Close Reading Blog Post: Crime and Punishment

(WARNING SPOILERS) For my close reading project I chose to read the book Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoevesky. Crime and Punishment is about a poor man named Raskolnikov (I call him Ras for short) who is in debt to the pawn shop lady Alena Ivanovna. He sees that there are many other people who are in debt to alena and it's ruining there lives too. He decides to kill her thinking it's for the better, he gets caught in the act by alena's sister, Lizaveta, and he has to kill her too. He then goes insane and gets a terrible fever. If I told the rest it'd be too much. You're just gonna have to read it on your own.

Crime and Punishment is about many things. Alcoholism, the evil within one, what someone would do to save themselves from poverty, and immediate-gratification. Let's start with Alcoholism. Ras' best friend Marmelodov was an alcoholic. A few months after Ras killed the two women Marmelodov gets so drunk that he wonders into the road and gets run over by a horse carriage. I imagine that Feodor Dostoevesky wanted to express that alcoholism is something that is okay, but shouldn't be taken for granted. Which comes to my next point, immediate-gratification, Marmelodov kept wanting more drinks, because he thought he deserved it for doing his job every day. He ended up dying from his addiction.

The evil within one and what someone would do to save themselves from poverty are both very similar, so I will talk about both as one. Ras couldn't deal with how poor he was, and he broke. He took an axe from a neighbors house went to Alena's house and killed her and Lizaveta in almost an instance, without any second thoughts. He ended up taking the money back he gave to Alena. Ras wouldn't give in. He kept hiding. Someone who didn't even do it gave in and Ras watched it happen feeling nothing.

Overall, this book is beautiful and so great. It takes a while to read, but it's worth it. Please read this book. It changed my life. I hope you can see why this book is so good if you read it.

Into Thin Air

Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a 1997 bestselling non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details the author's presence at Mount Everest during the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, when eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a "rogue storm". The author's expedition was led by the famed guide Rob Hall, and there were other groups trying to summit on the same day, including one led by Scott Fischer, whose guiding agency, Mountain Madness, was perceived as a competitor to Rob Hall's agency, Adventure Consultants.

In the book, Jon Krakauer tells events leading up to his eventual decision to participate in an Everest expedition in May 1996, despite having mostly given up mountain climbing years before. The 1996 season expedition recorded world-high 7 deaths, including Krakauer's guides, Rob Hall and Andy Harris. Initially, Krakauer, a journalist for adventure magazine Outside, stated that his intentions to climb Everest were purely professional. The original magazine story was to have Krakauer climb only to base camp, and report on the commercialization of the mountain. However, the idea of Everest reawakened his childhood desire for climbing the mountain.

Krakauer's recounting of certain aspects of the ill-fated climb has generated considerable criticism, both from the climb's participants and from renowned mountaineers such as Galen Rowell. Much of the disputed material centers on Krakauer's accounting of the actions of Russian climber and guide Anatoli Boukreev. An experienced high-altitude climber and guide for Scott Fischer, Boukreev descended the summit prior to his clients, ostensibly out of concern for their safety and in preparation for potential rescue efforts. Boukreev later mounted repeated solo rescue efforts, saving several lives. In his book, Krakauer acknowledged Boukreev's heroism in saving two climbers' lives, but questions his judgment, however, for his decision to descend before clients, for not using supplementary oxygen, for his choices of gear on the mountain, and for his interaction with clients.

All of the clients Boukreev guided on the mountain made it back safely, while Krakauer's expedition mates suffered injury or death. Galen Rowell criticized Krakauer's account, citing numerous inconsistencies in his narrative while observing that Krakauer was sleeping in his tent while Boukreev was rescuing other climbers. Rowell argued that Boukreev's actions were nothing short of heroic, and his judgment prescient. “…(Boukreev) foresaw problems with clients nearing camp, noted five other guides on the peak Everest, and positioned himself to be rested and hydrated enough to respond to an emergency. His heroism was not a fluke."

The Best Book I Read of 2013

There were so many great books I read in 2013. Mainly in the first part of 8th grade. The best book I read has to be Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoevesky. This book focused on the morals of a good man turned bad. And how he thinks he was right to commit the crime he did. Once he commits this crime he's a changed man with no limits. This man's name was Raskolnikov, but I'm going to call him 'Ras' for short.

Let me start off saying, this is the best book ever. I know I said that about The Catcher in the Rye, but truly. This book is amazingly touching in so many ways. Ras may have (spoiler!) killed a lady who owned a pawn shop where he pawned an item from, and that lady's sister. But he still has a good heart. He helped his friends, even how much of a monster his friends knew he was. They all helped him get through this. And the ones who didn't support this at all sadly killed themselves. The women he loved even knew that he did it. She stood by him at every moment that she learned this. It was extremely amazing. Ras becomes sick just knowing that he is the murderer and that one person has already said they did it, even though that person was not the murderer. Ras' best friends all stay with him and make him feel safe and secure aswell as supporting most of the decisions he made throughout all this trouble.

In the end Ras ends up turning himself in, because he feels too guilty. This is by far the best line in the book when he says, "It was I who killed the old women and her sister, Lizaveta, with an axe, and robbed them." Ras just couldn't go on with lying anymore, and became a better man just telling every one without one single regret. I completely recommend this book. It may have been written in the mid to late 1800's, but it's still to this day the best book ever. It's an incredible book, and from the bottom of my heart, I'm begging you to read this book.