Research Investigation
Crime writing, how does the genre reflect the morals and values of society?

Introduzione
Crime fiction has played an important part in society around the world in the past two centuries up ‘til now, reflecting its morals and values and its psychological state of mind. The use various artists, authors and directors have made of the crime subject has shed light on the morals and values societies of certain cultures at certain periods have had, and what typifies these societies in the way of their psychological states and their reactionary behaviours. The understanding of the psychological states of mind of different cultures and time periods can offer great insight into how societies change and form, produce and react, showing their fears, their drives and their beliefs and knowledge about the world of crime. I am investigating the links between different cultural societies over time to discover the relevance of crime to people.

What psychological security or strain does crime fiction offer to society?
The whole of St. Petersburg, Russia in the mid 19th century was involved criminally, knew of crime around them or experienced it first hand, in their corrupt, soul-taxing city.
In the first part of Crime and Punishment the author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, emphasizes the psychological strain taken on by the inhabitants of mid 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia, and the criminal acts against others, themselves and humanity they were driven to because of the chaos, malaise and poverty that characterised St. Petersburg at this time. St. Petersburg was experiencing a hot, humid summer at this time, “…during a spell of exceptionally hot weather…” Dostoevsky writes, ridden with poverty and unemployment which resulted in a great lack of moral standards and values, including theft, murder, daily drunkenness, family beatings, prostitution, corrupt law, blackmail, rape et cetera. Dostoevsky writes one scene in which a young girl, about fifteen, had been made forcibly drunk by some men in a bar, who had their way with her and sent her into the crawling streets to wander alone, delusional. Raskolnikov, the main character of the novel, sees her staggering along the street to sit down on a side-road chair, Dostoevsky describes: “The girl was walking unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side… the seat… on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner… a quite young, fair-haired girl—sixteen, perhaps not more than fifteen…”. Furthermore, a shifty looking gentleman begins to approach her, noticeably with the intention of having his way with her, whom Raskolnikov tells to go away and threatens to fight, right when an officer comes along. In my opinion, in this scene Dostoevsky illustrates the disgusting and corrupt nature of the common Russian in St. Petersburg, and their complete lack of moral integrity, which would have been very close to reality, as it was written from Dostoevsky’s own experiences in this city. However, Raskolnikov demonstrates a more dignified, higher standard of morality than the average citizen, as he is a very individual intellectual, by protecting the girl from harm and paying for her cab ride home. I think the society of mid 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia, was a society lacking most moral standards and practices, and had very few values, other than value for their own lives; to get through another day. They were very familiar with crime, and saw it as a normal part of their every-day lives, never really developing much disdain for it which would have led to the creation of morality and values.
American society of the mid 19th century innocently enjoyed the thrills and kills of crime, especially when it took place in a distorted atmosphere of madness and fiction. In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, he tells of an extremely nervous man, who commits a murder of an old, decrepit man, with a “pale blue… vulture’s eye, with a film over it”. As the murderer/narrator tells the story, he has an urging tendency to prove he is not a madman, often saying “why will you say that I am mad?”, “how then am I mad” and “you fancy I am mad”. It is clear that the psychological strain is heavily present on the murderer in crime fiction, as in Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov questions his sanity constantly after killing two elderly women. The reader, often an average man or women of society, would feel very unnerved, worried, scared or even frustrated at reading about a murderer who questions his sanity over and over, after getting away with killing a vulnerable, elderly person. Most societies, especially in the western world, are extremely affected by murder, as they question their safety and the sanity of the world around them. Society takes on a lot of psychological stress from murder, yet they are attracted and wowed by the macabre aspects of death, and thus gain security in themselves. They are scared of the pleasure they take at the absurdity of these murders and crimes, in my opinion.

What differences are there in the way of morals and values of early 19th century Russian and American societies, and the way they are reflected in crime literature?
In two different cultures there are clear differences that can be discovered in their societies’ morality and ethicality, as these are reflected in crime literature. We have already discussed the two texts which from evidence will be taken to investigate this point, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. We want to discover, from these two texts, what contrasts between the morals and values of the two societies these works of literature come from, in relation to crime and the way they view it. Poe’s society, in the Southern American state of Virginia from around 1810 to 1850, was a coy, proper and strict society, still very influenced by Victorian England, which held the intellect in high esteem, often spoke very complexly, and had wealthy bourgeoisie who enjoyed their leisure time, which included reading the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The Majority of the citizens would have had very little firsthand experience with crime, if any at all, especially murder, and so would have felt very thrilled, frightened and pleased to read about fictional cases of it, whilst being morally opposed to the happenings of the story and holding values against the exploitation of madness, so often written about by Poe, who lacked popularity because of this. Dorothy L. Sayers writes “Death in particular seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent amusement than any other single society” – this sentence alone justifies that these Americans, which had minds akin to those of the Anglo-Saxons, took pleasure in these mysterious, fictional writings of death and crime, they enjoyed it innocently, whilst being opposed to and fearful of the reality of death, and I gather they held moral values against the exploitation of madness in literature, as they did not support Poe’s writings, which had a madman theme. Poe writes about how relaxed the detectives who are investigating the murderer’s home become once they are freely shown around the house, and offered a seat and something to drink, which demonstrates the naivety of American society, including the police, and how they sub-consciously take delight in death.
The society of 1840s-60s St. Petersburg, Russia, however, was far different. Dostoevsky’s society was akin to crime on a much larger scale than Poe’s, with the majority of the citizens having direct experience of crime, more often than once, whether they had committed the crime, witnessed it, been subject to it or heard about it; the occurrence of crime was frequent. St. Petersburg was and still is a very large, common city of Russia, with a vast population, very little space to move and live, unless you had a lot of money, which very few did, as they lived in poverty from the lack well-paying employment. The majority of the inhabitants worked in small businesses and hands-on jobs for very sparse pay for very long hours, to come home to small, box-like apartment rooms, which they shared with many other people, some who they would not have known well, who would have been drinking and revelling for most of their night. I believe that, in such a life, a human being has a very cramped space to grow, especially morally and ethically. They would have been so used to crime throughout their lives that their thoughts about it would have been very few, and so developed almost no morals, leaving them subject to committing more crime or experiencing more, in my opinion, especially as there was a prevalent mafia present in St. Petersburg at this time. These people would have very rarely read books, and Dostoevsky’s novel would not have been very accessible to them, however, if they had read it, I doubt they would have been very surprised, thrilled or even fearful because of the crime they would read about. One particular scene in Crime and Punishment that illustrates the lack of moral integrity and values, and the tendency towards crime that the average St. Petersburger has, is when the main character, Raskolnikov, has a dream in his feverish state of a traumatising childhood experience: the young Raskolnikov was walking with his father home from the country, and they came across a tavern that he felt fearful of because “There was always a crowd there, always shouting, laughter and abuse, hideous hoarse singing and often fighting. Drunken and horrible-looking figures were hanging about the tavern.” as Dostoevsky writes. There was a cart sitting in front of the tavern with a weak looking nag tied to it, and suddenly a crowd of drunken people came out of the tavern, and the cart owner beckoned them all to get in the cart, though it would have been impossible for the nag to pull them. Dostoevsky describes:

“They all clambered into Mikolka's cart, laughing and making jokes. Six men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a fat, rosy-cheeked woman...The crowd round them was laughing too...wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were just getting whips ready to help Mikolka. With the cry of "now," the mare tugged with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely move forward; she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking from the blows of the three whips which were showered upon her like hail. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but Mikolka flew into a rage and furiously thrashed the mare, as though he supposed she really could gallop.”

The scene ends with a crowd of people beating the horse to death with iron rods and “an axe to...finish her off.” The crowd walks away after the nag is dead, without any care.
While Edgar Allan Poe’s 19th century society takes thrills and amusement from crime literature, they have had barely any firsthand experience with crime, though they condemn it with their morals and values, that are against crime altogether. The society of 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia was accustomed to crime in their everyday lives, and took no thrills or anything special from crime literature, and also had no moral or ethical values, due to the sickness, heat and corruptness of their city, and the little space they had to develop as human beings, in my opinion.

What differences are there in the way of morals and values between early 20th century and 21st century, as reflected in crime fiction media?
There are clear contrast between the morals and values of contemporary society and early 19th century society. To illustrate this point, the 1931 film M – Eine stadt sucht einen Moerder by Fritz Lang, and the modern, 2008-10 drama series Breaking Bad by Vince Gilligan will be used for evidence. The society depicted in M was a very conscious, fluent society in which all parts, such as workers, police, criminals and intellectuals worked to a very high level of success and had developed cunning and a strong society, very close-knit, as all citizens seemed to get along quite well, like family. In this German film, a “kinder Moeder” or child murderer is the driving narrative force; he commits the murder of a young girl, about 7, by buying her a toy and luring her into his home. This beginning already illustrates the cunning of the German mind, to use tricks that are not suspect to achieve their goals. When Elsie Beckmann, the missing girl, is discovered to be missing, the police have the press print a story about it, which the vast public of the city read, and a reward poster to find the murderer, who is thought to have killed children a few years before, is put up around the city. In my opinion, the police in this case have no problems with letting their society know what is going on with crime in their city. The process the police underwent to help them find the murderer was very clever and precise, for example taking fingerprints and analysing them with a projector, a very modern technique, and analysing the psychological state of mind of the murderer based on his writing style, as he sent the newspapers a letter. It is clear that science in this society is well used and developed, and that an intellectual method of police investigation is taken up, in my opinion. I believe that the cautious, calculated ways of the police and society illustrate that they are people with morals against violence and excessive force, and have values for the use of the mind as a tool to achieve goals, such as finding a murderer. Though, ironically, in the end, the criminals of the city are the ones to capture the murderer, through committing various crimes to get to him, such as blackmail, assault and breaking and entering, such as in the last scene they trap the murderer in a government building, which they break into, knock out the guards and search for the murderer, successfully capturing him. The criminals then want to kill the murderer in front of the citizens, to show they believe in true justice, which is actually their crime. In spite of the intense efforts taken by the police to protect the children of their city, it was only for criminal minds to capture another criminal, as they are not bound by the laws and restrictions that the police are, and they think alike to other criminals.
The crime world of the 21st century is dominated by drug-related crime, which is clearly demonstrated by Vince Gilligan’s 21st century television series, Breaking Bad, which is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and reflects that society specifically, but also alludes to the general criminal underground across the world. The society of ABQ, New Mexico is shown to be, on the surface, a large city with mostly middle-class people who are involved in various jobs, ranging in media, department stores, upper-level business, school teaching, humble business etc, and lower-class people who have addictions to drugs and alcohol, live in poverty and have a general lack of responsibility in their lives, generally what you would expect to find in the majority of western societies today. However, underneath all of this simplicity, pre-tense and ignorance there is a dark, maniacal society of criminals who feed the methamphetamine addicts of the lower-class and the few select of the middle-class who condemn drugs openly, but consume them secretly, making more money than anyone else in the state. In the episode “Crazy Handful of Nothin’”, season 1, episode 6, we see Walter White, a middle-class chemistry teacher who, because he has discovered he was cancerous, got into the crime business to produce methamphetamine for criminals to make money for his family before he dies, walking into the “crib” of a king-pin drug addict and seller to reclaim the money and drugs that were stolen from his partner. He succeeds in reclaiming his belongings by using his intelligence of chemistry to create a chemical with the appearance of methamphetamine, which explodes with volatility upon impact with objects. This scene demonstrates the stupidity of the average 21st century criminal, and the intelligence of this specific individual who can over-power five gun-wielding Mexicans with science. In this example two poles of criminality are present, the unintelligent, incautious, violent and junkie criminals, and the cautious, planning, creative, clever and prepared criminals, which leads us to one of Walter’s future partners, Gus, a very clever and powerful criminal leader. In the third season we see Gus often, posing as the manager of a local restaurant chain, “Los Pollos Hermanos” which he owns and launders his drug money through. He makes public appearances frequently, even once bringing food to a crowd of police officers who are in hospital, visiting their comrade, Walter’s step-brother, who has been on the case to find the producer of the “blue-meth”, “Heisenberg”, which is actually Walter working for Gus. Because of Hank’s, Walter’s DEA step-brother, violent, rushed, hopeful method of investigation and tracking he has no chance of discovering the producer. The police of this society are very unintelligent, hands-on shooting, killing, breaking, bashing types, which are almost as immoral as the killers, who never let their society know what is going on in the underworld of their city, lying in the media. In Layer Cake, a crime film by Matthew Vaughn, it is shown that all criminals get killed in the end, even the protagonist, who is shot in the heart on his hotel steps, demonstrating that no matter how careful, intelligent or prepared a criminal is, he is bound to face what he has done, a very present reality in today’s world.
Over an 80 year distance in time we can examine the burgeoned modern world of 1930 to today’s modern world of 2010. Where the values of each society lye is quite clear, and the moral predicaments of each time period certainly have different focus points and realities. The past culture of the 1930s had values for using intelligence, constructivism (also an art movement that was present in Europe at this time), protecting and bringing good, ethical and intelligent children into the world, using clever methods to solve their problems by making the intellect a tool, rather than a weapon and respecting each part of their society as needed for the whole to advance peacefully, not disrupting their balance at this point entirely, like they did later and like the Americans are doing today. They had open morals against most crime, but were not so surrealistic to believe that they or any other society could live in a crimeless world like some today do, in my opinion. Our modern society of 2010, however, has changed drastically from that period in many ways. The vast majority of westerners seem to hold very strong values for family, risking and wasting our lives to provide for them and make them happy, values for a police force to order our whole crime world, when, in my opinion, it is only human will driven by love and acceptance that can cure the crime world, a treatment of the individual soul, not a bizarre, uniformed squad of robots with guns, breaking down doors and killing people because they are so-called “guilty” or “not innocent”, and because of this, many people value violence and bloodshed over love and openness because they are told to believe it protects them. The intellect is vaguely trained and misused consistently in this world, though with the one-in-ten-thousand exception of people like Walter White and Gus, but even they chose to be criminals. The modern world is simply corrupt with malevolent thinking, apathy and ignorance, shown frequently on our television screens in shows like Breaking Bad, in my opinion. But it is also shown that everyone one of us has the ability to make choices which lead us down different paths, and there are some who choose paths of light, love, simplicity and humbleness, while others choose paths of dream states, ignorance and repression, I believe. I think the society of 1930 had less choice than we, however, as their society was a preparation for a world of shifting consciousness which we are in today, where everyone would start to consciously make decisions about the directions of their lives. And so the main difference between our modern world and their past world is that we can choose to create morals and values that suit our way of life, where their morals and values were inherited, destined prepared, futuristic, in my opinion.

Conclusione
We have discovered from our investigation that Crime literature demonstrates the psychological stress, confused with or leading to madness in some cases, heavily present on the killer in crime fiction and also in reality, the people of society reading crime literature feel challenged by their own fear of the madness and crime that are present, whilst being thrilled by the shocking content and grounded and secured by the knowledge of their safety at that moment. This description demonstrates Edgar Allan Poe’s society mainly, but Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Russian society is seen quite differently, taking little stress, comfort, excitement or wonder from crime literature, while being often exposed to crime in reality, as we have deduced, and so have developed few morals or values against it, as to them it is normal. And we have discovered that our modern underground crime world is drug-orientated, yet we live in an age of conscious choice that allows us the freedom to create our own path, and that because of this many people in the world have chosen crime, pre-tense, ignorance and especially fear as their path, while some others choose intellectual domination, and others love and compassion. Crime fiction, overall, is a way for an artist to reflect the crime in their society in a creation that demonstrates the affects it has upon the human psyche, and the direction the human race is possibly facing. Crime in reality to the human race seems to be an aspect of life that is to be feared, condemned because of the fear it brings, through hatred, violence, deceit and disruption of peace and order, but it is also an aspect that brings a lot of world-hypocrisy, as everyone is a criminal to some extent, whole countries that go to war for example are all, relatively, criminals, it is just that the people we condemn are full-time criminals to different extents, and we refuse to accept that it simply is! That it exists! And we can only help it change with love and acceptance.