The Punishment of Fear
Text / Siu Heng
Essay presented to The Hong Kong Examination Authority in partial fulfillment for Hong Kong Advanced Level English Literature Examination
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Mrs. Jennifer Luke for her guidance and supervision in this project.
"Fear follows crime, and is its punishment."-- Voltaire
What Voltaire says is a very apt description of criminals. But what is the nature of this fear that they are suffering from? The Webster's Dictionary defines fear as "a feeling of anxiety and agitation caused by the presence or nearness of danger, evil, pain, etc." An American clinical psychologist, Dr. Paul Hauck (1924 - ), says, "Fear ... comes from avoiding what you are afraid of." (1)
In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", Raskolnikov, the main character, suffers immense fear after committing a murder. It is indeed this feeling of anxiety and agitation caused by the "nearness" of death penalty, which makes him suffer many a sleepless night. Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker Aliona Ivanovna and her sister. It is because he considers the pawnbroker a hazard to the society as she preys on the money of the poor. However, after the murder, he fears that the police would track him down. The novel gives the reader vivid description of Raskolnikov's horror of being recognized as the murderer. Such a fear is great enough for him to endure anything just as long as he would not be discovered by the police. He remembers what a death criminal has once written, "to live somewhere ...and had to remain like that --- standing on a square yard of space --- all his life ... would still be better to live like that than die at the moment." (2) How true this echoes the state of mind of Raskolnikov.
But is this fear for physical punishment the only kind of fear he is experiencing? No. In fact, he is suffering from one which is even more tormenting. It is his guilty conscience. Psychologists define guilt as a "painful self-evaluation due to some action evaluated negatively and for which action the person holds himself responsible". (3) After his murder deed, Raskolnikov starts to consider it as something evil. He doubts why he "started out on such a vile, base, low business". Subconsciously, "An overwhelming and mysterious urge drew him" to go back to the very place where he has killed Aliona Ivanovna and her sister.
The title of the novel "Crime and Punishment" plainly states the theme of the book. It is straightforward, yet thought-provoking. What is Raskolnikov's punishment? His exile to Siberia at the end of the story is an obvious punishment to his crime. But the fear he experiences is in fact an even greater punishment. It does not only affect him psychologically, but physically as well. "His legs were trembling. ... His head whirled and ached from fever". His constant feeling of insecurity and his apprehension at the thought that he might have left some evidences at the scene of murder is torture enough for Raskolnikov. His theory on why crimes are easily discovered is quite significant. Before he kills, he once says he believes that "failure of judgment and collapse of will take hold of a man like a disease ..." but he did not know "whether the disease produced the crime or whether the crime by its own innate peculiarities was always accompanied by something like disease..." (4) This foreshadows what he later experiences after he has killed the pawnbroker. He suffers from this "disease" which accompanies his crime.
Raskolnikov tries to put forward a theory. He thinks "extraordinary people" has "the inner right to permit his conscience to transgress". (5) Yet he is wrong. He himself is conscience-stricken, and as police officer Porfiry Petrovich says "psychologically he will not get away". (6) It is ironic that while Raskolnikov wants to escape from legal punishment, his guilty conscience has become so unbearable that he eventually decides to give himself up to the police and admit his murder. He was eventually exiled, but his exile actually liberates him from the agony of fear. Exile is more welcoming than the hellish state of fear.
Fear of a similar nature is experienced by Macbeth, in Shakespeare's famous tragedy "Macbeth". Macbeth suffers enormous fear after murdering King Duncan and Banquo. From a great Lord, he pitifully falls into an apprehensive state, fearing that Duncan's and Banquo's sons will take revenge on him. Such a fear in Macbeth manifests into a form of illusion. He hears a voice saying to him that "Macbeth does murder sleep." In the banquet scene, he sees the ghost of Banquo and in the company of his guests he speaks to the ghost,
"Thou canst not say I did it; never shake
Thy gory looks at me." (Act III, Scene vi, ll49-50)
Fear takes the form of a ghost, which, to Macbeth, is a "horrible shadow, unreal mockery". It is not important whether it is just hallucination or real. The fear that arises from his guilty conscience is brought home to the readers.
And it is not just Macbeth, his scheming wife, the instigator of the murder, also experiences fear. It is Lady Macbeth who plans the murder. On the surface she is fearless. But sub-consciously, it is not so. The most telling evidence is her sleep-walk, in which she wants to wash away the imaginary blood stain on her hand. She says "all the perfumes from Arabia will not sweeten this little hand". (Act V, Scene i l49) Deep in her heart, she knows that the murder has burnt such a mark in her that it can never be removed. Both she and Macbeth do not seem to fear that their crime will be discovered, as Lady Macbeth says in her dream that "what need we fear who know it when none can call our power to account". (Act V, Scene i, ll35-36) Rather their horror and fear stems from their guilty conscience.
Like in "Crime and Punishment", fear brings torture upon Macbeth. He feels haunted all the time. From a heroic status, he degenerates into a pathetic state of a "haunted man".
"... we [Macbeths] will eat our meal in fear and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams ..." (Act III, Scene ii, ll19-20)
Yet there is another constituent to his fear. He fears that the last prophecy of the witches would come true. He wants desperately to change his fate. Like Raskolnikov, fear is a torture, and is therefore a form of punishment for Macbeth.
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" provides another good illustration of the fear suffered by the killer. After the murder, he conceals the body so carefully that he thinks "no human eye' could have detected anything wrong". He carefully takes many precautions to hide his crime. Yet his fear betrays him. Like Macbeth, he feels insecure and his fear too, manifests into an illusion. He imagines hearing a noise from the dead. "I fancied a ringing in my ears ... it continued and became more distinct..." (7) The police who have been talking to him do not suspect him but the murderer himself thinks that "they were making a mockery of my [his] horror", and he reveals his murderous deed to the police when he could bear no more.
Fear that stems from a guilty conscience is a mental torment which can be so intolerable that it over-rides the murderers' fear of physical retribution. Such retribution would be seen as "better than this agony", as said in "The Tell Tale Heart.". This is similar to how Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment" handles his fear. He would rather be exiled than be forever the bearer of such agonies.
On closer examination, in fact fear does not appear only after the crime. It is present long before it and in fact accompanies it. Just as Dr. Paul Hauck says, fear involves another kind of pain which "comes from doing what you are afraid of". (8)
In Macbeth, when he premeditates the killing of King Duncan, he already feels fear, fear for justice being done to his murderous act. When he actually commits the murder, his fear makes him so nervous that he cannot even tell whether the dagger in his hands are real weapons or just a "fatal vision", "a dagger of the mind". He fears that the stone would hear his steps and "take the present horror from the time".
Again, in "The Tell Tale Heart", fear which accompanies evil ideas exists throughout the whole period of premeditation of the perpetrator. "The idea ... once conceived, it haunted me [the murderer] day and night." (9) Even when he finally plucks up his courage, he can still hear the "groan of mortal terror".
In "Crime and Punishment" too, the fear Raskolnikov experiences before the killing of the pawnbroker is no less than the hatred he bears towards the victim. Before Raskolnikov kills the pawnbroker, he goes to see her and he leaves "in a great ferment". Apparently, he is torn between the desire to rid the society of the evil pawnbroker and the fear of implementing his murder plan which he regards as "an atrocity" and "It's filthy, lousy, foul, foul!" He almost gives up his plan as "this very idea turned [his] stomach and filled [him] with horror." When he hears that Aliona Ivanovna, the pawnbroker, would be alone at home and it would be an opportunity to kill her, "His initial astonishment gave way to horror, as though a chill had crawled down his back." (10) Though he eventually transgresses his conscience, deep in his heart he knows he is doing evil. And the fear that results from such knowledge produces a negative physical impact on him. "His heart was pounding so heavily that it became difficult for him to breathe." So we can see that well before he kills, he is already "punished" and that is in the form of intense fear.
But if fear exists even before the crime is committed, why do the murderer still carry them out? The answer is that the motive to kill is strong enough to overcome the fear temporarily. In "The Tell Tale Heart", the murderer felt that the victim's eyes, "Whenever it fell upon [him], [his] blood ran cold" (11) and he cannot tolerate it. To him, murdering the old man is the lesser of the two evils. So when a moment of weakness appears in his internal struggle, when evil triumphs over conscience, he gathers his courage to kill. As for Macbeth, he cannot resist Lady Macbeth's urge and the temptation to be king. It is only when the object of their hatred, or obstacle to their ambition is removed, that they have to face fear alone and is eventually driven into its abyss.
Footnotes
(1) Paul Hauck, Why be Afraid? How to Overcome Your Fears, Sheldon Press (1981), p.1.
(2) Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, Penguin Group (1980), p.162-3.
(3) Nico H. Frijda, The Emotions - Studies in emotion and social interaction, Cambridge University Press (1986).
(4) Dostoyevsky, p.78.
(5) Ibid, p.257.
(6) Ibid, p.332.
(7) Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales, Penguin Group (1994), p.271.
(8) Hauck, p.1.
(9) Poe, p.267.
(10) Dostoyevsky, p.69.
(11) Poe, p.267.
References
- Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Penguin Group, 1980.
- Frijda, Nico H. The Emotions: Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- Hauck, Paul. Why be Afraid? How to Overcome Your Fears. Sheldon Press, 1981.
- Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Tales. Penguin Group, 1994.
- Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works. Oxford University Press, 1988.