Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov

Rodón Románovich Raskólnikov (Russian: Родиóн Ромáнович Раскóльников) is the protagonist of the Russian novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Throughout the book he is also called & # 34; Rodia, Ródenka, and Rodka. & # 34; . The name Raskólnikov comes from the Russian word "raskólnik" which means schismatic.

Raskólnikov is a twenty-three-year-old student who comes from a humble family in the interior of imperial Russia, who moves to Saint Petersburg to study Law at the University. He is the son of a family dedicated to domestic service, being an orphan of his father, and the son of Pulcheria Raskolnikova, a seamstress, and brother of Dunia, a domestic servant.

In Saint Petersburg he lived in a tiny rented room, which basically consisted of a couch, where he spent his days isolated thinking and practically did not eat unless the maid, Nastia, offered him something. He became engaged to the daughter of his landlady, with whom he was never in love, who finally died of consumption. He discovered love with Sonia, daughter of an alcoholic former civil servant "friend" his, who after being a confidant of the crime he commits, selflessly follows him throughout history.

After spending some time studying law, Rodia finds himself in financial difficulties, which is why he is forced to leave his promising career. After cloistering himself in the small room he rented, Raskolnikov developed a plan, which apparently consisted of killing an old woman, Aliona Ivanovna, a moneylender and then stealing a large sum of money from her with which he could resume his studies and help the poor people. After two months of constant moral and ethical dilemmas, Raskolnikov takes the step and murders the old woman with an axe, but, despite this, and outside of any type of plan, he is also forced to kill the kind, but quite naive, sister of the old woman, Lizaveta Ivanovna, who appears suddenly and discovers the body next to Rodia himself at the crime scene.

Despite how simple the reasons for murdering that old woman may have seemed, the truth turned out to be different. Raskolnikov had developed his own theory about supermen, which he published in a local magazine, considering himself one of them, frequently comparing himself to Napoleon. For him, the murder of the old woman could be justifiable since the money she would steal would help him complete his studies, lift her family out of poverty and also fulfill her "mission" on Earth.

Shortly afterwards he realizes that he does not belong to that select caste of supermen, which raises the question of the futility of the crime, and he decides to get rid of what was stolen, considering whether to turn himself in or live with the guilt. Finally Rodión decides to turn himself in and thanks to the fact that the investigator of the case has taken a liking to him, instead of death, he banishes him to Siberia where Sonia decides to accompany him.

Critics have taken and taken up Dostoyevsky's classic a thousand times to indicate their support or dissatisfaction with the events that emerge in the epilogue. According to some authors, such as Ms. Cintia Fernández, the feeling of redemption that this character goes through towards the end of the novel Crimen y Punishment lacks verisimilitude, as does the feeling of amorous outburst that he experiences in front of to the faithful and patient Sonia. Other authors, for example Dr. Socorro Orgeira, maintain that the anagnorisis that Raskólnikov's character goes through at the end of the work contributes accurately to the fictional pact that has been established between the reader and the work averaging the first part that could be entitled without objections "The crime". According to this author, the vulnerability that the character develops in the ending is unmasked in his human life experience and, therefore, that ending looms as the beginning of another story.

In a more conciliatory position, the specialist Alejandra Paredes maintains that the work in its entirety—and not just the ending—must be recovered by a reader willing to get rid of the moral framework that veils (and vetoes), in many cases, the true meaning of the things and ideas that arise from literature.

In 1936, Mikhail Bakhtin published his work Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics, where he describes the polyphonic and dialogic aspect of this author's novels, that is, his ability to expose and contrast different worldviews. of reality represented through each character.