Representations of Pain

Paper Summary:

The paper analyzes representations of pain within the novel "Crime and punishment" by Dostoevsky and the short story "Bartleby the Scrivener: A story of Wall-street" by Melville in light of the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The paper highlights the melancholia in the behavior of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov after he commits the murders. In Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" the paper explains that one can see, based on attitudes and behaviors of Melville's passive, non-ambitious lawyer-narrator, a psychological reflection of Bartleby himself, and vice-versa. The paper shows how Melville's narrator's uneasy identification with Bartleby becomes more understandable.

From the Paper:

"In Dostoevsky's Crime and punishment the social context of the novel is that of late 19th century Tsarist Russia, a milieu within which Dostoevsky's main character Rodion Romanovitch ("Rodya") Raskolnikov is burdened with both financial problems and a sense of the social injustice of his surroundings. The latter springs from the social inequality he observes all around him in Tsarist Russia, and which he himself also feels."
"In casual conversation with another student one day, the student mentions how he himself could kill the old pawnbroker Alyona "without the faintest conscience-prick" (Dostoevsky, Crime and punishment, Chapter 6 [online text])."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dostoevsky, F. Crime and punishment, 1866, [Online], March 17, 2006. Available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/8crmp10.txt.html.
• Freud, S. "Mourning and melancholia", 1917. Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, 24 volumes, Alex Strachey, trans., Penguin Books, Ltd., London, 1959, pp. 243-258.
• Lacan, J. Ecrits, Norton, New York, 1977, p. 4.
• Wilden, A. "Lacan and the discourse of the Other", In Lacan, The language of the self: the function of language in psychoanalysis, Anthony Wilden, trans., Johns Hopkins University Press, London and Baltimore, 1981, 159-160.
• Melville, H. Bartleby the scrivener: A story of Wall-street", 1853 [Online], March 17, 2006. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com /129 /index.html#251.html.

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