# Talk:Crime and Punishment

I would like to adress what the novel is about. It is said that : "Crime and Punishment follows the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who plans to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money". He actually despise pawnbrokers and wants to rid society of one of them by killing Alyona Ivanovna, not for her money (in that perspective, his moral anguish and dilemma make no sense) but to prove to himself that some men are above the law, follow their own personal law and imposes it on society. These men are Ubermensch, super men, the futur of humanity according to R. I remember he steals somethings from the pawbroker, but hides it under a rock and never goes back there. It's clearly not about the money. In fact, the action of the whole novel resides in the mind of the protagonist more than their actions in reality. Crime and Punishment is not about the murder of a pawnbroker, it's more about the rebellion of a student against God himself, and the world order according to Dostoievsky.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.212.116.98 (talk) 13:20, 13 February 2022 (UTC) 

I think your main point is correct. I've rewritten part of the lead to try to reflect that. Harold the Sheep (talk) 05:21, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

From WP:NOVELPLOT: "Plot summaries should be concise and an integral part of the article. 400 to 700 words are usually sufficient for a full-length work, although very complex and lengthy novels may need a bit more." 3000 words clearly vastly exceeds "a bit more". There is no reason to have a plot section more than four times longer than the guidelines suggest.
Also, reverting my initial change without even bothering to leave an edit summary was extremely rude. Northwild (talk) 07:22, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Given the nature of many of your own edit summaries (eg "removed uninformative flab" and "removed inane shit") it seems remarkably precious of you to cry "No edit summary! How rude!" when you've just gutted someone else's carefully written work. In any case, there was a clear edit summary in the next reversion. Per WP:BRD, the polite thing for you to do would be to leave the original version and discuss the issue (hopefully not too obnoxiously and confrontationally) with the person who has reverted you. MOS/Novels is a guideline, not a rule. The very first thing it says is: "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense and occasional exceptions may apply." I would argue that Dostoevsky's longer novels (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, A Raw Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov) are exactly such exceptions in the case of plot summary length. In relation to the average novel, they are not a bit more complex, they are vastly more complex in a number of different ways. There are legitimate grounds in this case for invoking the policy of WP:IAR: If a rule prevents you from improving Wikipedia, ignore it. In my opinion, your revision of the plot summary was not an improvement for a number of reasons, so I reverted it. That doesn't mean it can't be discussed. Harold the Sheep (talk) 07:19, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I noticed that the short notes of this page lack the link to their full reference, which, in my opinion, would be most appropriate. Please let me know if there are resistances to such a change. I already did the transformation to Frank (1994), as an example. Cheers. Carlotm (talk) 01:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I've recently been reading the book Crime and punishment and throughout the book the name of Rodion's sister (Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova) is Dounia not Dunya as stated throughout this article, I don't speak Russian so it may be a translation error but I thought it might be worth a mention since in the translation of the book that I've been reading it is Dounia. Please advise on how to proceed.  Blake_of_the_East 135 Agent (talk) 19:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Links to the ebook versions I've been reading:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2554
https://freeditorial.com/en/books/crime-and-punishment Blake_of_the_East 135 Agent (talk) 11:32, 22 November 2025 (UTC)