Henok

It is C&P, I'm reviewing the highlights i made when i read the book for the first time (might as well write chapter by chapter summary and commentary from my pov if you like)

Before I start, let me tell you a thing or two about Dostoyevsky. He was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1821. He had six siblings and was the second born. He was delicate and sickly from early childhood. He was epileptic, but also the cleverest of his siblings. He stood 3rd in the St. Petersburg Engineering School examination and started attending university. It was during that time that he began writing his first book, Poor Folk, which immediately gave him fame and success. Shortly after, however, he was accused of some political movements that he didn't commit (supposedly) and was condemned to death with 20 other detainees. They were taken to the stake to be shot, but at the last moment, the ruler spared their lives and commuted their punishment to servitude. At exactly that moment, when they were being untied, one of the 20 people went insane and never regained his sanity. That exact moment created the Dostoyevsky we all know and was a precursor to perhaps the greatest work of literature. He was also poor and had to pay his late brother's debt. He literally went through every possible misery, and I think that gave rise to his profound philosophical and psychological works. “In order to write well, one must suffer, suffer!” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, as recalled by Dmitry Merezhkovsky. #MyCPCommentary

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Raskolnikov had, in a sense, already committed the crime psychologically before he ever committed it physically. This conversation with his landlady feels like one of those moments where something that has been growing inside him finally starts taking shape. The murder itself almost feels like the final, physical expression of thoughts he had been carrying around for a long time, his resentment, isolation, pride, and obsession with his own theory. And I think Dostoevsky is getting at something much bigger here. In real life, people don't necessarily wake up one day and suddenly become capable of doing something terrible. Sometimes the act is just the endpoint of a process that has been happening internally for a long time. Thoughts become rationalizations, rationalizations become intentions, and eventually circumstances give those intentions an opportunity to become actions. Raskolnikov is interesting precisely because even he doesn't completely understand where his own thoughts are taking him. That is exactly why he is confused. His act is just the culmination of his deranged rationalization. #MyCPCommentary

This captures the lives of many drunkards. Nobody with a healthy, stable mind simply wakes up one day and decides to become an alcoholic; more often, troubled people gradually find themselves in that situation. Some drink to fill a void in their lives. Alcohol can numb feelings, but it can also amplify them, depending on the person drinking it, and for Marmeladov, it seems to do the latter. He is intelligent enough to understand that drinking is destroying both his own life and the lives of the people around him, but that awareness is exactly what makes his drinking so tragic. He drinks because he wants to suffer. People don't always simply walk away from things that hurt them. If they did, no one would smoke a cigarette knowing perfectly well that it is harmful. And this isn't limited to addiction. The same contradiction can exist in relationships: we can know that someone is bad for us, recognize that they are hurting us, and still find ourselves yearning for them. Sometimes understanding that something is harmful doesn't make us want it less. Marmeladov understands his own destruction, but understanding it does not give him the strength to escape it. We can consciously recognize our own destruction and still move toward it. #MyCPCommentary

Im not ready to even start thinking about some of these let alone write, makes me realize how far i have come in life

They rarely work btw, especially for me, nahh