[(essay date winter 1974-75) In the following essay, Santangelo analyzes the various motives behind Raskolnikov's crime. Santangelo concludes that Raskolnikov's actions are the result of unconscious forces rather than of a single, clear rationale.]

As an esthetic experience Crime and Punishment is whole and complete.¹ As a critical experience, however, the complexity of motivation causes confusion and a slight feeling of despair. The critic must untangle layers of motivation, cause, and feeling, observing at all times the depth levels on which the action is moving. The problem of the novel is why Raskolnikov killed the wretched old lady and allied to this difficulty, why he confessed, and why he was punished. The notebooks reveal that Dostoevsky, himself, tortured over the problem. He never clearly explained as he himself said, things this way or that way. The author says in the notebooks in another context, "The murder takes place almost by chance. (I myself did not expect that)."² This confusion in Dostoevsky's creative process does not disintegrate the novel esthetically, for its total effect is one of artistic wholeness and unity, his best constructed work. In the novel his conception of the hero's character would not permit him to explain clearly the motive for the crime because too many motives are operative. There is no clear rational key. Dostoevsky presents the character as an artistic entity and achieves the total integration of the emotional, unconscious, and rational basis of his hero. The novel then does present a mystery, a crime without a clear motivation represented in a character who is very self-aware, but knows very little about himself.

Raskolnikov in the confessional scene with Sonia says he doesn't know why he killed the old woman. But he does give five motives for the crime. First, he says he killed the old lady because he was poor and needed money. This motive is the social justification from poverty. Then he argues that he wished to benefit society, that the old woman was useless and would have let her money rot. This motive is utilitarian. These first two are coupled because they exist on the level of the consciousness. The third motivation is psychological. He says to Sonia, "And do you realize, Sonia, that low ceilings and small poky little rooms warp mind and soul." He killed the old lady out of some subconscious compulsion. Later he claims as the fourth motive that he had a right to step over the bounds of ordinary human laws, that his will was above good and evil, as well as law and order. Rather than utilitarian, this problem is moral, a question of the autonomous will and the expanded ego. Lastly, Raskolnikov unconsciously poses the problem of man's relation to God. He says to Sonia, "Was it the old hag I killed? No, I killed myself, and not the old hag. I did away with myself at one blow and for good. It was the devil who killed the old hag, not I."...