Reflective Statement Several ideas regarding key ideas in Crime and Punishment emerged during the discussion, focusing primarily on the concepts of dreams and setting. Before the discussion I believed that Raskolnikov was somehow different from society and was often portrayed as a madman in his dreams/hallucinations. I also thought that St. Petersburg was a dirty and shameful city located somewhere in Russia. I later learned that Dostoevsky was actually using dreams to show Raskolnikov's different perspective of the world and that St. Petersburg is indeed a beautiful city (where the rich live) located in the west of Russia. Raskolnikov committed murder because he thought that the money he could earn through it would allow him to redirect wealth to many other poverty-stricken people, which is an allusion to socialism. However, his dreams show that he really committed the murder because he had a different sense of reality and believed himself to be extraordinary. Dostoevsky uses this to demonstrate that people who differ from social norms are often punished and characterized as inhuman. He tries to show this in Raskolnikov's dreams by showing how Raskolnikov sees the world. He is portrayed as a character who disobeys the law and resists social norms, and instead is characterized as a more progressive figure because he cares about the well-being of women, while ordinary society does not. The ideas raised regarding the setting also helped me understand some of the author's craft within the novel. The fact that St. Petersburg is a Western city that tries to imitate parts of Europe (particularly France) shows how it is cut off from the rest of Russia and full of rich people. This caused the book to become more...... middle of paper......as a whole they help Dostoevsky highlight problems within social norms (such as the treatment of women) and allow him to further develop the characterization of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov. The technique implemented in dreams even allows Dostoevsky to show how different realities collide because each individual character has a different interpretation of what is right and wrong within society. Ultimately it shows that the characters' individualistic principles clash with those of the societies and as a result the characters are punished for their differences. This final idea gives the reader the impression that alternative characterizations and realities must be destroyed and eliminated so that the system does not become corrupted. Work cited Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and punishment. 1866. Trans. Constance Garmet. New York: Bantam-Random, 2003. Print.