Crime and Punishment the two halves of the novel, as David Bethea has argued, is organized according to a mirror-like principle, whereby the "left" half of the novel reflects the "right" half. The seventh part of the novel, the Epilogue, has attracted much attention and controversy. Some of Dostoevsky's critics have criticized the novel's final pages as superfluous, anti-climactic, unworthy of the rest of the work, while others have defended it, offering various schemes that they claim prove its inevitability and necessity. Steven Cassedy argues that "Crime and Punishment" "is formally two distinct but closely related, things, namely a particular type of tragedy
Crime and Punishment As she leaves, Raskolnikov asks for her address and tells her that he will visit her soon. At Raskolnikov's behest, Razumikhin takes him to see the detective Porfiry Petrovich, who is investigating the murders. Raskolnikov immediately senses that Porfiry knows that he is the murderer. Porfiry, who has just been discussing the case with Zamyotov, adopts an ironic tone during the conversation. He expresses extreme curiosity about an article that Raskolnikov wrote some months ago called 'On Crime', in which he suggests that certain rare individuals—the benefactors and geniuses of mankind—have a right to 'step across' legal or moral boundaries