Life is a wheel that rolls inexorably forward through the temporal realm of existence. There are those who succumb to its movement and there are some, like Christ and Napoleon, who temporarily grasp the wheel and shape all life around them. “Normal” people accept their positions in life and are bound by law and morality. Extraordinary people, however, replace the law and shape the direction and progress of society. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is the story of a group of people trapped under the wheel and their different reactions to their difficult situation. One individual, Raskolnikov, refuses to acknowledge the bare fact of his mediocrity. To prove that he is extraordinary, he kills two innocent people. This despicable action does not bring him glory or demonstrate his superiority, but leads to his physical, mental and spiritual destruction. After much inner turmoil and suffering, he discovers that when a person transgresses the boundaries of morality and detaches himself from the rest of humanity, faith in God and faith in others is the only path to redemption. As the story unfolds, Dostoevsky introduces the reader to Raskolnikov, a troubled young man who is extremely isolated from those around him. He lives in a small, dingy, dusty, dirty room in a small, unattractive house. He lives in an abstract world neglecting the real. He is quite separated from all the people he has contact with. In the opening chapter, Raskolnikov is said to be "so completely absorbed in himself and isolated from his fellow men that he was afraid to meet, not only his landlady, but anyone else" (1). People get closer to him physically, but everyone is forced to stay distant mentally. He physically walks the crowded, noisy, dirty streets of St. Petersburg, but somehow never does so mentally, moving through the streets like a zombie, not like a man. It is not aware of its position and often bumps into disoriented pedestrians. Therefore, at the beginning of the novel Dostoevsky illustrates the apparent schism between Raskolnikov's mind and body. While living in St. Petersburg, Raskolnikov adopted many of the many new ideas sweeping through intellectual circles of the time. He even published an article about one in particular. These ideas opened a rift in Raskolnikov himself.