An Abrahamic Double Bind: An Examination of the Possibility of Faith in Crime and Punishment

Abstract:Crime and Punishment’s epilogue has troubled readers since the novel’s publication. Recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that the epilogue deserves reexamination — that it sheds important light on many of the formal, generic and interpretive problems central to the novel proper. This paper proposes that Raskoĺnikov’s conspicuously unrepentant attitude to the very end can be read as calling into question the reality of his guilt. Specifically, I examine his third interview with Porfirii in which, I suggest, Porfirii performs a kind of surrogate confession, thus unsettling our sense of Raskoĺnikov’s ‘crime’ as straightforwardly a crime. Drawing on Kierkegaard’s exploration of Abrahamic faith in Fear and Trembling — his suggestion that the ethical and religious interpretations of Abraham’s terrifying act necessarily clash — I argue that Raskoĺnikov occupies this knife edge between murderer and man of faith.