If man is not a scoundrel then he is basically good. If man is good then why is God needed for our salvation. If God is not needed then can’t it be up to man to create their own rules of right and wrong. This is what he was struggling with. The answer of course is that man is a scoundrel human nature is flawed since Adam and Eve. Raskolnikov concludes differently. He decides man is good and no behavior is bad to the genius. He needs money so he takes it from somebody to try to get his life on track. And in his sin he falls! He’s making justifications because of his ego.

If you go back in the chapter you’ll find him talking with the drunkard who acknowledges he is a scoundrel and claims that all will fall down before Christ and weep for their salvation. Who is smarter the drunkard or the enlightened Raskolnikov?

Notes is really a good starting point for Dostoyevsky (although it’s not where I started) because you can see so much of that character in other characters in his later writings. Plus it is almost a direct rebuttle of Marx before Marx existed. It’s basically a prediciton of the future, frighteningly genius.

As for getting stuck I hear that I got stuck on The House of the Dead and haven’t picked it back up yet. I’ll get to it sometime. I want to read The Gambler and The Devil too.

As for The Idiot – my favorite movie director of all times is Akira Kurosawa he’s famous for his old black and white samurai movies in the 1950s and 1960s (ever hear of the Seven Samurai). He influeneced or was admired by Spielberg, Coppolla, Scorsese, George Lucas, Spike Lee, John Woo, etc. etc. Anyways, he made several Shakespeare plays into movies placed in feudal japan (if you like Shakespeare you’ll love Kurosawa’s genius). Great acting too in most of his movies. But anyways I digress. In addition to a Shakespeare fan he was a big Dostoyevski fan and he made a movie of The Idiot (pretty close to the book) for changing times and cultural locations (again Kurosawa was a genius). Anyways, if you had trouble with the Idiot but like Dostoyevksi and can put up with a black and white with subtitles check out The Idiot sometime.