Crime and Punishment - Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov

‌In Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, a villain named Svidrigailov appears. He is often regarded as the novel's most powerful villain, representing the extreme of atheism. He is also interpreted as a symbol or a mirror that reflects the darkest side of the protagonist, Raskolnikov, who committed the crime of murdering a pawnbroker with an axe. In a sense, it seems as though the hatred for him and Sonya's love played a role in leading the protagonist toward repentance and resurrection. However, my thoughts differ greatly from this conventional view. To me, Raskolnikov appears to be a much worse human being than Svidrigailov. Therefore, Raskolnikov, who loathes Svidrigailov, seems more hypocritical, while Svidrigailov is perceived as a character whose true nature has been distorted by false suspicions and rumors in the world. In particular, because Svidrigailov overtly pursues and reveals his own interests and desires, ignoring the criticism of others to move toward his own goals, he is a character who inevitably receives a much worse reputation than he deserves. Below is a summary of my thoughts written in a formal, assertive style.
1. Raskolnikov, who commits extreme crimes based on prejudice
Raskolnikov judges good and evil based on his own prejudices. Furthermore, in a situation where his life is threatened, he does not kill others to survive; rather, he murders them to confirm whether he is an ordinary human or a heroic superman like Napoleon, attempting to secure his legitimacy based on utilitarian thought. However, his view of the pawnbroker as "evil" was based on rumors, hatred stemming from the person's occupation and appearance, and prejudice. In addition, he murders an innocent person who has committed no crime (the pawnbroker's sister). This signifies that he was not only lost in supremacist ideology but was also a flawed individual who lacked even the standards and principles for his own ideology. Therefore, I do not believe the kindness he shows toward Sonya's family is because he is inherently a good person. I view it as a psychological impulse to alleviate his extreme guilt and fear by giving his money to the poor, thereby securing the legitimacy of his actions and seeking to confirm and reinforce the idea that he is not a criminal, but a heroic superman.
2. The non-hypocritical Svidrigailov
Svidrigailov does not act hypocritically. He openly reveals that he is a person faithful to his desires. Additionally, while there are various suspicions of terrible misdeeds regarding him, most are based on rumors and are not properly confirmed within the novel. There are suspicions that he killed his wife, caused a servant to die through abuse, or drove a young girl to suicide through debauchery, but Svidrigailov's stance on these is different. He claimed he did not kill his wife, citing a doctor's diagnosis that she died of a stroke, and stated that he had only hit her twice in seven years. Regarding the servant and the suicide of the peasant girl, he denied any causal link, stating they took their own lives. Furthermore, regarding the fact that Svidrigailov, a married man, flirted with Raskolnikov's sister Dunya, he claimed that while he was a man of strong lust who had to live with a woman he did not love, his feelings for Dunya were true love. Whether these words are true or false cannot be known at all through the novel. However, the protagonist Raskolnikov feels great disgust toward Svidrigailov for making such excuses, yet he is unable to punish him. Instead, he is caught in a fatal weakness by Svidrigailov. A man who brutally murdered a pawnbroker with an axe by instilling in himself the justification of realizing the interests of the majority by eliminating harm to society, shows himself to be cowering and terrified in front of the loathsome Svidrigailov. Consequently, he appeared to be a much more despicable human being than Svidrigailov—a man who is weak against the strong while wielding violence against the weak and attempting to rationalize it.
3. Svidrigailov is not stingy with money.
While Svidrigovailov is a character who pursues desire and profit rather than ideology or philosophy, he is not stingy toward others. He makes an effort to deliver money to Dunya. Although it was because he had left money for Dunya before his wife died, he had no actual obligation to personally step forward and go through the difficulty of searching for Dunya to provide it. He wanted to use the money as an excuse to approach Dunya. This implies that his affection and obsession for Dunya were, at the very least, stronger than his interest in money. However, in his final moments, he distributes all his money to the most unfortunate people. This is not for his own honor after death. It is the result of realizing that he could not win the hearts of Dunya (the protagonist's sister) and his young fiancée through money. Since he cannot achieve his goals through money and no longer needs it himself, he decides to leave it to those in need. Furthermore, he succeeds in creating a situation where he could realize his sexual desires and goals by confining Dunya, gaining a perfect opportunity, but he does not actually do so. He may be a stalker and a kidnapper toward Dunya, but he does not become a rapist or a murderer. Consider that this novel was published in the 19th century. In the 20th century, specifically in the 1990s, we were enthralled by the romance in the movie *A Moment of Romance*, where Andy Lau kidnaps Wu Tsing-lien as a hostage, only for her to fall in love with him. From the perspective of being a kidnapper, isn't Andy Lau's character in *A Moment of Romance* actually a worse kidnapper than Svidrigailov? He kidnapped Wu Tsing-lien with the intent of using her as a hostage from the start. In contrast, Svidrigailov says he fell in love with Dunya after seeing her while living with a woman he did not love due to his circumstances. Moreover, he gained the obligation and justification to approach Dunya to deliver the money left by his wife. He wanted to use this as a pretext for some kind of transaction, but since Dunya and Raskolnikov completely blocked him, he made an attempt that could be seen as kidnapping or confinement to fulfill his duty of delivering money and his own goals; however, after confirming Dunya's will, he gave up everything and let her go without any conditions. Considering this was 19th-century Imperial Russia, was he not a character who tried to maintain his own version of a realistic moral line? Watching this scene, I thought that perhaps the numerous suspicions about him were made to seem worse and more "darkened" than they actually were, simply because of his persistence and his overt (unconcerned with dignity or face) display of desire. At the very least, regardless of the rumors, this was the image he showed within the actual novel. He was a man who did not play the hypocrisy of ideology, philosophy, or love, but who possessed a deep-seated desire to be loved.
4. The rehabilitation of the protagonist Raskolnikov and Sonya is ultimately thanks to Svidrigailov's money
Crucially, the protagonist Raskolnikov is depicted as a man who pays for his crimes in Siberia and undergoes rehabilitation through Sonya's love and devotion, but in reality, all of this is thanks to Svidrigailov taking care of Sonya's siblings and giving a significant amount of money to Sonya. As a result, Raskolnikov was able to start a new life with Sonya thanks to the money provided by the very human being he loathed most. Given that this novel interprets Sonya as the character playing an absolute role in Raskolnikov's rehabilitation, it is correct to say that Raskolnikov's rehabilitation would not have been possible without her. Consequently, Svidrigailov's suicide opened up a new life and hope for them. Furthermore, all of this was not something that happened to Svidrigailov unintentionally or by chance, but was made possible because he, even in the moment of his death, meticulously showed consideration by looking after Sonya and her siblings.