The life and literary career of the author makes for as much fascinating reading as that of any of his great novels. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a novel that embodied both the writer’s personal dilemma and the dilemma facing his country in its attempts to liberalize or modernize itself and to liberate the common people from the tyranny of the Tsars and their autocratic supporters. The theme of the extraordinary versus the ordinary man relies on this sort of calculated logic. Raskolnikov uses to commit the murders, symbolizes the two halves of Raskolnikov’s nature these opposing sides are in conflict throughout the novel and are reflected in his victims.