Keri's 3rd 500 words for her term paper

 Dostoyevsky demonstrates in "Crime and Punishment" that guilt can result in heavy drinking since the person's mental stability is not necessarily in check after having committed a crime. The guilt he feels after his crime makes Raskolnikov feel as if he needs to drink and sleep to make himself forget about what he did and the repercussions that come with it.
Guilt has been shown to cause such behavior. It makes sense in human nature since people tend to use defense mechanisms to make themselves feel better about whatever it is they did.  This can, oftentimes,  change a person's behavior. Drinking oftentimes makes people forget about their daily lives so it is often used as a kind of defense mechanism. Another kind of defense mechanism used would be cautious behavior. They can comfort themselves in the fact that they are not doing anything illegal in the current moment. In this way, when someone has done something wrong, it is oftentimes transparent from an aerial perspective whether that be through heavy drinking or extremely cautious behavior. 
After Raskolnikov commits the murder, he immediately drives himself mad with illness. He is unconscious and spends a lot of time sleeping. He essentially overcompensates which could also be seen as a defense mechanism. This would be called repression. Raskolnikov represses his feelings by sleeping and falling unconscious. In this way, guilt has been proven to affect a person's health. In a similar field, depression and other emotions of this sort can also cause repression in that a person sleeps constantly in order to avoid dealing with these emotions. For these reasons, it was obvious to me and all readers that Raskolnikov suffered from guilt. This reiterates how transparent guilt can be. 
In a similar way, guilt can cause a fever like that seen in "Crime and Punishment". It can also cause more severe illnesses. This is due to the amygdala which is the part of the brain that associates emotions with occurrences in a person's life. The amygdala makes it possible for a person to know while they feel a certain way. As a result of this, a person can know that they feel this way due to an exact circumstance that occurred. 
Guilt can also affect a person physically. An example of this would be avoiding direct eye contact with someone. Another example is Raskolnikov's fever mentioned above. All of these instances represent defense mechanisms and how they work to relieve from people the guilt they feel.