Top 1 Crime and Punishment quotes
"What was taking place in him was totally unfamiliar, new, sudden, never before experienced. Not that he understood it, but he sensed clearly, with all the power of sensation, that it was no longer possible for him to address these people in the police station, not only with heartfelt effusions, as he had just done, but in any way at all, and had they been his own brothers and sisters, and not police lieutenants, there would still have been no point in this addressing them, in whatever circumstances of life." - Chapter 1, Part 2
Alienation is a prominent theme explored in Crime and Punishment through the character of Raskolnikov. These are his thoughts when he is summoned to the police station after he has committed the murder. In his interaction with the police officers, Raskolnikov realizes that he has been severed from the rest of humanity by his actions from the previous night. Raskolnikov was only able to murder because his destitute condition had made him so separate from the rest of his humanity, but this separation is only intensified by the act of murder. He remains alienated from the rest of the characters in the novel until he confesses to Sonya, who he believes is similar to him in that she too has transgressed the moral boundaries of man.
