Summary of the part
Five chapters revolve around a reversal: the part opens with a false accusation and reaches, at its center, a true confession, and it is the false one that gives Raskolnikov the courage to make the true one. He leaves Luzhin's public unmasking with a sense of victory, and it is in that state, not in repentance, that he climbs to Sonia's room. Hence the inverted structure of the central scene: he hands over the fact and refuses the gesture she asks for, because he recognizes no authority in those who would judge him and fears their laughter. What he seeks is not forgiveness, it is company for his torment. Katerina Ivanovna's death and the entrance of Svidrigailov, who heard everything through the wall and returns to Raskolnikov the question of the louse in a joking tone, close the part, showing the real cost of the theory: not a free man, but a sequence of wrecked lives around him and a cynical double who applies it without discomfort, Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.
Chapter I: Luzhin's Subscription
Chapter summary
On the morning after the break with Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova and her mother, Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin wakes with his self-regard wounded: the landlord of the apartment rented for the wedding demands the full penalty of the contract, the furniture shop will not return the deposit, and he blames Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. In the room he shares with Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov, his former pupil, he learns from the boarding house keeper that the funeral rites of Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov will be solemn and that he and Raskolnikov were invited. He lives there out of thrift and out of fear of the progressives of Petersburg, and he judges that the young man, banal and credulous, gives him entry to that circle without risk. While he checks bundles of securities and banknotes on the table, he taunts the young man with the beating he gave Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova and with the reputation of Marmeladov's daughter. Lebezyatnikov defends himself with the commune, the free woman, and useful work, and says he understands only one word: useful. Luzhin then asks him to call Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova and to stay in the room, and first asks in a whisper whether Raskolnikov is at the funeral. With Sonia, who is startled, he apologizes for not attending, states that the money must not pass through Katerina's hands, proposes a subscription, arranges to meet her at seven in his room, and gives her ten rubles, asking that his name be kept out of it. Part of the money remains in sight on the table. Lebezyatnikov, who saw everything, shakes Luzhin's hand and praises him for his humanity, and soon launches into a speech about free marriage, while Luzhin rubs his hands, absorbed, chewing over something else.
Analysis
и уж, конечно, если бы можно было сейчас, одним только желанием, умертвить Раскольникова, то Петр Петрович немедленно произнес бы это желание
, and of course, if it were possible right now, by a mere wish, to make Raskolnikov die, Pyotr Petrovich would pronounce that wish on the spot.
Luzhin gathers into one person the losses of the morning (the bride, the apartment, his dignity), and that person is Raskolnikov. The narrator does not speak of a plan, but the anger already has a target and is already looking for a way to repair the offense. Two readings: the outburst of someone who has just been rejected, or the point where revenge begins.
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Chapter II: The Funeral Rites
Chapter summary
Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova spent about ten of the twenty-odd rubles that Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov gave her for the burial, on funeral rites no one asked her to hold, out of honor for her husband, poor woman's pride, and the wish to show the lodgers that she was raised in a colonel's house. The table ends up with poor drink and food from the kitchen of Amalia Ivanovna, the landlady, but the guests she wanted to impress do not come: neither the lodgers of standing, nor Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, nor the lady and her daughter who had complained of the noise. They sit down drunk: wretched clerks and a Pole. Katerina treats Amalia coldly, for holding her responsible for the absences. Raskolnikov arrives as they return from the cemetery, and she welcomes him as the only educated guest and, between coughing fits that stain her handkerchief with blood, pours out her heart. Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova conveys Luzhin's apologies, dressed up to soothe her. Excited, Katerina says she will open a boarding school for young noblewomen and promises Sonia a place as assistant. A remark by Amalia about the bed linen turns into a shouting match and a dispute over genealogies, until Amalia shouts something about the yellow ticket and Katerina throws herself at her to snatch off her cap. At that moment Luzhin appears at the door.
Analysis
Chapter III: The Public Accusation
Chapter summary
Katerina runs to Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin asking for protection against Amalia, and he says he has come to speak with Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, who is beside Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. He accuses her of having taken a hundred-ruble note from his table right after his visit, and says he will drop the matter if the note turns up. Sonia, astonished, denies it and offers the ten rubles, which he refuses. Amalia says she always knew that she stole. Katerina throws the ten rubles in Luzhin's face and turns out Sonia's pockets herself; from the right pocket falls the hundred-ruble note, folded in eight. She shouts that her stepdaughter sold herself for her children. Lebezyatnikov, from the doorway, calls Luzhin a slanderer: he saw him slip the note into Sonia's pocket when he took his leave, and thought it was charity. Raskolnikov reconstructs the motive: Luzhin saw him give money to Katerina, wrote to Raskolnikov's mother that her son had given it to Sonia, and by proving Sonia a thief he would win back the favor of Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova and her mother and take his revenge. Luzhin threatens to sue, calls the two of them atheists, and leaves half an hour later. Sonia has a fit of nerves and runs away. Amalia blames Katerina and throws her out, and Katerina goes into the street in search of justice. Raskolnikov goes after Sonia.
Analysis
Chapter IV: The Confession
Chapter summary
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov goes to the room of Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, still excited by his victory over Luzhin, but at the door he feels weakness and fear and asks himself whether he must really say who killed Lizaveta Ivanovna; he realizes he can neither refuse to say it nor postpone it. Sonia had been waiting for him. He puts forward a hypothesis: if she knew that Luzhin would destroy Katerina and the children, who would have to die, Luzhin or Katerina? Sonia refuses to decide: it is not she who judges. He gives way and says the question was a plea for forgiveness. He sits on the bed, recalls that he said yesterday that he would say who killed Lizaveta, and asks her to guess, speaking of the murderer in the third person: he did not want to kill her, he killed her by accident, when she came in, after going to kill the old woman alone. He tells her to look carefully, and she understands, kneels, embraces him, and promises to follow him to hard labor. He says that the jewels and the purse are hidden under a stone in a stranger's courtyard, and that he called her so that she would not leave him. He gives several reasons (Napoleon, his mother and sister without means, the louse, self-love) and disavows each; finally he says he killed for himself, to know whether he was a louse or a man, and that he killed himself, not the old woman. Sonia tells him to go to a crossroads, kiss the earth, bow to the world, and say aloud that he has killed. He refuses: he will not go to them, and he will fight. She offers him the cypress cross, keeping Lizaveta's; he holds out his hand and takes it back, not now. Lebezyatnikov knocks at the door.
Analysis
Chapter V: Katerina's Death
Chapter summary
Lebezyatnikov enters with the news that Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova has gone mad: she was thrown out of the house, tried in vain to approach a general in Marmeladov's name, and threatens to go into the streets with the children, singing and dancing. Sonia runs there, and Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov goes home and feels terribly alone. Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova comes to see him and offers herself to him entirely, should he ever need it; he replies only that Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin is a good man, and takes his leave in a way that frightens her. Lebezyatnikov catches up with him in the street: Katerina has left with the children. They find her at the edge of the canal, with the boys in costume, teaching them to sing and dance before the curious. A guard orders her to move on, the boys run off, and she runs after them, stumbles, and falls, with blood on her chest. They carry her to the room of Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova. She refuses the priest, saying she has no sins, and dies with a cry that they have worn out the old mare. Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, who appeared among those present, tells Raskolnikov that he will pay for the burial, place the three children in institutions, and pull Sonia out of the mire. When Raskolnikov asks how he knows, he replies that he lives on the other side of the wall.
Analysis
Reading of the Part
Analysis