Crime and Punishment: The Hare Dream I’ve returned to…
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Crime and Punishment: The Hare Dream
I’ve returned to Crime and Punishment for a third reading, and reading the opening chapters once again, a new aspect that I’ve noticed (or maybe I just forgot) is that Dostoevsky is very much attempting to capture a world that is ultimately characterised by a deep suffering that tends to lack the appropriate, empathetic response from the witnesses of such suffering. With this in mind, I’ve just come upon the Hare dream passage again. During previous readings, I’ve always loved this passage, but never thought about it’s significance. I guess I just always found it so effective at evoking an emotional response in the reader that I tended to not think about its thematic importance.
However, upon this reading I think its significance has become apparent as even though it’s a dream, the dream creates a fascinating juxtaposition between a youthful, childlike empathy and the dangerous narcissistic intellectualism of Rasknikov. In this sense, is this dream highly symbolic of the Christian, childlike sympathy and attention to suffering that is absent in a Russia that is high-jacked by various ideologies that the author was cautious of? Rather than progress in intellectualism, it’s the regression back to that instinctual, youthful care epitomised in the dream that is desperately needed?
#entertainment
I’ve returned to Crime and Punishment for a third reading, and reading the opening chapters once again, a new aspect that I’ve noticed (or maybe I just forgot) is that Dostoevsky is very much attempting to capture a world that is ultimately characterised by a deep suffering that tends to lack the appropriate, empathetic response from the witnesses of such suffering. With this in mind, I’ve just come upon the Hare dream passage again. During previous readings, I’ve always loved this passage, but never thought about it’s significance. I guess I just always found it so effective at evoking an emotional response in the reader that I tended to not think about its thematic importance.
However, upon this reading I think its significance has become apparent as even though it’s a dream, the dream creates a fascinating juxtaposition between a youthful, childlike empathy and the dangerous narcissistic intellectualism of Rasknikov. In this sense, is this dream highly symbolic of the Christian, childlike sympathy and attention to suffering that is absent in a Russia that is high-jacked by various ideologies that the author was cautious of? Rather than progress in intellectualism, it’s the regression back to that instinctual, youthful care epitomised in the dream that is desperately needed?
#entertainment
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