Mercy is the ability to have compassion, to sympathize with someone, to perceive someone else’s grief as one’s own, this forgiving love, which condescends to a person, even if he does not deserve it. According to H. Keller, “ true mercy“is the desire to benefit other people without thinking about reward.” A merciful person has a kind, pure heart. Such a person will never pass by the unfortunate and disadvantaged. Mercy saves a person not only physically, but also spiritually. It is capable of resurrecting the human soul.
In the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" thoughts about the saving power of mercy are associated with Christian motives.
Sonya Marmeladova is a young girl of eighteen years old, the daughter from the first marriage of drunken official Semyon Marmeladov. She used to work as a seamstress, but after her stepmother Katerina Ivanovna fell ill, money became scarce and the family went hungry.
This forced Sonya to desperate step– go with a “yellow ticket”. However, despite the fact that Sonya is a harlot, her sin did not affect her pure soul. It combines a vicious lifestyle and innocence of thoughts and feelings.
The purity of Sonya’s soul is conveyed in the description of her appearance: “a thin, but quite pretty blonde, with wonderful blue eyes" When they perked up, “the expression on their face became so kind and simple-minded that they involuntarily attracted one to her.” She is childishly innocent, even in appearance she looks like a child: “she seemed almost like a girl, much younger than her years, almost like a child, and this sometimes even showed up funny in some of her movements.”
The image of Sonya Marmeladova embodies the idea of Christian sacrifice, humility and compassion. She, like Mary Magdalene, chooses the path of repentance.
It is to Sonya that Rodion Raskolnikov comes for support and understanding, who kills the old pawnbroker and her sister Lizaveta in order to test his theory about two types of people.
Sonya and Raskolnikov are doubles because they are both criminals. They are two complex natures that do not find understanding in the world. However, despite the similarities, they have differences. Sonya becomes a criminal for the sake of her family. She sacrifices herself, honor and dignity, in order to feed her family: “She even received a yellow ticket, because my children were starving, she sold herself for us!” Sonya is selfless and noble. What keeps her from committing suicide is the thought of the fate of her “pathetic, half-crazed stepmother and her poor little children.
Raskolnikov later admits that he killed the old pawnbroker for his own sake.
Sonya maintains her faith in God despite what she has experienced. She believes in the possibility of human rebirth. The episode in which Sonya reads Raskolnikov the parable of the resurrection of Lazarus is considered one of the climaxes in the novel. She also reads spiritual revival to Raskolnikov.
Having learned about the crime, she is not afraid and does not condemn it. On the contrary, she takes pity on him and calls on him to confess to the crime and atone for his sin before God. When Raskolnikov goes to confess to a crime, Sonya puts on a green scarf, which is a symbol of compassion. She goes through Raskolnikov’s difficulties with him, and when he is sent to hard labor, she follows him, does not leave him at a difficult moment in his life.
With the power of her love and mercy, Sonya saves Raskolnikov and helps him to be reborn. Thanks to her, he rethinks his views and abandons his theory. Indeed, truly strong, extraordinary person not the one who was able to step over the lives of others, but the one who stepped over himself for the sake of others.
The power of Sonya's mercy helped Raskolnikov stand on true path and be reborn. She saved him from moral death.
Thus, mercy helps a person find moral guidelines and not perish spiritually. It can revive a person’s soul when it seems that there is no hope. A world without mercy is a cruel, vicious world in which there are no moral values. Based on this, we can say that mercy is the only force that can return a person to the true path.
Many Russian writers, when creating their works, examined in them the pressing problems of our time, exposing the vices of their time. Each era was marked by a new galaxy of questions to the thinking of which more than one generation of poets and writers devoted their work. With the development of society, literature also developed, topical topics changed, creative people new tasks arose, but one theme remained unchanged, perhaps in all centuries and times - exposing social injustice, protecting dignity " little man" This question was raised in the works of Gogol, Pushkin, Nekrasov. This theme also occupies one of the leading places in the works of Dostoevsky. A striking example This is the novel “Crime and Punishment”, where the protest against the social and moral humiliation of the individual is associated with the search for a force that could lead a person out of the spiritual and social crisis, from the calculating world of profit into the opposing world of kindness and truth.
Human suffering and injustice reigning in the world prompted the writer to search for various ways to save humanity, but Dostoevsky clearly rejects violent and revolutionary methods of influence, he does not accept the right of one person to interfere in the destinies of other people, to decide them at his own discretion, for a good purpose justify illicit means. Universal happiness, which is based on the sacrifices of individual people, according to the great writer, is the same evil, ennobled by lofty words. The idea of the inadmissibility of this “good” is fully revealed by the great writer in the novel about the “poor” student Raskolnikov. After all, the main character of the novel justifies his crime - murder, with compassion for all the “humiliated and offended”, allowing him to “bleed according to his conscience.” But is this true? What is compassion? Co-suffer means “to suffer together.” And Raskolnikov’s suffering is directed exclusively deep into himself. What he experiences can be called rather sympathy. The thought of murder matured in his head gradually. Half a year before the events described in the novel, Raskolnikov writes an article “On Crime,” where he “examined psychological state criminal during the entire course of the crime,” and at the same time raised the question of such a crime, which is resolved according to conscience, and therefore is not a crime as such. Subsequently, he creates a theory about two categories of people: “trembling creatures” and “those who have the right.” And, naturally, he wonders about his own membership in one category or another. This is the motive for the murder. But no one recognizes himself as a criminal. Everyone is a fighter and sufferer for the truth. Raskolnikov follows the same path. At first, he hides the wrongness of his goals from himself, convincing himself that he kills only in order to “later dedicate himself to the service of all humanity and the common cause.” But from the very beginning he anticipates his self-deception. “We are inventing our own casuistry, we will learn from the Jesuits... we will convince ourselves that this is necessary, really necessary for a good purpose,” this is what he says about his sister’s decision to marry Luzhin, but these words can also be applied to his own internal state. The words heard in the tavern that “dozens of families saved from poverty, from decay, from death” are worth killing and robbing “an insignificant, evil old woman” are perceived by him as salvation, as a justification for his terrible plan. “I didn’t even want to lie to myself about this...”, but still he “lies.” He is trying to replace one goal - “self-affirmation” with another - “universal happiness”. “I myself wanted good for people,” Raskolnikov says to Dunya. “I killed for myself, one thing for myself,” he admits to Sonya. And this self-deception only intensifies the hero’s subsequent suffering. “To suffer together,” but Raskolnikov “as if with scissors, cut himself off from everything and everyone,” opposing everyone else. And his suffering is greater because he could not get over himself, that “he is a trembling creature.” Although he convinces himself that the suffering of a criminal is an indispensable sign of his rightness and greatness.
The complete opposite of Raskolnikov is Sonya Marmeladova. It is she, according to the author’s plan, who is the embodiment of true mercy and compassion. Trying to save her family from starvation, she goes out onto the street to sell her own body. Raised according to Christian commandments, she realizes that by committing such a sin, she dooms her soul to eternal torment. But compassion for hungry children, a sick stepmother, and an unhappy father turns out to be stronger than the desire to save one’s soul. At the same time, Sonechka remains true to her convictions, maintaining endless love for humanity, faith in herself and in people. “You also overstepped... You laid hands on yourself, you ruined your life... yours (it’s all the same!)...,” Raskolnikov tells her. But he himself feels that it’s not “all the same.” She is for the sake of others, and he is for the sake of himself. Her “crime” did not touch her soul. In essence, Sonino’s “crime” is a feat, while Raskolnikov wants to pass off his crime as a “feat”. Sonya is having a hard time experiencing her fall, and she is also visited by thoughts of suicide, which could save her from shame. But the images of hungry, helpless children make you forget about your suffering.
Sonechka also selflessly rushes to save Raskolnikov’s soul. There is no condemnation of his evil deed; boundless mercy is manifested in her in relation to his moral suffering. And here it is just appropriate to remember that compassion means “suffering together.” Sonya sincerely suffers along with Raskolnikov, trying to find a way to save his soul. And only thanks to her efforts Raskolnikov comes to the conclusion that his theory is untenable. It is Sonya who awakens him to life and leads him to the salvation of his soul. In the epilogue, Raskolnikov kneels before the girl: “... he was resurrected, and he knew it, felt it with his entire renewed being, and she - after all, she lived only his life!” Not a single theory in the world is capable of defeating true human mercy and compassion. This is what life is all about.
In the novel Crime and Punishment, Sonya and Raskolnikov are the main actors. Through the images of these heroes, Fyodor Mikhailovich is trying to convey to us main idea works, find answers to vital important issues being.
At first glance, there is nothing in common between Sonya Marmeladova and Rodion Raskolnikov. Their life paths intertwine unexpectedly and merge into one.
Raskolnikov is a poor student who abandoned his studies at the Faculty of Law, created a terrible theory about the right of a strong personality and plotted a brutal murder. An educated man, proud and vain, he is closed and uncommunicative. His dream is to become Napoleon.
Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova is a timid, downtrodden creature who, by the will of fate, finds herself at the very bottom. An eighteen-year-old girl is uneducated, poor and unhappy. Having no other way to earn money, she sells her body. She was forced to lead such a lifestyle by pity and love for her loved ones.
At the heroes different characters, different social circles, level of education, but the same unfortunate fate of the “humiliated and insulted.”
They are united by the crime committed. Both crossed the moral line and found themselves outcasts. Raskolnikov kills people for the sake of an idea and glory, Sonya violates the laws of morality, saving her family from starvation. Sonya suffers under the weight of sin, but Raskolnikov does not feel guilty. But they are irresistibly drawn to each other...
Relationship stages
Acquaintance
A strange coincidence of circumstances, a chance meeting, brings the heroes of the novel together. Their relationship develops in stages.
Rodion Raskolnikov learns about Sonya's existence from the confusing story of the drunken Marmeladov. The fate of the girl interested the hero. Their acquaintance occurred much later and with sufficient tragic circumstances. Young people meet in the room of the Marmeladov family. A cramped corner, a dying official, unhappy Katerina Ivanovna, frightened children - this is the setting for the heroes’ first meeting. Rodion Raskolnikov unceremoniously looks at the girl who entered, “timidly looking around.” She is ready to die of shame for her obscene and inappropriate outfit.
Dating
The roads of Sonya and Raskolnikov in the novel Crime and Punishment often intersect as if completely by accident. First, Rodion Raskolnikov helps the girl. He gives her the last money for his father’s funeral, exposes Luzhin’s vile plan, who tried to accuse Sonya of theft. In the heart young man There is still no room for great love, but he wants to communicate more and more with Sonya Marmeladova. His behavior seems strange. Avoiding communication with people, having parted with his family, he goes to Sonya and only to her confesses his terrible crime. Raskolnikov feels inner strength, which the heroine herself did not suspect.
Pity for the criminal
Rodion Raskolnikov and Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment are two outcasts. Their salvation is in each other. This is probably why the hero’s soul, tormented by doubts, is drawn to the destitute Sonya. He goes to her to feel sorry for her, although he himself needs compassion no less. “We are cursed together, we will go together,” thinks Raskolnikov. Unexpectedly, Sonya opens up to Rodion from the other side. She is not afraid of his confession, does not fall into hysterics. The girl reads aloud the Bible “The Story of the Resurrection of Lazarus” and cries with pity for her loved one: “What are you doing, that you did this to yourself! There is no one more unhappy than you in the whole world now!” Sonya's power of persuasion is such that it makes her submit. Rodion Raskolnikov, on the advice of a friend, goes to the police station and does sincere confession. Throughout the journey, he feels Sonya's presence, her invisible support and love.
Love and devotion
Sonya is a deep and strong person. Having fallen in love with a person, she is ready to do anything for him. Without hesitation, the girl follows the convicted Raskolnikov to Siberia, deciding to stay nearby for eight long years of hard labor. Her sacrifice amazes the reader, but leaves the main character indifferent. Sonya's kindness resonates in the souls of the most brutal criminals. They rejoice at her appearance, turning to her and saying: “You are our mother, tender, sick.” Rodion Raskolnikov is still cold and rude when dating. His feelings awakened only after Sonya became seriously ill and fell ill. Raskolnikov suddenly realizes that she has become necessary and desirable to him. The love and devotion of a weak girl managed to melt the frozen heart of a criminal and awaken in him the good sides of his soul. F. M. Dostoevsky shows us how, having survived crime and punishment, they were resurrected by love.
Victory of good
The book of the great writer makes you think about the eternal questions of existence, believe in the power true love. She teaches us goodness, faith and mercy. The kindness of weak Sonya turned out to be much stronger than that the evil that settled in Raskolnikov’s soul. She is omnipotent. “The soft and weak conquers the hard and strong,” said Lao Tzu.
Work test
One of the main characters of the novel F.M. Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” is Sonya Marmeladova, a girl forced to work “on a yellow ticket” in order to save her family from starvation. It is to her that the author assigns the most important role in the fate of Raskolnikov.
Sonya's appearance is described in two episodes. The first is the scene of the death of her father, Semyon Zakharych Marmeladov: “Sonya was small, about eighteen years old, thin, but quite pretty blonde... She was also in rags, her outfit was decorated in a street style... with a brightly and shamefully outstanding purpose.”
Another description of her appearance appears in the scene of Sonechka’s acquaintance with Dunya and Pulcheria Alexandrovna: “she was a modestly and even poorly dressed girl, very young, almost like a girl... with a clear but frightened face. She was wearing a very simple house dress...” Both of these portraits are strikingly different from each other, which reflects one of the key features of Sonya’s character - the combination of spiritual purity and moral decline.
Sonya's life story highest degree tragic: unable to watch indifferently as her family perished from hunger and poverty, she voluntarily submitted to humiliation and received “ yellow ticket" Sacrifice, boundless compassion and selflessness forced Sonechka to give all the money she earned to her father and stepmother Katerina Ivanovna.
Sonya has many wonderful human character traits: mercy, sincerity, kindness, understanding, moral purity. She is ready to look for something good and bright in every person, even in those who are not worthy of such treatment. Sonya knows how to forgive.
She has developed an endless love for people. This love is so strong that Sonechka is determined to consciously give all of herself for their sake.
Such faith in people and a special attitude towards them (“This man is a louse!”) are largely connected with Sonya’s Christian worldview. Her faith in God and the miracle that comes from him truly has no boundaries. “What would I be without God!” In this regard, she is the opposite of Raskolnikov, who opposes her with his atheism and theory about “ordinary” and “extraordinary” people. It is faith that helps Sonya maintain the purity of her soul, protect herself from the dirt and vice that surrounds her; It is not for nothing that almost the only book she has read more than once is the New Testament.
One of the most significant scenes in the novel that influenced later life Raskolnikov, is an episode of joint reading of a passage from the Gospel about the resurrection of Lazarus. “The cinder has long gone out in the crooked candlestick, dimly illuminating in this beggarly room a murderer and a harlot, strangely gathered together to read an eternal book...”
Sonechka plays a crucial role in Raskolnikov’s fate, which consists in reviving his faith in God and returning to the Christian path. Only Sonya was able to accept and forgive his crime, did not condemn him and was able to induce Raskolnikov to confess to his crime. She went with him all the way from recognition to hard labor, and it was her love that was able to return him to the true path.
Sonya has proven herself to be a decisive and active person, capable of making difficult decisions and following them. She convinced Rodion to denounce himself: “Get up! Go now, this very minute, stand at the crossroads, bow, first kiss the earth that you have desecrated, and then bow to the whole world...”
At hard labor, Sonya did everything to ease Raskolnikov’s fate. She becomes a famous and respected person and is addressed by her first name and patronymic. The convicts fell in love with her for her kind attitude towards them, for her selfless help - for something that Raskolnikov does not yet want or cannot understand. At the end of the novel, he finally realizes his feelings for her, realizes how much she suffered for him. “Can her beliefs now not be mine? Her feelings, her aspirations at least..." So Sonya's love, her dedication and compassion helped Raskolnikov begin the process of becoming on the right path.
The author embodied the best human qualities. Dostoevsky wrote: “I have one moral model and ideal – Christ.” Sonya became for him the source of his own beliefs, decisions dictated by his conscience.
Thus, thanks to Sonechka, Raskolnikov managed to find new meaning life and regain lost faith.
“Crime and Punishment” is one of many novels in Russian literature that raise a whole series of questions about man’s place in the world, his eternal search for meaning in life. Dostoevsky's heroes are in a constant struggle not only with their own feelings, but also with surrounding reality, sometimes hostile and unfair. They certainly make a choice in favor of one path or another, complicated by obstacles of a material and moral nature. Often this is the way spiritual crisis, mental anguish, mistakes and repentance. Dostoevsky's novel is history lost souls, rebellious, indomitable in their desire for answers, rebelling against internal and external lack of freedom, which forces them to make a variety of decisions. Each of the characters is presented to the reader as bright, strong, original character, setting goals, the value of which is determined by the inconsistency and depth of nature. Therefore, in this book we can find excellent arguments for the final essay.
- Rodion Raskolnikov is one of central characters in the novel. He is poor, but extremely smart and educated. A miserable existence in hunger and poverty depresses him, because he sees in himself an extraordinary personality, a person endowed with remarkable abilities and the ability to influence the minds of others, less gifted. Hence his theory, unthinkable in its outward cruelty, according to which an “extraordinary” minority is allowed to commit murders with impunity, without the slightest sense of guilt. In this, Raskolnikov sees the highest justice and his natural destiny as a superman. His goal is to prove to everyone, and above all, to himself, that he is the very person who has the right to dispose of the lives of the “faceless masses.” Without realizing it, Rodion enters into a struggle between the idea and life, in which the natural course of things still prevails over the hasty theory, proving to the author the inconsistency of his own reasoning. However, the crime has already been committed, the choice has been made, and the hero, to achieve a ghostly, abstract goal, has used the most terrible of all possible means: murder. Awareness of what he has done distorts the sinner’s worldview, makes his life a nightmare in which his soul experiences endless pangs of conscience, bowing under the weight crime committed. As you can see, the end does not justify the means, even if it is aimed at goodness and justice.
- Sonya Marmeladova - heroine, life path which is complicated by an equally serious choice. Having lost her last hope of saving her family from poverty and hunger, she decides to sacrifice her own well-being and take up an “obscene craft.” At the cost of humiliation and suffering, she obtains the money necessary to feed her loved ones. On the one hand, the goal of such an act is external, material in nature, however, the act done by Sonya to achieve it is the result of a complex moral choice, in which the heroine’s fortitude and sacrifice were revealed. Out of love for her neighbors, she commits a serious crime against herself, but at the same time remains an integral person, ready to help anyone who needs her. Thus, her desire for goodness and love did not change from what she did for him. This means that the end justifies the means if a person sacrifices only his destiny for it.
- No less sincere and selfless in the novel is Dunya Raskolnikova, Rodion’s sister, who selflessly loves her brother and is ready to come to his aid, sacrificing her own well-being. She is well brought up and educated, but is by no means spoiled by life; on the contrary, she becomes a victim of yet another social injustice. By agreeing to the humiliating position of Luzhin’s fiancée, Dunya thereby hopes to improve the family’s plight and make life easier for her brother, who was forced to interrupt his university education and starve. She sees Rodion’s salvation as her main goal, so she is ready to accept and endure any difficulties, including marrying a man she does not love, sacrificing her own happiness. However, the heroine didn’t even think about the consequences of her decision, how could her brother accept such a terrible sacrifice? And she herself does what she fled from when she was a governess: she gives herself to an unloved person. Doesn't such a marriage humiliate her? This stubborn unaccountability of actions indicates that her goal is just a desire, a dream, not supported by thoroughness and responsibility.
- One of the most controversial characters in the novel is Arkady Svidrigailov, whom researchers call “ ideological double Raskolnikov”, since he considers himself free from moral laws, as if embodying Rodion’s theory. Living in absolute idleness, Svidrigailov chases fleeting pleasures, in which he sees the ultimate goal of existence. Like others, he wants to find happiness and know joy, but he sees the meaning of existence, rather, in the satisfaction of base momentary desires, in the joy of possession. This desire for voluptuousness and excessive simplification of life corrupts the hero, creating the image of a cynical, immoral person, devoid of internal moral guidelines and conscience. Confessing to Raskolnikov in deceptions and meanness, he explains them by the desire for natural carnal joys, which constitute the purpose of life for him. This is his goal and, at the same time, a crime, the punishment for which will certainly follow the hero, embodied in nightmares, pangs of conscience, endless boredom and longing for sincere human feelings. Such goals and aspirations are perhaps even worse than their absence.
- “The end justifies the means,” says another hero of Crime and Punishment, Pyotr Luzhin. He is sure: you can rise yourself only at the expense of others, weaker ones, incapable of resisting. And this is also a unique theory, less abstract than Raskolnikov’s, which found concrete embodiment in the relationship between Luzhin and Dunya Raskolnikova. Attractive, well-mannered, wealthy Luzhin intends to save Dunya from poverty and help her cope with family trouble, so he proposes to her. However, behind the external nobility of feelings hides a cynical calculation, in which Dunya had to play the role of a poor bride, and in the future - a submissive, uncomplaining, endlessly grateful wife of a brilliant husband. Luzhin's vain and cowardly soul sees the girl exclusively as a servant, controlled and obedient. Under the imaginary height of feelings, Luzhin discovers a petty and vile goal: to exalt himself in the eyes of others, but at the same time humiliate the weak, subordinating him to his will. Interesting? Save it on your wall!