This is undoubtedly not a unique insight, but doesn't Crime and Punishment strike you as a preemptive polemic against pretty much everything Ayn Rand ever wrote? If nothing else, placing Rand into the light of Raskolnikov brings into stark relief her (ironic?) Napoleonism.
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I actually was just thinking about writing about Dostoyevsky vs. Rand for my senior research paper...so yes. =)
If that is the message you get, then you can not have understood either of them. ( I have only read The Fountainhead )
By Ayn Rands standards, Raskolinikov would be the enemy of everyone who chooses life as his standard. Perhaps her most important message is that a self respecting person who has chosen to live does not live at the expence of another.
This is exactly what raskolnikov does. He destroys what is not his. He wants to be great and to assert his power for powers own sake, just like Toohey in The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand would label this as an anti-goal. There is either no standard behind it, or the standard is death.
I happen to like both books. Crime and Punishment shows in the end the importance of kindness between human beings(I am thinking of Sonias influence). The fountainhead what happens when people have no standards, ignore them or are not allowed to have them.
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