Crime and Punishment

Book excerpt: Rodion Raskolnikov is young, poor... and ambitious. He is convinced of the idea that "big people" must take what is rightfully theirs and that this distinguishes them from the "little people". They are even allowed to destroy "life unworthy of life". He argues with commanders like Napoleon: if they leave the field as victors, history remembers their great deeds and not the many thousands of murders that went along with them. When, with this thought in his heart, he kills an old usurper and her sister, however, he realizes that the human psyche does not readily embrace this tangled logic. Gröls Classics - English Edition