Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Individual
Group Discount
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews December 9, 2023 December 2, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan - Group Discount
Qty: 00
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
If a hero is defined as a man or woman with noble attributes who carries out difficult and frightening tasks, then at first glance Raskolnikov seems the opposite of a hero. He murders a defenseless old woman, then insists he has done nothing wrong. Still, his conscience torments him: He worries about his actions, his family, and the nation in which he lives. Because he thinks deeply about moral problems, Raskolnikov is ultimately able to commit brave acts, turning himself into the police and atoning for his sinful past. Though Raskolnikov spends most of the novel in a decidedly non-heroic state, his keen, searching conscience allows him to attain grace in the closing epilogue and he ends the novel a hero.
To be sure, Raskolnikov engages in numerous unheroic thoughts and deeds. Toward the beginning of the novel, he attacks and kills the moneylender Alyona Ivanovna. He tells himself he has behaved admirably; by his perverse logic, moneylenders are so cruel that they do not deserve to live. “Crime?” he says. “What crime?” He likens Alyona Ivanova to a “louse” that has “sucked the life-sap from the poor,” and claims that killing her was a virtuous act that should earn him forgiveness for forty sins. Raskolnikov also develops a worldview in which some men are so farsighted and brilliant that they may kill anyone who displeases them, counting himself as one of these men. This pattern of selfish thoughts and actions certainly does not seem heroic.
On the other hand, Raskolnikov’s active conscience distinguishes him from most people. The guilt he feels after killing Alyona Ivanovna is the most brutal punishment in the novel. Even the police investigator, Porfiry Petrovich, admires Raskolnikov for his finely-tuned sensibilities. His conscience causes him to worry not just about his own sins, but also about the sins of nineteenth-century Russia. He refuses to marry, seeing the institution as deeply flawed and imbalanced, and he forbids his sister to marry Luzhin because such a marriage would reduce her to a servant. The status of Russian women enrages him and his heart aches for Sonya, who prostitutes herself to feed her family. Tormented, he dreams of a poor, weak horse that gets crushed in the street. To Raskolnikov, the horse represents Russia’s starving masses, sacrificed in the name of progress. These moments of bitterness and idealism show that Raskolnikov has an extraordinary conscience.
Raskolnikov’s active, well-developed conscience ultimately enables him to commit heroic acts. These acts of heroism occur toward the very end of the novel, after the psychological torment proves too much to bear and he turns himself in. Sentenced to hard labor in Siberia, the young man accepts his fate with surprising courage and grace. Though it doesn’t happen immediately, Raskolnikov eventually renounces his selfish thoughts and realizes that he had allowed himself to become alienated from the human community. The resolute loner even declares his love for the steadfast Sonya, an act of pure faith from a man who has despised marriage for so long. “Instead of dialectics,” Dostoyevsky writes, Raskolnikov realizes that “there was life, and something different to work itself out in his consciousness.” He changes from a self-pitying criminal into a generous, compassionate man, capable of loving another person.
It may seem strange to call a murderer heroic. But Dostoyevsky persuades us that Raskolnikov has undergone a beautiful transformation—from peevish liar to mature and penitent man. Raskolnikov has the courage to examine his past, admit that some of his beliefs are wrongheaded, and change the way he thinks and acts, and in so doing he undertakes a daunting, rare, and admirable journey—a journey that can certainly be described as an act of heroism.
Please wait while we process your payment