Part One: The Crime
Everything is in man's hands, and he lets everything slip past his nose, purely out of cowardice... that is already an axiom
Explanation and analysis
Raskolnikov, a poor student of Petersburg, has just hurried down the stairs of his house, nearly running, so as not to cross the landlady to whom he owes money. He is on his way to the home of an old pawnbroker, where he is going to do what he calls a trial run of a plan he has been brooding over for a month. Still in the street, speaking to himself, he draws from his own flight a general rule.
The sentence shows a man who turns a small shame into a law of the world. Fleeing from a creditor seems to him proof that the only obstacle between man and what he wants is cowardice, and the word axiom gives the idea the air of something that needs no proof. Here there is pride and urgency: if all that is missing is boldness, then daring becomes a duty, and the plan stops being a game to become a test of character. At the same time, Raskolnikov himself contradicts the rule soon after, accusing himself of talking too much to avoid doing anything and calling the project a fantasy. The reader sees that thought runs faster than will, and that he looks in theory for the strength his body does not yet have.
The text supports two readings. It may be an incitement, with which he pushes himself into action, calling cowardice what may have been prudence. It may also be an advance defense: if everything depends on courage, then any future retreat will be only his weakness, and not an error of the idea.
Do you understand, do you understand, dear sir, what it means when there is no longer anywhere to go?
Explanation and analysis
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But the poor boy no longer knows where he is. Screaming, he forces his way through the crowd to the mare, throws his arms around her dead, bloodied muzzle, and kisses it, kisses her eyes, her lips...
Explanation and analysis
Kill her and keep her money, so that afterward, with its help, you can devote yourself to the service of all humanity and the common cause: [...] One death and a hundred lives in exchange, well, that's arithmetic!
Explanation and analysis
It was as if he had caught a piece of his clothing in the wheel of a machine, and it had begun to pull him in
Explanation and analysis
He took the axe out completely, raised it with both hands, barely feeling himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought it down on her head, with the blunt side
Explanation and analysis
Part Two: The Inquiry
he had the impression that, at that instant, he had cut himself off, as with scissors, from everyone and everything
Explanation and analysis
Science, for its part, says: love, above all others, only yourself, for everything in the world is founded on personal interest
Explanation and analysis
the terrible word, like the bolt of the door that day, kept jumping on his lips: he was about to let it out, he only had to release it, he only had to pronounce it!
Explanation and analysis
there is life! Haven't I just now lived? My life has not yet died along with the old woman!
Explanation and analysis
Part Three: The Theory
people are divided, in a certain way, into ordinary and extraordinary. The ordinary have to live obeying, and have no right to transgress the law, for they are, would you believe it, ordinary. The extraordinary, on the other hand, have the right to commit every kind of crime and to transgress the law as they please, precisely because they are extraordinary
Explanation and analysis
I simply insinuated that the extraordinary man has the right... that is, not the official right, but he himself has the right to allow his conscience to overstep... certain obstacles, and only in the case where the execution of his idea (sometimes saving, perhaps, for all humanity) requires it
Explanation and analysis
The living soul will ask for life, the living soul will not submit to mechanics, the living soul is distrustful, the living soul is reactionary!
Explanation and analysis
The Murderer Is You
Explanation and analysis
It wasn't a person I killed, it was a principle! The principle, that I killed, but I did not overstep, I stayed on this side... All I managed was to kill
Explanation and analysis
I really am a louse
Explanation and analysis
Part Four: The Siege
instead of all that, just imagine, there will be a little room, something like a village bathhouse, black with soot, with spiders in every corner, and that's it: that is the whole of eternity!
Explanation and analysis
It was not before you that I bowed, it was before all human suffering that I bowed
Explanation and analysis
And what would I be without God?
Explanation and analysis
Together we are cursed, and together we shall go!
Explanation and analysis
Have you ever seen a moth before a candle? Well, he will stay, he will stay all the time around me, circling as around a candle [...] and tightening, tightening the circle, and bang! He flies straight into my mouth!
Explanation and analysis
Freedom and power, and above all power! Over every trembling creature and over the whole anthill!.. That is the goal!
Explanation and analysis
Part Five: The Confession
That Lizaveta... he didn't want to kill... He... killed her without meaning to... He wanted to kill the old woman... when she was alone... and he arrived... And then Lizaveta came in... And then he... killed her too
Explanation and analysis
I needed to know then, and to know quickly: am I a louse, like everyone, or a man? Will I manage to overstep or not? Do I dare to bend down and pick it up or not? Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right...
Explanation and analysis
Was it the old woman I killed? It was myself I killed, not the old woman! Right there, all at once, I destroyed myself, forever!..
Explanation and analysis
Go now, this very instant, stop at a crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth you have defiled, and then bow down before the whole world, to the four corners, and say to everyone, aloud: "I killed!" Then God will send you life again
Explanation and analysis
Enough!.. It's time!.. Goodbye, poor thing!.. They've worn out the old mare!.. She has burst!
Explanation and analysis
Part Six: The Surrender
"What, who killed?..." he repeated, as if he did not believe his own ears. "Why, you killed, Rodion Romanovich! You yourself killed..."
Explanation and analysis
don't laugh at this, there is an idea in suffering. Mikolka is the one who is right
Explanation and analysis
that I killed a foul, harmful louse, an old moneylender who serves no one, for whose death forty sins are forgiven, who sucked the lifeblood out of the poor, and that is what is a crime? I don't dwell on it and I don't mean to wash it away
Explanation and analysis
So this is the symbol that I take up the cross, he-he! And it's true, until now I have suffered very little!
Explanation and analysis
He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed to the ground, and kissed that filthy earth, with delight and happiness
Explanation and analysis
It was I who killed, on that occasion, the civil servant's old wife and her sister, Lizaveta, with an axe, and robbed them
Explanation and analysis
Epilogue: The Resurrection
he did not repent of his crime
Explanation and analysis
each one thought the truth was contained in himself, and only in himself
Explanation and analysis
Love resurrected them: the heart of one held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other
Explanation and analysis
but here a new story begins: the story of a man's gradual renewal, of his gradual rebirth, of his gradual passage from one world to another, of contact with a new reality until then entirely unknown. That could form the theme of a new account, but our present account is at an end