The Abyss and Us
Nietzsche once warned, “He who fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” But the abyss isn’t out there, it’s inside us––quiet, patient, and always watching. It waits behind every choice we call justified, every mask we silently put on. All it takes is one lie whispered to ourselves: I’m different. I’m above consequence. I can handle it. Raskolnikov told himself that before he picked up the axe. He didn’t kill out of hate or for money. He did it to see if he could, thinking he could return to who he was.
He never did.
Because by the time the blood dries, the mask has already become your face.
This is how Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th-century novel Crime and Punishment begins, not with a crime, but with a theory that consumes a man from the inside out.
You don’t need to read all 700 pages of the book to feel the weight of its questions, because at its heart, it’s a story about something most of us face: Who am I? And what happens when I lose touch with that answer? Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1866, the novel follows a young man named Raskolnikov, a former law student living in deep poverty in St. Petersburg, Russia. He’s smart, thoughtful, and emotionally wrecked. He has dropped out of school, isolated himself from others, and spends his days pacing in a tiny rented room, trapped in thought and torn between two versions of himself: one compassionate and deeply human, the other cold, distant, and abstract. Caught between those, he comes up with a theory: that a small group of “extraordinary people”, like Napoleon, have the right to break the moral rules that bind the rest of us, if it serves a higher purpose.
To test this, he decides to kill a pawnbroker, a woman he believes is greedy and cruel, to see if he is an extraordinary man. Raskolnikov convinces himself that this murder is just an experiment. He believes that history’s greatest men didn’t become great by following the rules. So maybe, just maybe, if he kills this “useless” woman and uses her money for good, he’ll prove he’s one of the greats. In his mind, he’s not doing evil, but he’s stepping outside morality like a scientist watching a test tube bubble. He tells himself this is temporary, detached, even noble.
However, here’s what most analyses skip: Raskolnikov doesn’t just kill because he thinks it’s right. He kills because he’s already drowning. He’s dropped out of school. He’s pushed away his mother and sister. He barely eats. His thoughts race, but he’s stuck in inaction, paralyzed by an internal void. In the moment before the murder, what he craves more than anything is not power, but clarity, some action that will prove he still exists. He says it himself, “I wanted to dare, and I killed. I only wanted to dare, Sonia––and that's the whole reason!” The dare is him testing his extraordinariness.
After the murder, Raskolnikov doesn’t feel glorious, but rather hollow. The power he thought he’d feel never comes. He believed that by committing the murder, he would force a kind of existential clarity, that the act would dissolve his inner conflict and legitimize his theory. Instead, he is consumed by fever, paranoia, and fragmentation. He wanders the streets of St. Petersburg in a daze, avoiding his loved ones and spiraling deeper into his known friend: isolation. He realizes that in performing the act of an “extraordinary man,” he has irreversibly altered his own nature. He no longer belongs to the world of innocence, but he also doesn't fully belong to the world of nihilism—he never meant to. So, he’s suspended in between. The mask, once imagined as temporary, has sealed to his face. He thought he could return to who he was. But that version of himself, the one who wouldn't kill, no longer exists.
Time was closing in, and he could no longer bear himself. Eventually, he surrenders. We like to believe that confession brings closure––that admitting guilt sets us free. Dostoevsky disagrees. When Raskolnikov finally confesses, it’s not redemption. He’s exiled to Siberia, but punishment doesn’t erase his inner emptiness. That’s because the crime wasn’t the true source of his suffering. His suffering comes from becoming someone capable of that crime. He lost sight of who he was and can’t seem to swallow who he might’ve been. At the end, confession can’t bring back the self that was buried under the pretense. This is why when you stare into darkness long enough, and it won’t just watch you, it will swallow you whole. When Raskolnikov developed his theory of extraordinary men, he didn’t simply flirt with the idea, he drowned in it. He authored an article on it, cut himself off from the world, and circled the theory in his mind until action felt like the only escape. Warning against this, Nietzsche says, “For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift.”
Because in the end, we are not punished for our thoughts.
We are punished for who we become by thinking them…for just a little too long.
He never did.
Because by the time the blood dries, the mask has already become your face.
This is how Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th-century novel Crime and Punishment begins, not with a crime, but with a theory that consumes a man from the inside out.
You don’t need to read all 700 pages of the book to feel the weight of its questions, because at its heart, it’s a story about something most of us face: Who am I? And what happens when I lose touch with that answer? Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1866, the novel follows a young man named Raskolnikov, a former law student living in deep poverty in St. Petersburg, Russia. He’s smart, thoughtful, and emotionally wrecked. He has dropped out of school, isolated himself from others, and spends his days pacing in a tiny rented room, trapped in thought and torn between two versions of himself: one compassionate and deeply human, the other cold, distant, and abstract. Caught between those, he comes up with a theory: that a small group of “extraordinary people”, like Napoleon, have the right to break the moral rules that bind the rest of us, if it serves a higher purpose.
To test this, he decides to kill a pawnbroker, a woman he believes is greedy and cruel, to see if he is an extraordinary man. Raskolnikov convinces himself that this murder is just an experiment. He believes that history’s greatest men didn’t become great by following the rules. So maybe, just maybe, if he kills this “useless” woman and uses her money for good, he’ll prove he’s one of the greats. In his mind, he’s not doing evil, but he’s stepping outside morality like a scientist watching a test tube bubble. He tells himself this is temporary, detached, even noble.
However, here’s what most analyses skip: Raskolnikov doesn’t just kill because he thinks it’s right. He kills because he’s already drowning. He’s dropped out of school. He’s pushed away his mother and sister. He barely eats. His thoughts race, but he’s stuck in inaction, paralyzed by an internal void. In the moment before the murder, what he craves more than anything is not power, but clarity, some action that will prove he still exists. He says it himself, “I wanted to dare, and I killed. I only wanted to dare, Sonia––and that's the whole reason!” The dare is him testing his extraordinariness.
After the murder, Raskolnikov doesn’t feel glorious, but rather hollow. The power he thought he’d feel never comes. He believed that by committing the murder, he would force a kind of existential clarity, that the act would dissolve his inner conflict and legitimize his theory. Instead, he is consumed by fever, paranoia, and fragmentation. He wanders the streets of St. Petersburg in a daze, avoiding his loved ones and spiraling deeper into his known friend: isolation. He realizes that in performing the act of an “extraordinary man,” he has irreversibly altered his own nature. He no longer belongs to the world of innocence, but he also doesn't fully belong to the world of nihilism—he never meant to. So, he’s suspended in between. The mask, once imagined as temporary, has sealed to his face. He thought he could return to who he was. But that version of himself, the one who wouldn't kill, no longer exists.
Time was closing in, and he could no longer bear himself. Eventually, he surrenders. We like to believe that confession brings closure––that admitting guilt sets us free. Dostoevsky disagrees. When Raskolnikov finally confesses, it’s not redemption. He’s exiled to Siberia, but punishment doesn’t erase his inner emptiness. That’s because the crime wasn’t the true source of his suffering. His suffering comes from becoming someone capable of that crime. He lost sight of who he was and can’t seem to swallow who he might’ve been. At the end, confession can’t bring back the self that was buried under the pretense. This is why when you stare into darkness long enough, and it won’t just watch you, it will swallow you whole. When Raskolnikov developed his theory of extraordinary men, he didn’t simply flirt with the idea, he drowned in it. He authored an article on it, cut himself off from the world, and circled the theory in his mind until action felt like the only escape. Warning against this, Nietzsche says, “For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift.”
Because in the end, we are not punished for our thoughts.
We are punished for who we become by thinking them…for just a little too long.
Studio Sergio Mora-Diaz
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