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PHILIP
RAHV
of its carryover of the theme of the Petersburg misery it brings
to a close the series of so-called social narratives which, from
Poor Folk
to
The Insulted and Injured,
is
dominated by a
consistent motif that has been aptly defined as that of "the
impotent protest of powerless people." In its second aspect, how–
ever, the novel throws off the limitations of the earlier theme,
attaining the higher goals of its author's greater or ultimate
period.
Raskolnikov's involvement with the Marmeladov clan en–
abled Dostoevsky to solve what must have been his main com–
positional problem: How to portray with entire cogency a hero
who is a solitary and monomaniac acting throughout in a
mood of "morbid irritability" verging on madness without suc–
cumbing to him, that is to say, without letting him take the
lead to the degree of making the world over in his image? This
is but another way of formulating one of the principal dif–
ficulties which forced Dostoevsky to abandon the first versions
of the book. For to have permitted Raskolnikov, as first-person
narrator, to absorb the story unto himself would surely have
resulted in its impoverishment, producing an impression of life
closing in, a claustrophobic effect diminishing the hero's stature
in our eyes and turning him into an altogether special case.*
And this is where the Marmeladovs come in exactly, that for
all the grimness of their situation and its grotesque features they
still somehow exist within the bounds of the normal, whereas
Raskolnikov is decidedly outside
it;
hence their presence adds
considerably to the story's quota of circumstantial realism,
helping to overcome the hazard implicit in Raskolnikov's
malaise. For we must keep in mind that
his
story, which on one
*
The special or clinical case is precisely what no master of the nar–
rative medium will let himself in for. Dostoevsky did let himself in for
it once, in the early nouvelle,
The Double,
which, for all its startling
effects, cannot be rated otherwise than as a failure. He never repeated
that youthful error. In lesser talents, however, this error becomes habitual,
for in coping with the extremes of morbidity or irrationality they are
frequently lured into betraying the shared sense of human reality.
