Crime and Punishment w/ My Big Question

Crime and Punishment and my Big Question basically go hand in hand. There are many relationships throughout this book and each of them contribute to my idea. The primary relationship between Rodya and Razumihin is one of those examples. Rodya steps the boundaries between insanity and sanity very frequently and whenever Rodya is having troubling thoughts or is in a bad place Razumihin is always there for him. He seems to be the voice of reason throughout the book and even looks after Rodya's family when Rodya goes to prison. This relationship is obviously helpful because Razumihin is an honest man who wishes to help Rodya and simply improve his life. Although he doesn't know Rodya killed those women in the beginning, he finds out later, but still remains as a stable person for Rodya to lean on even after he is convicted. Another relationship would be the one between Rodya and Dounia. This relationship seems to be healthy but is tainted by Rodya's illness. He treats his family very poorly throughout the book, but the family sticks with him. It is surprising they still love him after all his has done, but shows how strong the love within ones family can be. Dounia tries to help Rodya with his life, but only seems to annoy him and make his life worse. First, by bringing Peter Petrovich into the picture and by her mother sending the letter to Rodya, it made Rodya's insanity run deeper. In the end, the relationship takes a turn for the better and Rodya does realize who truly loves him. One of those people, and another important character, is Sonya. She is very timid and is shown as a very innocent person although she is a prostitute. Her love for Rodya is what drives him to confess and what helps him begin the road to redemption. This relationship is definitely healthy for Rodya because he learns that he does not always have to do things on his own and can be helped by others in order to succeed. It also teaches Rodya how to love and that the hardest thing to do may also be the right thing to do. Although he tortures her for the majority of the book, Rodya finally comes to the realization that he needs Sonya just as much as she needs him. In the book Crime and Punishment there are many relationships that turn out to be healthy even though Rodya taints them with his fits of insanity. A couple relationships that are not healthy and in fact harmful to Rodya would be the one with Svidigralov and in some cases with Porfiry. Svidigralov only causes Rodya distress by talking about his sister all the time and how he wants to be with her and when Rodya goes to him for help he is left with nothing. Svidigralov tortures Rodya by being a possible threat to his sister and is also a bad influence on him because Svidigralov is the future Rodya if he were to continue on the path he was going on. Porfiry seems to drive Rodya into even deeper fits of insanity with his games and interrogation tactics. That relationship is definitely harmful because he only plays games and increases Rodya's frustration. Although in the end Porfiry figures out that Rodya is in fact the killer, but let's Rodya confess for himself so in that aspect he did help him.

King Lear and My Big Question

The story of King Lear is a perfect example of how a man was changed mentally by the people in his life. The play is full of relationships that go array and deaths occur because of it. In the beginning, Lear is a normal king who decides to divide his kingdom into three parts, one for each of his daughters. This would be acceptable, if all of his daughters proclaimed their love for Lear, but one did not. Cordelia decides not to "heave her heart into her mouth" and say something that is not true. For this she is not given a piece of King Lear's kingdom and instead she is basically sent away to live with her new found husband in France. From that point on, being that Cordelia was his favorite daughter, King Lear continues to go into a crazed depression. On his first visit to his daughter, Goneril, he feels unwelcomed and Goneril views her father as outstepping his boundaries. The way Goneril and King Lear fight only adds to King Lear's madness, making him paranoid. He thinks he will then be welcomed nicely at his second daughter's home, but he finds it is even worse there. In a fit of insanity Lear leaves his daugher's house to go run outside in a storm. He cannot believe his daughter's are betraying him so and it sparks him to sink into a deep madness. The relationship between Lear and his daughters proves that if you entrust everything in the people you love it may lead to your demise. This relationship was so extremely hurtful to Lear that it caused his downfall as a normal person.

While all this is happening, another relationship, that of Edmund and Edgar is evolving. Edgar trusts Edmund being it that they are brothers, (even though Edmund is illegitimate), and does not think Edmund would ever do him harm. But it turns out that Edmund is selfish and wants to take over the kingdom so he plans an evil plot to get rid of Edgar. This relationship turns sour without Edgar even knowing it. With Edmund sending Edgar away for his "own good" he got his brother out of the picture and even convinced their father, Gloucester, that Edgar had done him wrong. Edgar cannot stand up for himself because he is gone and so Gloucester has no one else to believe. When Gloucester is seen trying to help King Lear Goneril and Cornwall cut his eyes out, making him blind. At this point King Lear has gone completely mad.

 At the end of the novel almost each of these characters have died except for Albany, Edgar, and Kent. It shows that because of all the betrayal and secrecies that lied between these people, the characters could not survive. Each person's actions affected another's and it ended up as a spiral of depression and suicide. It was almost a domino affect, as each character died, that character's passing affected another character in that they committed suicide or were killed. The story of King Lear proves that if you are surrounded by sour relationships that are harmful and unheatlthy then you will not be able to tolerate it for long.

Oedipus and My Big Question

Oedipus and my question interact in a variety of ways. The tragic end of Oedipus proves how detrimental a relationship such as the one with his mother and him, can be. Throughout his life the relationships Oedipus has are healthy and supportive. He is happy with his friends and surrounded by good people around him. When the murder search is lit aflame though Oedipus at first turns on his dear friend and brother in law, Kreon. At this point the relationship was tainted. Because Oedipus accused Kreon of telling lies so that he could steal the throne, a tension was created. This was obviously harmful because it caused stress on all the people involved. Then, when Oedipus realized who his mother/wife was, it ruined his life. This healthy and otherwise perfectly normal relationship was eventually found out for what it truly was, incest. Just the fact that Oedipus had been betrothed to his mother and had relations in the same bed that he was birthed was too much for Oedipus and Jocasta to handle. This harmful relationship was the end of them both. Jocasta hung herself because she could not bare to live on with her husband/son. Oedipus also blinded himself with Jocasta's brooches because he would not look upon the world and the other people in his life in the same way. He couldn't look at his marvelous palace the same, or his daughters the same, or even his own brother in law in the same way as he did before he knew the truth. In all, Oedipus is the perfect depiction of how a healthy relationship can turn harmful, and how that relationship can impact someone, such as Oedipus, to the highest extent.  

Intro to My Big Question

How do you know if a relationship is healthy or harmful, and can it be both?

In my life time I have heard/seen many stories about harmful and healthy relationships. What inspired me to do this was the relationship that my best friend has with her biological father. Her Mom and Dad divorced when she was a baby and he split, so she hasn't seen him since. But recently he has tried to contact her and come back in her life. I know this has affected her life significantly and it can truly be  seen as both harmful and healthy because in one way without him she learned how to be independent and strong. On the other hand I imagine it would have been a very hard childhood growing up without a father. The fact that there is a lack of relationship between my best friend and her Dad makes her life tougher and more complicated. Therefore the relationship would lean towards the harmful side in my opinion. I want to explore this question this semester because I want to see how other harmful relationships affect the characters in the story and how the healthy ones can overpower the hurtful.

This summer I read the book, "To the Lighthouse" by Victoria Wolf. It was a story about a family on some islands near Scotland and it was very focused on the interaction of the characters. One of the main dilemmas in this story was the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Mr. Ramsay was a brilliant philosopher who made life decisions based on his intellect, while Mrs. Ramsay based her choices off of her emotions. Throughout the story Mr. Ramsay would secretly beg for Mrs. Ramsay's sympathy; but she would not give it. When Mr. Ramsay wanted her to prove her love she would do so by a smile and a look in her eyes, not by her voice. This relationship was so complicated that it is in fact hard to tell whether it was harmful or hurtful. Mrs. Ramsay loved her children more then anything in the world and often times Mr. Ramsay was hurtful or cruel to them. James' life long dream, for example, was to go spend a day at the light house. He would ask over and over and Mrs. Ramsay would leave James with a ray of hope, only for it to be struck down by his father because the weather wasn't good enough or the water was too rough. Although they disagreed in parenting, they did love each other very much and could not be successful in their world without one another. The relationship that I mentioned earlier though with James and Mr. Ramsay was different. James disliked his father so much he had thoughts of murder and assault appear in his head whenever his father entered the room. This relationship was harmful and unhealthy because there was so much hatred and even though his father did not mean to, he made James detach from him. The only real connection there is, is when they finally make the journey to the lighthouse together at the end of the novel. There were many more relationships between each family member and overall I would say that this family was much more complex then the average family, at least nowadays. The novel was written in 1926 and things were much different then. Don't get me wrong every modern family has their problems, but in this novel the problems seemed to go much deeper.