Last month my Honors Composition and Literature teacher assigned me to read the classic novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I’d heard of the book beforehand but never was really interested in reading it, as it wasn’t the genre I normally enjoy. I now write this having read Crime and Punishment and will tell you that it was an absolute dreadful book that constantly made me want to take a nap after reading a section of it. For those who haven’t read this classic novel let me give you a brief summary. Crime and Punishment is about a man named Raskolnikov committing a murder of an old pawnbroker and her sister and the psychological effects the murder caused Raskolnikov to feel. In the book Dostoyevsky shows through multiple examples that guilt can drive a person crazy until finally they can’t handle it anymore. Due to the fact that I had to choose a topic found in the book I chose guilt because of its many examples shown throughout.
Although I can’t list all the examples of guilt Crime and Punishment provides, I do have three instances that display how different characters’ experience guilt and their response to this feeling. In Chapter 3 of Part 1 Marfa Petrovanna, the wife of a wealthy man named Svidrigaïlov, believes that Raskolnikov’s sister Dounia tried to seduce her husband and because of this Marfa went around town spreading this falsity. Once she discovered that in fact it was her husband that tried to seduce Dounia she goes door to door correcting her mistake and then introduces Dounia to a rich man as a way to lift the feeling of guilt of her shoulders
For my second example it comes after Raskolnikov committed the murder and has continuously gone back and forth in his head about why he did it and how he feels because of it. Specifically, in Chapter 4 of Part 5 Raskolnikov confesses to the murder to his love interest Sonia, the daughter of a drunkard and a prostitute. In the book you get to see the guilt Raskolnikov feel drive him to isolation, suffering by himself. By confessing he now takes some of the weight that’s been dragging him down and puts it on Sonia. Why would he do this? Because he’s a selfish prick who is unable to put himself in somebody else’s shoes.
Finally, in Chapter 2 of Part 6 Porfiry Petrovich, the lead detective in the murder of the pawnbroker and her ill-fated sister, visits Raskolnikov to let him know that he knows Raskolnikov is the murderer and that by confessing he can begin the road to recovery because he won’t find any contentment in prison without admitting his crimes. Now I want to shift more into real life and away from the book directly so I can explore into the topic of guilt in today’s world.
When my teacher stated to us that we would have to write an open letter about our book and the topic we’ve chosen I struggled in the fact that we had to include a personal connection to the topic. I struggled because although I’ve felt guilt like the vast majority of people, I didn’t believe that my experiences were worthy enough to talk about. I had to look on a larger scale, and that’s what I did. As a person who is gay and apart of the LGBT community I know some in the LGBT community feel ashamed and guilty due to the feelings they have, especially in younger individuals.
I was lucky to be born into a very loving and accepting family that didn’t care about who I was attracted to, but others aren’t as fortunate as I was. Many kids are born into families that make them feel like there’s something wrong with them. This leads them to be ashamed of who they are as a person and guilty for something they have no control over. This can have deadly effects.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death of adolescents between the age of 10-24 in 2015. Suicide happens at a four times higher rate in LGBT youth than heterosexual youth. I chose to go in this direction because although as a country the United States has been going in a more positive direction with the legalization of same-sex marriage, which new studies have found this ruling may be associated with fewer youth suicide attempts, there is still much more progress that needs to be achieved. It was only a couple months ago, in September, when a candidate for the state senate in Utah responded on a post of a gay teen’s obituary after said teen committed suicide. This candidate, named Jason Christensen, responded by saying, “Yes this is sad, and hopefully God will have mercy on both sins that this boy committed. The sins of homosexuality and the sins of murder,” what Christensen did was prosecute this dead child instead of giving condolences to the grieving family like a compassionate person.
I went in this direction because I felt that there’s still a lot we need to do to truly achieve equality. This open letter is for anybody who cares that the LGBT youth in our country that are still made to feel guilty, not only be peers but even by our politicians, for living their lives and being true to themselves. I’m tired of turning on the news or reading online that another child killed themselves because the thought nobody loved them, nobody cared for them and I’d venture to say I’m not alone in that feeling.
Now obviously Crime and Punishment has nothing to do with the LGBT, but I would say ninety percent of this book is about the way Raskolnikov deals with the guilt of committing murder and you know what he should feel guilty. He killed someone and he should feel guilty because of it. But anyone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, doesn’t know, or doesn’t care about what sex they find attractive shouldn’t have to feel guilty for something that doesn’t have any effect on anybody else but them. One of my favorite quotes is, “The greatest pleasure in life is love,” written by Euripides. Nobody should feel guilty for their greatest pleasure in life.
