Brief Summary of School Reading List Books - Ievgen Sykalo 2026

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This book. This book. I’m telling you, it’s like Dostoyevsky reached inside my brain, rummaged around for a bit, found all the tangled wires and weird little obsessions, and then just… wrote them down. Crime and Punishment. Yeah, the one you probably pretended to read in high school, or maybe skimmed the SparkNotes for, all about some dude who murders an old lady with an axe. Sounds like a true crime podcast, right? But it’s not. It’s so much more than that. It’s a gut punch. A slow, agonizing, strangely beautiful gut punch.

I went into it, I gotta admit, with a bit of a sneer. Another Big Russian Novel™. Another brick to haul through. But then Raskolnikov—Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, bless his deeply messed-up heart—he just… took over. He’s this former student, brilliant, brooding, living in a coffin-sized room in St. Petersburg, practically starving. And he’s got this idea. This grand idea. Not just a notion, but a fully articulated, almost philosophical conviction that some people, extraordinary people, are above the law. They can transgress, step over boundaries, commit acts that would send lesser mortals straight to hell, all for some greater good. Or, you know, just because they can. Because they’re different.

And who’s his test subject for this theory? An old pawnbroker. Alyona Ivanovna. A truly repulsive character, by all accounts. A greedy, usurious old crone who exploits the poor, including Raskolnikov himself. She’s the perfect target, right? A bug to be squashed. A parasite to be eliminated. So he plots. Oh, how he plots. It’s not some spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s meticulous. He scopes out her apartment, obsesses over the details, even practices with a makeshift axe. And then, he does it. He actually does it.

The murder itself, when it happens, is… messy. Not slick, not satisfying, not like some movie hitman. It’s desperate and clumsy and horrifying. And then, of course, the other woman shows up. Lizaveta. The pawnbroker’s innocent, simple-minded sister. And Raskolnikov, in a panic, kills her too. Just like that. Two lives snuffed out. For a theory. For some paltry goods. And the immediate aftermath? Not triumph. Not liberation. Just a suffocating, soul-crushing terror.

This is where the book just sings. Because it’s not really about the murder. It’s about what comes after. The psychological torment. The way Raskolnikov’s mind just unravels, thread by thread. He’s convinced he’s above suspicion, that he’s too clever, too brilliant to be caught. But every little sound, every glance, every conversation becomes a torment. He hallucinates. He sweats. He’s constantly on the verge of confessing, then pulling back, then spiraling again. It’s like watching a high-wire act where the wire keeps getting thinner and the wind keeps picking up. You just know he’s going to fall. But how? And when?

And the city itself, St. Petersburg, it’s not just a backdrop. It’s a character. A grimy, suffocating, claustrophobic character. The heat, the dust, the taverns, the cramped apartments—it all presses in on Raskolnikov, mirroring the pressure in his own mind. He wanders the streets, a ghost among the living, trying to outrun his own guilt, trying to make sense of what he’s done. He’s a walking, talking existential crisis. The very air seems to hum with his fevered thoughts.

Then there’s the cast of characters that Dostoyevsky throws into this simmering pot. Each one feels so… real. Like you’ve met them, or seen them shambling down a street, or heard their drunken laments from a bar. There’s Marmeladov, the pathetic, eloquent drunkard, whose family Raskolnikov encounters early on. His story, his wife Katerina Ivanovna’s tragic descent, and their daughter Sonya’s terrible sacrifice — it’s a whole separate drama unfolding, a whole other layer of human misery and resilience that somehow connects to Raskolnikov’s own internal chaos. You see the destitution, the desperation, the moral compromises people make just to survive, and it makes Raskolnikov’s lofty theories about "extraordinary men" feel even more chillingly detached.

And Sonya. Ah, Sonya. She’s the light in the darkness, the moral compass in this swirling vortex of depravity. A young woman forced into prostitution to support her family, yet she possesses this unwavering, almost blinding faith. Her goodness isn’t naive; it’s hard-earned, forged in suffering. Raskolnikov, with all his intellectual arrogance, finds himself drawn to her, repelled by her purity, and yet, inexplicably, needing it. Their interactions are the core of the book, really. These intense, desperate conversations where he’s trying to rationalize his crime, and she’s quietly, steadfastly, offering him a path to redemption. It’s not preachy, not in the slightest. It’s just… raw. The sheer emotional weight of their exchanges—it's like watching two tectonic plates grind against each other, slowly, inexorably, until one has to give.

Then there’s Porfiry Petrovich, the examining magistrate. He’s not a detective in the modern sense. He’s more like a psychological interrogator, a master of passive-aggressive mind games. He knows Raskolnikov did it. He doesn’t have proof, not really, but he just knows. And he plays with Raskolnikov like a cat with a mouse, circling, dropping hints, observing, letting Raskolnikov’s own guilt devour him. Their conversations are masterpieces of suspense and psychological warfare. You’re on the edge of your seat, even though nothing is physically happening. It’s all in the words, the unspoken assumptions, the shifting power dynamics. Porfiry is just so… calm. So utterly unruffled. And that’s what makes him terrifying. He’s not out for vengeance; he’s out for confession, for Raskolnikov to come to terms with his own soul.

And Raskolnikov’s motivations, man. They’re a mess. At first, it’s about proving his theory, about being an "extraordinary man." Then it’s about money, about lifting himself and his family out of poverty. But it’s never quite just about that. There’s a tangled knot of pride, resentment, intellectual arrogance, and a strange, almost altruistic desire to help others (he does some surprisingly good deeds throughout the book, which only adds to the delicious contradictions of his character). He’s constantly rationalizing, backtracking, trying to find a narrative for himself that makes sense, that justifies the horror. It’s the ultimate self-deception, played out on a grand scale. He's like a leaky bucket trying to hold water; no matter how much he plugs the holes with grand ideas, the truth just keeps seeping out.

Dostoyevsky doesn’t give you easy answers. There are no clear heroes or villains, just people struggling, failing, occasionally soaring, but mostly just… struggling. Even the "good" characters have their flaws, and the "bad" ones have moments of surprising humanity. It’s messy, just like life. And that’s what makes it resonate so deeply. It’s not about some grand philosophical treatise you have to decrypt; it’s about the raw, exposed nerves of human experience. The crushing weight of guilt, the flicker of hope, the desperate need for connection, even when you’ve pushed everyone away. It’s a whole symphony of human emotions, played out with a chaotic, sometimes deafening, sometimes almost unbearable intensity.

The writing itself? It’s not always pretty. Sometimes it’s clunky, sometimes it’s rambling, sometimes it feels like Dostoyevsky is just going off on a tangent. But that’s its power. It feels like a direct download from a fevered brain. It’s not polished and manicured like some contemporary novels. It’s raw, it’s immediate, it’s alive. You can feel the sweat and the desperation on the page. It’s like listening to someone confess their deepest, darkest secrets, not in a perfectly composed narrative, but in a torrent of fragmented thoughts and sudden emotional outbursts. It’s like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands — slippery, elusive, but undeniably there.

And the ending. No spoilers, of course. But it’s not some neat, tidy resolution. It’s more like a slow, painful awakening. A realization that the grand theories, the intellectual acrobatics, mean nothing in the face of true human connection and suffering. It’s about the possibility of redemption, yes, but it’s hard-won, earned through immense pain and self-reckoning. It leaves you thinking, long after you’ve turned the last page. It makes you question everything you thought you knew about justice, morality, and the human heart. It’s not a book you just read; it’s a book that reads you. And that’s why, despite the axe murders and the existential angst, you can’t look away. You just can’t. Because it’s too real. Too human. Too utterly, devastatingly true.