Crime and Punishment
Characters
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, Rodya to his mother and sister, is the protagonist: a former law student in Petersburg, so poor that he has given up his classes and owes his landlady for the cubbyhole where he lives (chapter I of Part One), and the author of...
Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova
Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, Sonia, is the daughter of the first marriage of the retired civil servant Marmeladov. She was pushed onto the yellow ticket of prostitution because her consumptive stepmother and the stepmother's three young children had nothing...
Porfiry Petrovich
Examining magistrate in charge of the case of the murdered pawnbroker, and a relative of Razumikhin (chapter IV of Part Two), which places him within the life of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov by way of society before placing him by way of the police.
Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov
Rural landowner, former card cheat, widower of Marfa Petrovna, the woman who redeemed him from debtors' prison (chapter I of Part Four) through a verbal contract of six conditions, in which formal fidelity was traded for freedom in the bedroom (chapter IV of...
Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova
Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova, usually called Dunya and Dunechka by her mother, is the sister of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. She is indispensable to understanding the work, because her engagement to Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin is what sets the crime in motion,...
Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin
Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin, a former university classmate of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former student like him and as poor as him: tall, badly shaved, strong, capable of drinking all night or of drinking nothing, of spending a winter without heating...
Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova
Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova is the mother of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and of Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova, a widow who lives on a small pension and has placed all of the household's hopes in her two children.
Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov
Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov is a retired civil servant of more than fifty, a titular councillor, a drunkard of elaborate speech, who introduces himself to Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov in a basement tavern and chooses him as a listener because he takes him...
Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova
Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova is the officer's widow who married Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov weeping and wringing her hands, because no relative would take her in, and who lives with her three young children in a passage room of a noisy boarding house,...
Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin
Piotr Petrovich Luzhin, court councillor and rising lawyer, is the fiancé of Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova. His dramatic importance is medium, and its weight lies in his function: it is he who states the theory of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov without...
Lizaveta Ivanovna
Lizaveta Ivanovna is the younger half-sister of the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, and the second victim of the axe. She hardly speaks and dies in chapter VII of Part One, and yet she weighs on the whole book, for a reason the common reading tends to miss: it is...
Other characters
- Alyona Ivanovna: the pawnbroker who lends at interest and mistreats her sister Lizaveta, visited by Raskolnikov during the rehearsal of the crime and later killed by him (Part One, Chapter I)
- Kapernaumov: the tailor in whose house Sonia rents her room, of whom Marmeladov speaks in the tavern (Part One, Chapter II)
- Amalia Ivanovna: Lippewechsel, the Marmeladovs' landlady, with whom Katerina contests the respect of the tenants (Part One, Chapter II)
- Nastasya: the servant of Raskolnikov's landlady, who brings him tea and food and looks after him through his fever (Part One, Chapter III)
- Praskovya Pavlovna Zarnitsyna: Raskolnikov's landlady, mother of his late fiancée, who threatens to report him to the police over the debt (Part One, Chapter III)
- Marfa Petrovna: Svidrigailov's wife, who beats Dunya by mistake, later makes amends with her and dies suddenly, mentioned in Raskolnikov's mother's letter (Part One, Chapter III)
- Vakhrushin: the merchant from his hometown, a friend of Raskolnikov's father, to whom his mother owes the advance on her pension and who hands him the money she sent (Part One, Chapter III)
- Mikolka: the drunken peasant of Raskolnikov's dream, who beats the mare to death (Part One, Chapter V)
- Koch: the corpulent customer of the old woman, who knocks at her door while Raskolnikov is inside (Part One, Chapter VII)
- Pestryakov: the student who reaches the old woman's door right after Koch, is arrested with him and then released (Part Two, Chapter I)
- Ilya Petrovich: the lieutenant at the police station who receives Raskolnikov shouting and, in the end, hears his confession (Part Two, Chapter I)
- Nikodim Fomich: the police inspector who calms the lieutenant and argues with him over the arrest of Koch and Pestryakov (Part Two, Chapter I)
- Luiza Ivanovna: the housewife, suspected and accused of brawling, whose complaint occupies the lieutenant while Raskolnikov waits (Part Two, Chapter I)
- Chebarov: the business adviser who bought Raskolnikov's promissory note from the landlady and enforces it (Part Two, Chapter I)
- Zametov: the clerk at the police station, an acquaintance of Razumikhin, who looks for Raskolnikov's sock and hears from him the hypothesis that he is the murderer (Part Two, Chapter III)
- Zossimov: the young doctor, a friend of Razumikhin, who treats Raskolnikov and notes that only the murder pulls him out of apathy (Part Two, Chapter III)
- Nikolai: the painter who pawns the old woman's earrings at Duchkin's tavern, is arrested and ends up accusing himself of the crime (Part Two, Chapter IV)
- Mitka: Nikolai's fellow painter, with whom he played at rolling down the gate on the day of the crime (Part Two, Chapter IV)
- Duchkin: the owner of the tavern across from the building, who takes Nikolai's earrings to the police (Part Two, Chapter IV)
- Duklida: the street girl to whom Raskolnikov gives coins shortly before he provokes Zametov (Part Two, Chapter VI)
- Polenka: Katerina's eldest daughter, who runs after Raskolnikov and promises to pray for him (Part Two, Chapter VII)
- Resslich: Gertrud Karlovna Resslich, the keeper of the disreputable house where Svidrigailov rents the room next to Sonia's (Part Three, Chapter IV)
- The petty bourgeois: the furrier who follows Raskolnikov in the street and calls him a murderer, and later asks his forgiveness (Part Three, Chapter VI)
- Filipp: Svidrigailov's servant who, according to Luzhin, was driven to death by persecution (Part Four, Chapter II)
- Lebezyatnikov: the young progressive who shares a room with Luzhin and disproves the accusation against Sonia (Part Five, Chapter I)
- Achilles: the sentry in the brass helmet on the fire tower, in front of whom Svidrigailov kills himself (Part Six, Chapter VI)