Guilt, suffering, confession and redemption in crime and punishment"You keep lying!" - Raskolnikov shouted, no longer able to contain himself. "You're lying, you damn clown!" And he threw himself at Porfiry, who retreated to the doorway, but without a trace of panic. "I understand everything, everything!" He approached Porfiry. “You are lying to me and making fun of me, so I will betray myself…” “You cannot betray yourself more than you have already done, Rodion Romanovich, old boy. But you have fallen into a state of embarrassment. Don't shout, I'll call my parents men, sir!" (Dostoevsky, 34) No humane and valuable person is capable of committing a heinous crime without later feeling a sense of guilt or remorse. Slowly this sense of guilt festers and corrodes the conscience until the vanishing point, reached through confession, which thus leads to salvation. Throughout Dostoevsky's Crime and. Punishment of the main character, Raskolnikov is struck by guilt and suffering which ultimately leads to his confession and redemption motivated by many forces. Crime and Punishment is the story of a young "intellect", Raskolnikov, who develops a theory of the superman. In his hypothesis, he felt that certain men were extraordinary and could commit unethical acts without punishment and without a guilty conscience. In his case, he wanted to rid the earth of a parasite by brutally killing an old pawnbroker, Alyona, and her sister Lizaveta, to earn money with which he could continue his studies and see if he was truly extraordinary. . Was he really the Napoleon he thought he was? Could he trample on people without regard for their feelings or suffering as Napoleon had done? (Literary Criticism, 68) "He is obviously not a superman or Napoleon, but he did not have enough fre... middle of paper ......but his overwhelming power and the fact that he made such a painful impression on readers that those with strong nerves would get sick and those with weak nerves should give up reading it (Kjetsaa, 183)Works CitedBloom, Harold Modern Critical Interpretations, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.Dostoevsky,. New York, New York: New American Library, Inc., 1968. Gale Research Co. Criticism of Nineteenth-Century Literature, Detroit, MI 1984, vol. 7. Kjetsaa, Geir. New York, New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987, Magill, Masterplots, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, 1985. Timoney, John Discourse on Crime and Punishment 10, 1994.