Crime and Punishment stages of composition. Once having decided, Dostoevsky began to rewrite from scratch, and was able to easily integrate sections of the early manuscript into the final text. Frank says that he did not, as he told Wrangel, burn everything he had written earlier. Dostoevsky was under great pressure to finish "Crime and Punishment" on time, as he was simultaneously contracted to finish "The Gambler" for Stellovsky, who had imposed extremely harsh conditions. Anna Snitkina, a stenographer who later became Dostoevsky's wife, was of great help to him during this difficult task. The first part of "Crime and Punishment" appeared in
Crime and Punishment His chaotic interaction with the external world and his nihilistic worldview might be seen as causes of his social alienation or consequences of it. Despite its title, the novel does not so much deal with the crime and its formal punishment, as with Raskolnikov's internal struggle (the book shows that his punishment results more from his conscience than from the law). Believing society would be better for it, Raskolnikov commits murder with the idea that he possessed enough intellectual and emotional fortitude to deal with the ramifications, [based on his paper/thesis, "On Crime", that he is a Napoleon], but his