The first great novel of the author's "mature period" of writing, Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Romanovick Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money; arguing that the good deeds he can perform with the money counterbalance the crime while riding the world of a worthless parasite. The murder also serves to test his own hypothesis that some people are not only capable of, but even have the right to do such things, believing that murder is permissible when in pursuit of a higher purpose.