have been the cause of her death. They say he used to beat her horribly!”(218). Thus, it is certainly safe to say tha...
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