Through Error You Come To the Truth

For a while now, Criminal Minds has been one of my favorite shows on television. I find watching profilers asses the mental conditions of various sadistic criminals absolutely fascinating. In essence, Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment is such an examination. My senior classmates and I had a difficult time keeping all the Russian names straight, but other than that I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. Like the ever changing mental anguish of Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter, Raskolnikov's true punishment comes from himself rather than the law. His relationships with the outside world become schizophrenic after he commits his intended murders and Raskolnikov is forced to alienate himself as a result. Being alone with one's sins can be a horrible experience and only makes Raskolnikov's self scrutiny worse. It's a wonderful study of the power of the human mind and is worth sorting out the Russian names to read. I give it a solid B+.

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"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." (Fyodor Dostoevsky)