Dostoevsky sent a letter to the publisher of the newspaper The Russian Messenger, saying: “Do I hope to publish a novel in your magazine, The Russian Messenger? It is a psychological study of a crime that is taking place in our own day, in fact in this very year. A young man from a petty bourgeois family, expelled from university and living in deadly misery, unconsciously, with confused principles, influenced by strange, immature ideas, whose realm is fantasy, decides to escape his miserable situation forever. He resolves to kill an old woman, the widow of a tyrannical councilor, who lends money at interest, in order to please his mother who lives in the outskirts of the capital, and to save his sister who is employed by a landlord whose future is threatened, and to finish his studies, go abroad, and live a happy, upright life, fulfilling his duty of kindness to others of this human race. If we can call this act a crime against a deaf, malicious, and sick old woman, she might have died a natural death a month later.” Note that these crimes are terribly difficult to investigate, because the motives and signs are so clear, and many things are left to chance, which invariably exposes the criminal. All this makes the criminal abandon his project. A month passes between the crime and the final disaster. The killer is never accused, and never can be. Here the psychological development of the crime becomes clear: intractable and unexpected issues afflict his heart. Divine justice and human law take their toll, and he is finally forced to go where he pleases. He did not die in exile, but returned to live among people. What torments him is the awakening of human sense within him after he has committed his crime. The law of justice and human nature have taken their toll. The criminal himself decides to accept the torment to atone for his sin.