The Trap of Gogol as Raskolnikov
Okay... maybe it’s a bit of an overserious title, but I find it to be fitting.
So, I’ve seen the idea of comparing Gogol to Raskolnikov come up more and more, and I wanted to give my personal take on it.
My take: it’s a folly.
Now, make no mistake, I’m not saying that the comparison can’t be used for good in small doses. There are some comparisons that are beneficial to consider (i.e. both kill to reach a higher ‘something’).
However, I also believe that relying too heavily on the comparison for characterisation is essentially using crutches made of webbed glass--one small misstep and your characterisation comes crashing down, crippling you for a time (in my experience, at least).
Raskolnikov is reaching to be someone great amongst society, to become a Napolean and prove to himself and others that he can achieve greatness (and, I’m sure, to get a better life). He genuinely believes for a time that he’s capable of it, and thus starts his journey.
Gogol, on the other hand, isn’t trying to prove greatness. He doesn’t feel a need to. His “freedom” (going against society), isn’t to be great or prove power, the only thing he’s proving is his free will. To be free from the brainwashing of society. It’s just to escape his cage.
For my understaning of Gogol, I first had to understand the key to BSD’s character development. After reading multiple original source materials, I noticed that Asagiri has created each character to mirror a character in literature, but with one vital difference--he included the element that each BSD character needed to transcend the limitation (implied by the author) that caused the literary character to fail.
The key to Gogol’s character is realising what made Akaky Akakievich (protagonist of “The Overcoat”) fail--his intensively brainwashed compliance--and going against it. Akaky Akakievich followed the strictures of his society, even to his death. Gogol therefore actively rejects the ‘brainwashing’ of society altogether, as to him that equals freedom.
Raskolnikov isn’t “going against ALL society”, as far as I remember. He’s still operating within it, only against it for a time before it realises that he’s right. He’s working within it to prove greatness, and maybe bending some rules of his own society, but, overall, a freedom from society isn’t the point. Being accepted is.
As far as freedom can go, Raskolnikov needs a freedom from innate morality, to be extraordinary, like BSD Dostoyevsky. Raskolnikov needs to have the qualities that will one day bring him greatness, that one day everyone will understand.
Gogol, on the other hand, goes completely against society. He doesn’t want to be accepted. He wants to be as unaccepted as possible, to prove his free will from the brainwashing instilled by society. He wants to go against the grain like Raskolnikov, but the end goal isn’t anywhere near a societal realisation. He doesn’t need anyone to understand, even if it’s lovely that Dostoyevsky does.
BSD characters tend to have what their book counterparts were lacking (in my experience, which is very limited, but I feel like it, at least, applies to Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Dazai, Pushkin and Goncharov). They have what it takes to succeed where their predecessors failed.
And so, I firmly believe that it’s vital to mention that Raskolnikov is Dostoyevsky’s character. And Akaky Akakievich is Gogol’s. Both are distinct and towering authors in their own right, and I don’t believe Asagiri would do one of them the disservice of basing such vital character depth in another author’s work. He wouldn’t make Gogol’s Ability “Crime and Punishment” just as he wouldn’t make Dostoyevsky’s Ability “Dead Souls”.
Therefore, Raskolnikov cannot be considered as a base source for Gogol. If you want to understand Gogol, then you’ll have to refer Gogol’s works.
Lastly--and most blatantly--Asagiri is clearly a lover of literature and loves the literary characters with such a passion that he’s created two manga series to portray them. It does him a disservice to say that he would confuse the character development between two such distinct and well-known authors.
And so, I don’t feel that, in good faith, I can as of now agree with the idea that Gogol is anything like Raskolnikov in more than a few surface-level ways.
Thanks for reading <3