crime and punishment: part five

selected passages from dostoevsky

ChatGPT summary:

The consequences of Raskolnikov’s actions come to a head, and the novel moves closer to his inevitable reckoning.

The section begins with Luzhin’s final attempt at revenge. He frames Sonya Marmeladov for theft, planting money on her in an effort to disgrace her and, by extension, Raskolnikov. However, Lebezyatnikov, Luzhin’s naive roommate, witnesses the deception and exposes Luzhin’s lies. Publicly humiliated, Luzhin is forced to leave, marking his complete downfall.

Meanwhile, Raskolnikov finally confesses his crime to Sonya. Overcome with guilt and sensing that Sonya is the only one who can truly understand his suffering, he reveals that he murdered Alyona Ivanovna and Lizaveta. Sonya, instead of condemning him, reacts with deep sorrow and compassion, urging him to repent and accept the consequences of his actions. She believes his only path to redemption is through confession and suffering.

At the same time, Svidrigailov becomes increasingly menacing. He reveals that he has overheard Raskolnikov’s confession to Sonya, making him a dangerous loose end. Though his true intentions remain ambiguous, his knowledge of the crime adds another layer of pressure on Raskolnikov.

As Part Five ends, Raskolnikov is caught in a psychological and moral crisis, torn between Sonya’s plea for repentance and his lingering belief in his own philosophical justifications for the murder. The weight of his crime is becoming unbearable, and his fate is closing in on him.

chapter one

Cliffsnotes summary:

The next morning in Luzhin's rooms, he still thinks of his unfortunate break with Dunya and his thoughts are interrupted by his roommate, Lebezyatnikov, who sees himself an advanced thinker. They discuss ideas important in Russia at this time.

The discussion eventually comes around to Sonya, whom Luzhin wants to see. Luzhin insists that his roommate remain during the interview. Luzhin questions Sonya about the financial conditions of the family and about the stability of Katerina Ivanovna, who is telling people that Luzhin is going to arrange for a pension for her. Luzhin makes it clear that he has no influence, but he tells Sonya he would like to try to get some type of fund started for the widowed Katerina. To show his good intent, he gives Sonya a ten-ruble note.

Highlights:

I meant to keep them without a penny so that they would turn to me as their providence, and look at them!

Luzhin is talking about how his plan to make Dunia and her mother fully dependent on him backfired; instead of coming to him begging for more, it highlighted his character on full display.

They are the sort of people that would feel bound to return money and presents if they broke it off; and they would find it hard to do it! And their consciences would prick them: how can we dismiss a man who has hitherto been so generous and delicate?

This was his critical mistake; he knew that they were the type of people that would feel so burdened by the receipt of gifts that they would feel forever indebted and unable to take the course of action that they ended up taking. Strategic error on his part which he now recognizes. Also highlights how gifts can be a means to control others!

These powerful, omniscient circles, which despised everyone and showed everyone up for what they really were, had long been for him a peculiar but wholly vague cause for concern.

This is said by Luzhin when describing the young progressive groups. Again, another opportunity for Dostoevsky to make commentary on social politics, framing progressives as “despising everyone”. I think it’s a pretty accurate assessment! Always tearing others down, even now.

He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated idiots, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.

This is Luzhin’s description of his roommate who is one of these young progressives. Honestly, this line could have been written even now, to describe much of what I see online. So much of political discourse is performative; people don’t even understand what they’re saying, thereby “vulgarizing” it and “caricaturing” every cause they try to serve. It’s madness!

he had not protested, for instance, when Andrei Semionovich congratulated him for being ready to contribute to the establishment of the new “commune,” or to abstain from christening his future children, or to acquiesce if Dunia were to take a lover a month after marriage, and so on. Peter Petrovich took such pleasure in hearing his praises sung that he did not even look down upon such virtues when they were attributed to him.

This is commentary by Dostoevsky on Luzhin, again highlighting Luzhin’s character and the way he uses everyone around him as means to an end. He calls Semionovich a “half-educated idiot”, but doesn’t protest when Semionovich attributes virtues to Luzhin that he doesn’t even want! He took all the praise, unbothered of where it was coming from. Yuck.

But the “humane” Andrei Semionovich ascribed Peter Petrovich’s ill-humor to his recent breach with Dunia and he was burning with impatience to talk about it. He had something progressive to say on the subject which might comfort his eminent friend and “could not fail” to promote his development.

This is so, so good! “Promote his development.” Every young progressive believes they hold the playbook to helping others grow, and they believe that speech alone is sufficient! The audacity and hubris! They’re more obsessed with speaking than listening and understanding. I think Semionovich is a tremendous caricature of many young progressives nowadays.

“You keep on like that because you are in a bad mood yourself . . . But that’s nonsense and it has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with the question of women! You don’t understand; I used to think, in fact, that if women are equal to men in all respects, even in strength (as is maintained now), there ought to be equality in that, too. Of course, I reflected afterwards that a question like that really shouldn’t arise, because there shouldn’t be any fighting and, in the future society, fighting is unthinkable . . . and that it would be strange to try to find a principle of equality in fighting. I am not so stupid . . . though, of course, there is fighting . . . there won’t be later, but at the moment there is . . . damn it! How muddled I get with you! That’s not why I’m not going. I’m not going on principle, in order not to take part in the revolting convention of memorial dinners, that’s why! Though, of course, I might go to laugh at it . . . I am sorry there won’t be any priests at it. I would certainly go if there were.”

“Then you would sit down at another man’s table and insult it and those who invited you. Eh?”

There “ought” to be equality, even in strength. The idealism of Semionovich is ridiculous here; he doesn’t even want to contemplate it, instead arguing that in an idealistic society, fighting wouldn’t exist which would then make the question of whether or not men and women are equal in strength moot. Such a classic tendency to wash over any statement or fact that challenges grand ideals!

And it’s so funny how Luzhin exposes how blatantly disrespectful it is for Semionovich to go to an event just to highlight the “revolting convention.” Such a double standard!

“Certainly not insult, but protest. I would do it with a good purpose in mind. I might indirectly assist the cause of enlightenment and propaganda. It’s every man’s duty to work for enlightenment and propaganda and the more harshly, perhaps, the better. I might drop a seed, an idea . . . And something might grow up from that seed. How should I be insulting them? They might be offended at first, but afterwards they’d see I’d done them a service. You know, Terebyeva (who is in the commune now) was blamed because when she left her family and . . . devoted . . . herself, she wrote to her father and mother that she wouldn’t go on living conventionally and was embarking on a free marriage and people said that it was too harsh, that she might have spared them and written more kindly. I think that’s all nonsense; there’s no need to be soft. On the contrary—what’s needed is protest. Varents had been married seven years, she abandoned her two children, she told her husband straight out in a letter: ‘I have realized that I cannot be happy with you. I can never forgive you that you have deceived me by concealing from me that there is another means of organizing society—through communes. I have only recently learned this from a very magnanimous man to whom I have given myself and with whom I am establishing a commune. I am speaking to you frankly because I consider it dishonest to deceive you. Do as you think best. Do not hope to win me back—you will be too late. I hope you will be happy.’ That’s how letters like that ought to be written!”

“They'd see I’d done them a service.” Goodness, my blood started boiling when I read that. No one asked for this service! Who gave them the right?

And Semionovich is valorizing how Terebyeva left her family and children in the name of principle! This is insane! But it’s a stance that many people nowadays take as well. Eschew responsibility in the name of personal freedom. She calls it her husband’s fault that he didn’t highlight to her this new way of living; how easy it is for people to craft themselves as a victim.

sometimes think if my parents were living what a protest I would have aimed at them! I would have done something on purpose . . . I would have shown them! I would have astonished them! I am really sorry there is no-one!”

Protested what? It’s clear from these dialogues that Semionovich doesn’t stand for something; he stands for protest as a personality trait, regardless of what he’s against.

As for Sofia Semionovna personally, I regard her action as a vigorous protest against the organization of society, and I respect her deeply for it; I rejoice, in fact, when I look at her!”

“I was told that you got her turned out of these rooms.”

Oh this is such an incredible exchange. On the one hand, he’s valorizing Sonia’s suffering. He rejoices when he sees are! That’s asinine, especially when you consider how the novel has established the depths of Sonia’s suffering. That is not something to be celebrated! And she’s clearly not launching any kind of protest! This is so analogous to how the people valorizing others for their suffering are completely disconnected from the lived experience of those people!

And this is further highlighted when Luzhin remarks how Semionovich was one of the people who actually forced Sonia to move out of her old living arrangements into her current awful place of residence! You could call this a “luxury belief”; beliefs that confer status to the affluent but actually make things worse for the people experiencing the harms.

And I never flirted with Sofia Semionovna! I was simply developing her, entirely disinterestedly, trying to rouse her to protest . . . All I wanted was her protest and Sofia Semionovna could not have remained here anyway!”

And somehow Semionovich tries to frame his actions as compassionate towards Sonia in some way or form. Again, no one asked for his help, certainly not Sonia! And he’s certainly not helping her!

“You keep on laughing and very inappropriately, may I add. You don’t understand! There is no such role in a commune. The commune is established so that there should be no such roles. In a commune, such roles are essentially transformed and what is stupid here is sensible there, what, under present conditions, is unnatural becomes perfectly natural in the commune. It all depends on the environment. It’s all the environment and man himself is nothing. And I am on good terms with Sofia Semionovna to this day, which is a proof that she never regarded me as having wronged her. I am trying now to attract her to the commune, but on a completely different level. What are you laughing at? We are trying to establish a commune of our own, a special one, on a broader basis. We have gone further in our convictions. We reject more! And meanwhile I’m still developing Sofia Semionovna. She has a beautiful, beautiful character!”

It’s still not even clear what this commune is; is it a rejection of judgment? Of any individual freedom? Of modernity? And here, Semionovich says that the measure by which their progressivism is judged is by how much they reject! They don’t really stand for anything!

“Man himself is nothing.” That’s another line that deeply stood out to me. I think this is something that I believed growing up; that individuals are not responsible for the harm that they inflict if they aren’t given the perfect environment that’s conducive to their development. I no longer believe this; it completely removes your own responsibility for your own life! How dare he say that man himself is nothing. That is a far greater rejection of individual freedom and autonomy than anything he deems to promote; you must give people the freedom to own their mistakes.

Yet she thoroughly understands some questions, for instance about kissing hands, that is, that it’s an insult to a woman for a man to kiss her hand, because it’s a sign of inequality.

Really? Really? This made me laugh. Reminds me of the modern-day “fuck men” / “ick” discourse. Yet this was written like 150 years ago.

Has any member of the commune the right to enter another member’s room, be they a man or a woman, at any time . . . and we decided that they have!”

Insane! Semionovich is saying that their rejection goes so far as to reject privacy too!

“You are always thinking of something unpleasant,” he cried with aversion. “Pah! How irritated I am that when I was expounding our system, I referred prematurely to the question of personal privacy! It’s always a stumbling-block to people like you, they ridicule it before they understand it. And how proud they are of it, too! Pah! I’ve often maintained that that question should not be approached by a novice until he has firm faith in the system.

And when Luzhin points out that this could be quite inconvenient for people, Semionovich says that the concern would go away once he gains “faith in the system”, whatever that means. Classic progressive rebuttal to any criticism: “you just don’t get it; if you know, you know.”

“Children? You referred to children,” Lebeziatnikov started off like a warhorse at the trumpet call. “Children are a social question and a question of the utmost importance, I agree; but the question of children has another solution. Some refuse to have children altogether, because they suggest the institution of the family. We’ll talk about children later, but now, as for the question of honor, I confess that’s my weak point. That horrid, military, Pushkinian expression is unthinkable in the dictionary of the future. What does it mean? It’s nonsense, there will be no deception in a free marriage! That is only the natural consequence of a legal marriage, so to say, its corrective, a protest. So that in fact it’s not humiliating . . . and if I ever, to suppose an absurdity, were to be legally married, I would be truly glad of it. I should say to my wife: ‘My dear, up until now I have loved you, now I respect you, because you’ve shown you can protest!’ You laugh! That’s because you are of incapable of getting away from prejudices. Damn it all! I understand now why being deceived in a legal marriage is unpleasant, but it’s simply a despicable consequence of a despicable position in which both people are humiliated. When the deception is open, as in a free marriage, then it does not exist, it’s unthinkable. Your wife will only prove how she respects you by considering you incapable of opposing her happiness and avenging yourself on her for her new husband. Damn it all! I sometimes dream if I were to get married, foo! I mean if I were to get married, legally or not, it’s all the same, I should present my wife with a lover if she had not found one for herself. ‘My dear,’ I should say, ‘I love you, but even more than that I desire you to respect me. See!’ Am I not right?”

This is so utterly insane. Semionovich is now fully off the deep end, arguing about the elevation of personal happiness over all else. He says that he would prove to his wife that he values her happiness over all else, even the “constraints” that a legal marriage would provide, by providing her with a lover, and in doing so, earning her respect and showing that he won’t react in a vengeful way! Again highlights how desperate this group of young progressives is to showcase to others how desperately they’re “on their side” and wish for them to elevate their own desires over all else.

chapter two

Cliffsnotes summary:

At Katerina Ivanovna's, the funeral party is just beginning. The dinner was given so as to "do like other people." The party far exceeds Katerina's means to pay, but she insisted on inviting everyone, even her landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna Lippewechsel, whom she dislikes intensely; Lebezyatnikov who once beat her; and Luzhin whom she does not know.

When Katerina notices that many people, especially the more genteel and influential lodgers, turned down her invitation, she blames it on her landlady and begins to act disdainful and haughty around her. Sonya is quiet, very nervous, and apprehensive, but Raskolnikov says nothing. Then as the party progresses, Katerina becomes openly critical and then hostile toward the landlady as though she was responsible for all the misfortunes in Katerina's life. Finally, pandemonium breaks loose and the entrance of Luzhin prevents an open fight.

Highlights:

Perhaps the chief element was that peculiar “poor man’s pride,” which compels many poor people to spend their last savings on some traditional social ceremony, simply in order to do it “like other people,” and not to “be looked down upon.” It is very probable, too, that Katerina Ivanovna longed on this occasion, at the very moment when she seemed to be abandoned by everyone, to show those “wretched contemptible lodgers” that she knew “how to do things, how to entertain” and that she had been brought up “in a genteel, she might almost say aristocratic colonel’s family” and had not been meant for sweeping floors and washing the children’s rags at night.

I’ve never been introduced to the concept of poor man’s pride before. It highlights how the chief motivation of every lower class is to be viewed as part of the class immediately above them. Kind of how middle class people nowadays spend on luxurious vacations of trinkets that highlight themselves as upper class.

For every minor problem he ran to Katerina Ivanovna, even hunting her out at the market, at every instant called her “Pani.” She was thoroughly sick of him before the end of it, though she had declared at first that she could not have got on without this “serviceable and magnanimous man.” It was one of Katerina Ivanovna’s characteristics to paint everyone she met in the most glowing colors. Her praises were so exaggerated as to be embarrassing on occasion; she would invent various circumstances to the credit of her new acquaintance and quite genuinely believe in their reality. Then all of a sudden she would be disillusioned and would rudely and contemptuously repulse the person she had been literally adoring only a few hours previously. She had a naturally merry, lively and peace-loving disposition, but due to her continual failures and misfortunes she had come to desire so keenly that everyone should live in peace and joy and should not dare to break the peace that the slightest problem, the smallest disaster reduced her almost to a frenzy, and she would pass in an instant from the brightest hopes and fancies to cursing her fate and raving and knocking her head against the wall.

Amazing phenomenological description of the hysteria that comes from the desire to control everything and create something incredible. By offering over-the-top praise, she’s trying to speak something into reality, even though this server is clearly not perfect and is in fact getting on Katerina’s nerves. Every momentary disruption or problem was a threat to the vision of perfection that she was trying to bring to life, and she reacted extremely strongly to that dissonance. I’ve seen so many people in this loop while planning events; think of how hysterical people get when something goes wrong at their incredibly thought-out birthday party.

Amalia Ivanovna, too, suddenly acquired extraordinary importance in Katerina Ivanovna’s eyes and was treated by her with extraordinary respect, probably only because Amalia Ivanovna had thrown herself heart and soul into the preparations. She had undertaken to lay the table, to provide the linen, crockery, etc., and to cook the dishes in her kitchen, and Katerina Ivanovna had left it all in her hands and gone off to the cemetery. Everything had been well done. Even the tablecloth was nearly clean; the crockery, knives, forks and glasses had been lent by different lodgers and were naturally of all shapes and patterns, but the table was properly laid at the time fixed, and Amalia Ivanovna, feeling she had done her work well, had put on a black silk dress and a cap with new mourning ribbons and met the returning party with some pride. This pride, though justifiable, displeased Katerina Ivanovna for some reason: “as though the table could not have been laid except by Amalia Ivanovna!”

Ah don’t we all react this way to people sometimes; when they take pride in their accomplishments, we instinctively denigrate their accomplishments and what they’ve done. Dostoevsky highlights this by adding the two words “though justifiable”; Amalia had every right to be proud of her preparations!

It must be noted that when Katerina Ivanovna praised anyone’s connections and fortune, it was without any ulterior motive, entirely disinterestedly, for the mere pleasure of increasing the importance of the person praised.

Oooooooooh this is incredible. Over-praising others in this way can be a way to selfishly increase your own status by elevating those you’re associating with. I never thought about this.

“No doubt you think, like everyone, that I was too severe with him,” she went on, addressing Raskolnikov. “But that’s not true! He respected me, he respected me very much! He was a kind-hearted man! And how sorry I was for him sometimes! He would sit in a corner and look at me, I used to feel so sorry for him, I used to want to be kind to him and then I would think to myself: ‘Be kind to him and he will drink again,’ it was only through severity that you could keep him within bounds.”

Katerina’s rationalization of her abuse of her late husband. She was unable to see how her actions were feeding into his alcoholism. She thought it was the only way of keeping him in bounds, but she never for a moment stopped and considered the efficacy of that strategy. This is a good reflection point for all of us: what actions do we habitually do because we feel like we have to do them? Is there another path?

chapter three

Cliffsnotes summary:

Katerina Ivanovna is excited to see Luzhin, thinking he has suddenly become her savior, but she is struck dumb when he disclaims all knowledge of her father and he stands disdainfully apart from her and avoids her as much as possible.

Luzhin then announces the purpose of his visit; he has come to see Sonya. Shortly afterwards, Lebezyatnikov appears at the back of the room and remains quietly there. Luzhin explains loudly to Sonya how he had exchanged some securities for rubles, and that when she left the room after their interview, a one-hundred ruble note was missing. He carefully explains that he had just counted the money and one of the notes is now missing. He accuses Sonya of black ingratitude and demands that she return the money. Sonya denies the charge, and Katerina immediately comes to her defense. Luzhin threatens to send for the police, but tells Sonya that if she will return the note, he will forget everything. Katerina then becomes enraged and screams for someone to search her. As Katerina begins frantically to turn Sonya's pockets inside out, a hundred ruble note falls out of one of the pockets. Sonya still denies the theft, and the landlady orders them from the house.

Lebezyatnikov steps forward and accuses Luzhin of being a vile, evil person. He tells how he saw Luzhin slip the hundred-ruble note into Sonya's pocket while she was standing in his room, amazed at the fact that he had given her ten rubles. Luzhin denies the accusation, and Lebezyatnikov is at a loss to explain why Luzhin acted as he did.

At this moment, Raskolnikov steps forward and explains how Luzhin was rejected by his sister and he tried to alienate him from his family by implicating Sonya. At this time, Luzhin leaves as quickly as possible, but someone throws a glass at him. The glass misses Luzhin, but it hits the landlady who in turn orders Katrina out of the house. Sonya could endure no more and "she gave way to hysteria" and hurried home. Raskolnikov follows her wondering what she can say now about her predicament.

Highlights:

She could not understand how Peter Petrovich could deny having enjoyed her father’s hospitality. Though she had invented it herself, she believed in it firmly by this time.

This is also so good! We all invent fantasies or falsities, but even though we know they’re not real, we still have the same emotional reaction as if it were real; we believe our own inventions. What does that say about us?

chapter four

Cliffsnotes summary:

On his way to see Sonya, Raskolnikov wonders if it is absolutely necessary to tell Sonya who killed Lizaveta. When she meets him, she had indeed been waiting for him and she pleads that he not talk to her the way he did yesterday — "there is enough misery in the world." But Raskolnikov ignores her plea and immediately reminds her of the things that he had said yesterday.

Over her protests, Raskolnikov asks her a hypothetical question — that is, between Luzhin and Katerina, which one should be allowed to go on living? Should Luzhin live and continue committing acts of evil and hate crimes and causing the imprisonment of people like Sonya and the deaths of Katerina and the children? Or should Katerina Ivanovna go on living? "How do you decide? Which of them should die?" Sonya refuses to answer saying "I can't know God's intentions? Why do you ask such questions that have no answer? Who am I to judge who shall live and who shall not?" As Raskolnikov asks these difficult questions, Sonya realizes his suffering and asks what is troubling him.

Raskolnikov reminds Sonya that he had promised to tell her today who killed Lizaveta. To Sonya's frightened response, he first asks her to guess and then tells her to "take a good look at me." Somehow the dreadful knowledge is communicated to Sonya and all of her suffering suddenly becomes magnified. She shrinks from Raskolnikov. Recovering immediately, she flings herself on her knees in front of him, crying out: "What have you done, what have you done to yourself?. . . .There is no one, no one unhappier than you in the whole world."

A sudden feeling of tenderness floods Rodya's heart and softens it, and he asks Sonya: "Do not forsake me." and she vows she will "Never, forsake you, nowhere! . . . I will follow you wherever you go. . . I will even follow you to prison." At the mention of prison or Siberia, Raskolnikov recoils, and his haughty attitude returns.

When Sonya asks him how he could bring himself to do such a thing, Raskolnikov offers explanations ranging from his poverty to his Ubermensch theory. Each of his reasons is rejected so that Raskolnikov never successfully explains his crime. After many attempts to explain the crime, he turns to Sonya and asks "tell me what to do now?" She requests him "Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled [desecrated] and then bow down to the whole world and say to all men aloud, 'I am a murderer!'"

When Rodya questions this, she tells him again: "Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it." Rodya hedges still and asks Sonya if she will come and visit him in prison, and as she affirms that she will, she offers him the cypress-wood cross that was once Lizaveta's. He reaches for it, but decides it would be better if he accepted it later, and Sonya agrees: "When you accept your suffering, you shall put it on."

At this crucial moment, Lebezyatnikov rushes into the room.

Highlights:

“Must I tell her who killed Lizaveta?” It was a strange question because he felt at the very time not only that he could not help telling her, but also that he could not put it off. He did not yet know why it must be so, he only felt it, and the agonizing sense of his impotence before the inevitable almost crushed him.

There’s a larger force that’s pushing him to confession; to righting the balance; to accepting his punishment and his atonement. I don’t know where it comes from either, but the phrase “impotence before the inevitable” feels extremely apt.

“Why do you ask what can’t be answered? What’s the use of such foolish questions? How could it depend on my decision? Who has made me a judge to decide who ought to live and who ought not to live?”

This is Sonia’s response to Raskolnikov’s questioning of whether Luzhin or Katerina should go on living. Sonia rightly responds that it’s not her concern and she has no right to make these kinds of judgments; that’s something Raskolnikov can’t grasp as he constantly keeps getting caught up trying to make these judgments.

And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatred for Sonia passed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightened of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but he met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there was love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the real feeling; he had mistaken one feeling for the other. It only meant that the time had come.

He finally recognizes that the hatred he feels towards the people who love him is artificial! It’s fabricated by his ego as a form of self-preservation, to push him away from confession and carry on his deceit for a little while longer. But Sonia’s love overcomes Raskolnikov’s defenses, and he’s finally ready.

“What have you done—what have you done to yourself!” she said in despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms round him, and held him tight.

Unbelievable moment. I couldn’t believe what happened here. How many people nowadays respond to confession with love and acknowledgment of the suffering of sinners? If everyone responded like Sonia, I don’t think many people would have much of a reason to lie, hide, and degrade themselves like Raskolnikov had been doing up until now. Sonia recognizes the impact that Raskolnikov’s actions have on himself!

“What’s the meaning of it? Where am I?” she asked in complete bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. “How could you, you, a man like you . . . How could you bring yourself to it? . . . What does it mean?”

The duality of man, isn’t it? Raskolnikov has shown Sonia and her family more kindness than others, and he’s opened up vulnerably to her; these are characteristics that don’t align with the depravity of his crime. What does it mean? That’s the question, isn’t it?

“Could it, could it all be true? Good God, what a truth! Who could believe it? And how could you give away your last penny and still rob and murder!”

Exactly! It defies any rational or conscious explanation. It wasn’t for the money.

“And why, why did I tell her? Why did I let her know?” he cried a minute later in despair, looking with infinite anguish at her. “Here you expect an explanation from me, Sonia; you are sitting and waiting for it, I can see that. But what can I tell you? You won’t understand and will only suffer misery . . . on my account! Well, you are crying and embracing me again. Why do you do it? Because I couldn’t bear my burden and have come to throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can you love such a mean wretch?”

“But aren’t you suffering, too?” cried Sonia.

Again a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and again for an instant softened it.

“I couldn’t bear my burden and have come to throw it on another.” What a line. He still doesn’t know how to explain himself, he only gets the sense that sharing the suffering with someone else will ease his pain. But he can’t understand how this doesn’t repel Sonia. I don’t know if I fully understand either. Maybe this is the essence of love and of deep, intimate human connection; shared suffering. That’s all Sonia’s focused on — she looks beyond Raskolnikov’s crime itself and his actions, but only sees his suffering.

“It was like this: I asked myself this question one day—what if Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had not had Toulon or Egypt or the passage of Mont Blanc to start his career, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things, there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that, if there had been no other means? Wouldn’t he have felt a pang at its being so far from monumental and . . . and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I worried myself so terribly over that ‘question’ that I was extremely ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck him that it was not monumental . . . that he would not have seen that there was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way, he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it! Well, I too . . . left off thinking about it . . . murdered her, following his example. And that’s exactly how it was! Do you think it’s funny? Yes, Sonia, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that’s just how it was.”

Sonia did not think it at all funny.

“You had better tell me straight out . . . without examples,” she begged, even more timidly and scarcely audibly.

This is probably the clearest description of his theory; he assumed that extraordinary men like Napoleon would kill with no hesitation or emotion if something got in their way of their grand plans, and Raskolnikov committed the murder to test whether he was extraordinary. A power play maybe?

But to Sonia, this is still a provisional explanation, and not a real one.

“I’ve only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful creature.”

“A human being—a louse!”

“I know too that it wasn’t a louse,” he answered, looking strangely at her.

Another one of his defenses collapses; even Raskolnikov himself knows that the pawnbroker’s life wasn’t one to be tossed away.

Ah, how I hated that closet! And yet I wouldn’t leave it!

Raskolnikov is now talking about his state of being stuck in his room, away from university after he dropped out at the start of the book. Don’t we feel this way about our surroundings whenever we’re experiencing depressive episodes? We need to get away, but we refuse to do so.

I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—I still won’t be any wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if you wait for everyone to get wiser it’ll take too long . . . Afterwards I understood that that would never happen, that people won’t change and that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that’s true. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia . . . that’s true! . . . And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is very daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! That’s how it has been until now and that’s how it will always be. A person has to be blind not to see it!”

Though Raskolnikov looked at Sonia as he said this, he no longer cared whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; he was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had gone too long without talking to anyone). Sonia felt that his gloomy creed had become his faith and code.

“Then I understood, Sonia,” he went on eagerly, “that power is only entrusted to the person who dares to bend down and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing which is required: you just have to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no-one had ever thought of before me, no-one! I saw clear as day how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I . . . I wanted to have the daring . . . and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!”

Another provisional explanation from Raskolnikov for why he did it; to be the kind of person that could seize power when it was offered to him. But even this idea is false; his idea of the murder wasn’t even original at all! He overheard other people talking about it in a tavern!

“I know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all over to myself, lying there in the dark . . . I’ve argued it all over with myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how sick I was then of going over it all! I’ve kept wanting to forget it and make a fresh start, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don’t suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn’t think I didn’t know, for instance, that if I began to question myself as to whether I had the right to gain power—I certainly didn’t have the right—or that, if I asked myself whether a human being is a louse, it proved that it wasn’t true for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his goal without asking questions . . . If I worried myself all day long, wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly of course that I wasn’t Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of that battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn’t want to lie about it even to myself. It wasn’t to help my mother I did the murder—that’s nonsense—I didn’t do the murder to gain wealth and power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I just did it; I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in my web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn’t have cared at that moment . . . And it was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It was not so much the money I wanted, but something else ... I know it all now . . . Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else which led me on. I wanted to find out then and there whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can overstep barriers or not, whether I dare bend down to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right . . . ”

“To kill? Have the right to kill?” Sonia clasped her hands.

“Ah, Sonia!” he cried irritably and seemed about to make some retort, but was contemptuously silent. “Don’t interrupt me, Sonia. I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me since that I did not have the right to take that path, because I am just a louse like all the rest. He was mocking me and, look, I’ve come to you now! Welcome your guest! If I weren’t a louse, would I have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman’s I only went to try . . . You may be sure of that!”

“And you murdered her!”

“But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I’ll tell you some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once and for all, forever . . . But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!” he cried in a sudden spasm of agony, “let me be!”

I had to read this over and over again. That last paragraph is shaking; Raskolnikov says it was the devil that murdered the pawnbroker, and that his only crime was murdering himself. Stunning.

The exchange between Sonia and Raskolnikov is also fascinating. Sonia emphasizes the crime, while Raskolnikov is caught up in his intellectual games. It was his intellectual hubris that he thought gave him the license to do what he did; he wanted to see what kind of a man he was. It wasn’t about the murder.

But Sonia is focused on what he actually did, and each time she brings it up it cuts through Raskolnikov’s intellectualizations. He, too, knows that he must pay the price for what he’s done; no matter the justifications that live in his mind, the gravity of his act demands atonement.

“You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?” he asked gloomily.

“Suffer and atone for your sin by it, that’s what you must do.”

Sonia keeps it completely cut and dry. She knows the only path forward for Raskolnikov is confession and suffering the consequences.

“What wrong have I done them? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That’s only a phantom . . . They destroy millions themselves and look on it as a virtue. They are crooks and scoundrels, Sonia! I am not going to them. And what should I say to them—that I murdered her, but did not dare to take the money and hid it under a stone?” he added with a bitter smile. “They would laugh at me, and would call me a fool for not getting it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn’t understand and they don’t deserve to understand. Why should I go to them? I won’t. Don’t be a child, Sonia . . . ”

“It will be too much for you to bear, too much!” she repeated, holding out her hands in despairing supplication.

“Perhaps I’ve been unfair to myself,” he observed gloomily, pondering, “perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I’ve been in too great a hurry to condemn myself. I’ll make another fight for it.” A haughty smile appeared on his lips.

“What a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole life!”

“I shall get used to it,” he said grimly and thoughtfully.

Raskolnikov still questions confession; he asks why should he confess to the same people that under different circumstances are given license to kill. Sonia emphasizes that it’s not about the other people; it’s about helping him ease the burden of his own conscience. Raskolnikov is not ready to submit though; he still views himself as superior, and still views suffering the heavy burden as preferable to submitting himself to others who he views as beneath him.

He looked at Sonia and felt how great her love was for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be loved so much. Yes, it was a strange and awful sensation! On his way to see Sonia he had felt that all his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at least part of his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned towards him, he suddenly felt that he was immeasurably unhappier than before.

Real, unconditional love confers responsibility! It’s not just free and light; it’s carries weight. Some people can’t handle it.

“We will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our cross!”

This is said by Sonia. She intuitively understands; the only way forward is to confess and jointly bear atonement.

chapter five

Cliffsnotes summary:

Lebezyatnikov has come with the information that Katerina has been evicted from her apartment, has gone mad, and is now wandering madly around the town with the children dressed in outlandish and absurd costumes. She is forcing them to sing and beg from strangers. Her speech is virtually incoherent, and her behavior is incomprehensible. Sonya rushes to her but suddenly, Rodya feels repulsed by Sonya and questions himself why he had come to her.

Raskolnikov returns to his room where he finds Dunya waiting for him. She explains that she better understands his situation because Razumihkin explained how Raskolnikov is troubled by the police and their false suspicions. She offers him her complete loyalty and love and will come to him any time that he needs her. Raskolnikov longs to tell Dunya the truth but cannot.

As Raskolnikov wanders aimlessly about the city, he comes upon Katerina. She has attracted a large crowd who have gathered to watch and laugh at her crazy antics. She is forcing the children to beg and, is arguing with strangers on the streets, and is trying to force her way into strange houses. Then as she runs through the streets, she stumbles, falls, and cuts herself. She is carried to Sonya's room nearby. A doctor is sent for, but Katerina is dying. She maintains that she needs no priest or doctor, and as she dies, Svidrigailov, who lives in the next room, enters and volunteers to undertake all of the arrangements. He tells Raskolnikov that he will use the money that he was going to give to Dunya to apply it to the care the children and will settle a large sum upon Sonya also.

By using the exact phrasing and terms that Raskolnikov used in making his confession to Sonya, he thus subtly reveals to Raskolnikov that he overheard the entire conversation between him and Sonya, and he reminds Raskolnikov that "I told you that we should come together again — I foretold it."

Highlights:

“But what I say is that if you convince a person logically that they have nothing to cry about, they’ll stop crying. That’s clear. Is it your conviction that they won’t?”

“Life would be too easy if that were so,” answered Raskolnikov.

If only people nowadays understood that; you can’t logic your way out of your emotional expression. Raskolnikov knows this.

One professor there, a scientific man of standing who died recently, believed in the possibility of such treatment. His idea was that there’s nothing really wrong with the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things.

Silly! That would be too easy, and it’s quite paternalistic. Yet that’s still how lots of modern approaches operate.

Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now that he had made her more miserable. “Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!”

Think there’s a grander intelligence at play here; she was the only one he could confess to.

No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one) when he had longed to take her in his arms and say goodbye to her, and even to tell her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.

“Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and will feel that I stole her kiss.”

This is Raskolnikov talking about his sister. He longs to open up to her, but he feels she’ll be stained by his embrace; as if it was stolen under false pretenses. He still doesn’t believe in the unconditionality of his sister’s love! But he’s right; his dishonesty to his family has a price.

A special form of misery had begun to oppress him recently. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity “on a square yard of space.” Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.

Is this acceptance? He now knows there’s no escaping the consequences of his actions. That feeling of doom is oppressive.