Nature and Nurture in Crime and Punishment Essay -- Crime and Punishmen

Nature and Nurture in Crime and Punish handst In the discussion today there is an article some a high-school male child who brought guns to school and shot several students. The p atomic number 18nts of the victims are suing various computer bet on companies saying that the violent games present shooting and eat uping people as pleasurable and fail to portray realistic consequences. A representative of integrity of the companies released a statement saying that this is another example of individuals seeking to cross responsibility that has become so common in our society. This case is not about software. What is on trial is the age-old debate between temper and nurture, which also lies at the center of Fyodor Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment. In his dream about the gray nag, Raskolnikov as an un frame of referenced child is innately compassionate he weeps for horses being cruelly beaten, but already society, in the form of his parents, begins to shape him, to train him, to numb his compassionate feelings for those in pain. His mother draws him away from the windowpane when he sees such a horse pass and his father tells him when the men kill the nag Theyre drunk, theyre playing pranks, its none of our business, come along (59). already Raskolnikov is being taught to rationalize murder, for all those people who watched and did not interfere are partly to blame as they rationalize that its none of our business. Mikolka, the horses murderer, also rationalizes his image first, he defines the mare as property, not as life. Repeatedly he says Its my goods (57) while those who object refer to the horse not as an unsex object but as her. Secondly, he attempts to justify the act by dint of cold reasoning I might as well kill her, shes not worth her ... .... Even today as we scan the news we can still find the nature versus nurture issue turn to by Dostoevky still prevalent in our court cases and legal system. whole kit Cited and Consulted Bloom, Haro ld. Modern Critical Interpretations. brisk York, unfermented York Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. New York Random House, 1992. Gale Research Co. Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism. Detroit, MI 1984, Vol. 7. Kjetsaa, Geir. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Writers Life. New York, New York Viking Penguin Inc., 1987, Magill, Frank. Masterplots. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Salem Press, 1976. Terras, Victor. Handbook of Russian Literature. New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1985. Timoney, John. Speech on Crime and Punishment. Mt. Holyoke College, November 10, 1994.