Symbols

The Axe The weapon of the two murders of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov decides long before the crime that it will be an axe, sews a loop inside his coat to carry it, sees his plan to take one from the landlady's kitchen fall through, and ends up finding... The Crosses Two pairs of crosses and a crossroads. The first pair hangs from the neck of Alyona Ivanovna, and Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov cuts it with the axe and tosses it back onto her chest. The second belongs to Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova and Lizaveta Ivanovna,... The Resurrection of Lazarus Chapter 11 of the Gospel of John, the story of Lazarus of Bethany, which Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova reads aloud to Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov in her room, and the copy of the Gospel that contains it, which, in chapter II of the Epilogue, lies under his... The Dream of the Mare Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov's dream on Petrovsky Island, in chapter V of Part One. He is a seven-year-old boy on a holiday, walking with his father to the cemetery where his grandmother and a little brother who died are buried, and at the door of a tavern... The Cubicle The room of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov at the top of a five-story building, which the narrator compares to a closet at the opening of the book and which his mother calls a coffin. It is small and low, with yellow wallpaper peeling off, and a sofa that... The Dream of the Plague The feverish dream of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov in the prison hospital in Siberia, recounted in chapter II of the Epilogue, at the end of Lent and in Easter week: the whole world condemned to a plague unlike any seen before, coming from the depths of Asia...