Summary of the part
Six chapters, three movements. The first is the family: Razumikhin takes in the mother and sister of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov on the night of the reunion, and the next day Raskolnikov himself receives them with restraint, unable to sustain the affection he pretends to feel, while Dunya at the same time disobeys Luzhin's letter and her brother's order. The second is the encirclement: Sonia's entrance into the room, the pretext of the pledge that takes Raskolnikov to Porfiry's office, Svidrigailov following Sonia to the door next to hers. The third is the center of the book: at Porfiry's house, provoked by Razumikhin and by the investigator himself, Raskolnikov sets out the theory of the article, is pressed by questions that grow ever sharper, and goes out into the street, where a stranger calls him a murderer. The part closes with the nightmare of the old woman laughing under the blows and with Svidrigailov's arrival.
Chapter I: The Night of the Reunion
Chapter summary
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov comes to on the sofa after fainting at the sight of Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova and Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova in his room, looks from one to the other in silence for two minutes, so fixedly that his mother is frightened, and sends the two of them home until the next day. He rebuffs his mother's thanks to Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin, who has decided to stay at his side. Before they leave, he tells them he has thrown out Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin and demands that Dunya refuse his hand by letter, because he is convinced she is marrying on his account; she, offended, asks by what right, and he does not answer. As they are leaving, he shouts after them that the marriage is vile.
Razumikhin, drunk, takes charge of the situation: on the stairs he prevents the mother from spending the night in her son's room, and proposes taking them to the lodging house and coming back with news and with Zossimov. On the way, exalted, he defends the right to err on one's own account, kneels on the sidewalk before the two women, and curses Luzhin for putting them in a bad boardinghouse. Dunya calms him and trusts him. Razumikhin comes back to say the sick man is asleep, and then comes back with Zossimov, who sees in the young man a fixed idea close to monomania, but says the presence of relatives helps as long as no new shocks are caused.
Analysis
Ты выходишь за Лужина для меня. А я жертвы не принимаю.
, You are marrying Luzhin for my sake. And I do not accept sacrifice.
Raskolnikov takes the choice away from Dunya and puts it on his own account: if she marries for his sake, he can forbid it. The sentence also frees him from a debt, because refusing the sacrifice means refusing to stay in debt to a bargain. The text supports two readings: the generosity of someone who does not want to be the price of his sister, or the defense of someone who cannot bear to owe his own future to this marriage.
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Chapter II: The Morning of Shame and Luzhin's Letter
Chapter summary
Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin wakes at eight with the shame of the night before: drunk, he cursed Dunya's fiancé in front of her. He brushes his only suit and, out of stubbornness, decides not to shave. Zossimov, who had slept at the landlady's house, hears from Razumikhin that the sick man is asleep and orders him not to be woken, says there is no fixed idea at all, since it was Razumikhin himself who described his friend as a monomaniac, and tells Razumikhin that Zamyotov had told Porfiry everything too. At nine, Razumikhin arrives at the lodging house, where the two women have been waiting since seven, and answers Pulcheria's questions about Rodion's last year, leaving out the scene at the police station.
The mother tells how her son wanted to marry the landlady's daughter, sickly and without a dowry, who died soon after, and fears that he will ride roughshod over any obstacle. She then shows Luzhin's note: he will come at eight in the evening and will withdraw if Rodion is present; and he hints that Rodion gave twenty-five rubles to a young woman of notorious conduct under the pretext of a funeral. Dunya decides that her brother must be present at the meeting, despite the letter. As they climb the stairs, the door of Raskolnikov's landlady opens a crack, two black eyes examine them, and the door slams shut.
Analysis
Chapter III: The Confrontation with Mother and Sister
Chapter summary
When Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin arrives with the two women, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is dressed, washed, and combed, almost healthy, but pale and gloomy, like someone enduring physical pain. He kisses his mother and sister, holds out his hand to Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova with a true smile, and the reconciliation is made without words. He explains the blood on his clothes: the day before he helped carry a run-over civil servant, who died, and gave the widow all the money his mother had sent for the burial; he asks forgiveness for this and says that to help, one must have the right. His mother tells of the sudden death of Marfa Petrovna, Svidrigailov's wife, and Raskolnikov asks the two of them whether they are afraid of him; Dunya says yes.
Then, curt, he demands once more that Dunya choose between him and Luzhin; she answers that she sacrifices herself for no one, that she marries for herself and marries only if he values her; he accuses her of selling herself, and she, losing her composure, says she has not yet killed anyone. Raskolnikov turns pale and nearly faints. Composed again, he reads Luzhin's note, calls its style legalistic, and dismantles the slander about the funeral: he gave the money to the widow, not to the daughter, whom he saw for the first time the day before. He accepts whatever the two of them decide, and Dunya asks him to come at eight.
Analysis
Chapter IV: Sonia, the Pledge, and the Stranger
Chapter summary
Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, daughter of Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, enters the room with the shyness of a girl, dressed modestly, and nearly turns back on seeing the crowded room. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov recognizes her after a delay, feels pity, and introduces her to his mother and sister in a firm tone as the daughter of the civil servant who died crushed before his eyes. Sonia passes on Katerina Ivanovna's invitation to the funeral and, looking around the room, says that he gave them everything the day before. Dunya makes her a full curtsy; Raskolnikov turns back to Sonia, his face clear, to say that the dead rest and the living still have to live.
In the room, he takes Razumikhin to the window and asks about Porfiry, who is handling the murder case: he says he has two objects pawned with the old woman and wants to declare them to Porfiry in order to get them back without alarming his mother; Razumikhin proposes going together. Taking leave of Sonia in the street, he says he will visit her today. A stranger of about fifty, who had heard his name, follows her home and knocks at the door next to hers. On the way to Porfiry's, Raskolnikov provokes Razumikhin and enters laughing.
Analysis
Chapter V: The Article, at Porfiry's House
Chapter summary
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov enters trying to hold back his laughter, and the whole scene takes on the air of a genuine joy, which serves his purpose. Porfiry Petrovich, in a dressing gown, is a short, stout man with watery eyes, and Zamyotov is in a corner. Raskolnikov lays out the case of the pledge, and Porfiry says a statement to the police is enough. He then asks how the discussion of the day before, about whether crime exists or not, ended, and Razumikhin sums up the socialist doctrine that crime is a protest against a defective social organization, and grows heated against it.
Porfiry turns to Raskolnikov's article on crime, written six months earlier, and sums up the idea at the end of the text: people divide into ordinary, who must obey, and extraordinary, who have the right to transgress the law. Raskolnikov corrects him: it is not an official right, but the right of the extraordinary man to allow his conscience to step over obstacles, if the execution of his idea requires it. He cites Kepler, Newton, and the lawgivers of history, Lycurgus, Solon, Muhammad, Napoleon, as examples of the extraordinary: the ordinary are masters of the present, the extraordinary are masters of the future. Razumikhin concludes that he permits blood according to conscience, and Porfiry confirms: it is more terrible.
Porfiry asks whether he did not imagine himself extraordinary, and he answers that if he had stepped over the obstacle, he would not say so. Zamyotov hints that some future Napoleon killed the old woman. Porfiry invites him to the police station the next day and asks whether, climbing the stairs at that hour, he saw the painters in the open apartment on the second floor. Raskolnikov, noticing the trap, says no and recalls a civil servant moving out on the fourth floor; Razumikhin reminds him that the painters had worked there on the day of the crime. Porfiry apologizes, and the two of them leave, gloomy.
Analysis
Chapter VI: The Man Who Rises from the Ground
Chapter summary
On the way back, Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin tries to dispel the suspicions about Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, who replies that the two of them have no facts at all, only a loose idea, and that this is why they are trying to shake him. Razumikhin asks whether, having done that, he would say he saw the painters, and Raskolnikov explains how an experienced culprit would defend himself. He runs home and searches the hole in the wallpaper, finding nothing. On going out, the porter points out to him a man who looks like a petty bourgeois and who had asked for him; Raskolnikov follows him in silence until the man says he is the murderer.
At home, on the sofa, feverish, he says to himself that he did not kill a person, he killed a principle, and that he really is a louse; he imagines the prophet with the saber who commands obedience; he hates his mother and sister and thinks of Lizaveta and Sonia. He falls asleep and dreams that the man leads him up the stairs to an empty room, where he strikes the old woman twice and she laughs in silence. He wakes and sees a stranger sitting beside the sofa, who has waited ten minutes; when Raskolnikov asks what they want, the man introduces himself: Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.
Analysis
Reading of the Part
Analysis