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 looks for news about the murder, and seems almost to want to draw attention to his own part in it. He encounters the police official Zamyotov, who was present when he fainted in the bureau, and openly mocks the young man's unspoken suspicions. He returns to the scene of the crime and re-lives the sensations he experienced at the time. He angers the workmen and caretakers by asking casual questions about the murder, even suggesting that they accompany him to the police station to discuss it. As he contemplates whether or not to confess, he sees Marmeladov, who has been