What It Is
Two pairs of crosses and a crossroads. The first pair hangs from the neck of Alyona Ivanovna, and Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov cuts it off with the axe and throws it back onto her chest. The second belongs to Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova and Lizaveta Ivanovna, who exchanged crosses out of friendship: Sonia kept Lizaveta's copper one, and the cypress one, the cross of simple folk, is the one she places on Raskolnikov's chest when he goes to give himself up. The crossroads is the place where Sonia tells him to kiss the earth and tell the world that he killed, and it is where he, in the square, carries out the first half of the order.
Where It Appears
The cross enters the book as a punishment that a drunkard asks for himself. In chapter II of Part One, in the tavern, Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov gets to his feet with his arm outstretched before those who laugh at him and says what he thinks he deserves, before imagining a judgment in which the Lord will receive the drunkards and the weak precisely because they did not think themselves worthy:
меня жалеть не за что! Меня распять надо, распять на кресте, а не жалеть!, there is nothing to pity me for! I should be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied!
In the dream of chapter V of Part One, while Mikolka kills the mare, the crowd shouts at him that he has no cross on his chest. An old man is the first to say it, and then many voices repeat it: it is the Russian way of saying that someone has lost the fear of God.
In chapter VII of Part One the crosses are objects. After killing Alyona Ivanovna, Raskolnikov cuts with the axe, without touching the body, the cord around her neck, on which hang two crosses, a small medal and a little chamois pouch. He keeps the pouch and throws the crosses onto the dead woman's chest. The narrator describes the two as cypress and copper, with an enameled icon beside them.
The crossroads appears before it becomes an order. In chapter VI of Part Two, after being thrown out of the old woman's building, Raskolnikov stops in the middle of an intersection like someone waiting for another's last word and not receiving it, and goes on to where the crowd is. In chapter VI of Part Three, the petty bourgeois man who called him a murderer parts from him at an intersection and turns left, and Raskolnikov stands still, watching; only farther along does the man turn once to look at him.
In chapter IV of Part Four, the New Testament on Sonia's chest of drawers is an object that Lizaveta Ivanovna brought at her request. It is the first sign of the bond between the two women, which the exchange of crosses will confirm in chapter IV of Part Five.
In chapter IV of Part Five, after hearing the confession, Sonia does not yet speak of any cross: she gives an order, and the order has a set place, the crossroads.
Поди сейчас, сию же минуту, стань на перекрестке, поклонись, поцелуй сначала землю, которую ты осквернил, а потом поклонись всему свету, на все четыре стороны, и скажи всем, вслух: «Я убил!» Тогда бог опять тебе жизни пошлет, Go now, this very minute, stand at a crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth that you have defiled, and then bow to the whole world, to all four sides, and say to everyone, aloud: “I killed!” Then God will send you life again.
Still in chapter IV of Part Five, he refuses the order, and Sonia offers him the cypress cross. She says she will keep the copper one, which was Lizaveta's, with whom she exchanged: she gave her an icon and received the cross. In the Russian she adds that they will suffer together and bear the cross together. Raskolnikov stretches out his hand and withdraws it: not now, better later. Sonia agrees: when he goes to his suffering, she will put the cross on him, they will pray together and go.
In chapter V of Part Five, the same day, Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova takes her children out into the streets, and Lebezyatnikov says that she makes them stop at crossroads and in front of shops to sing and dance, with people trailing behind. The crossroads that Sonia had proposed to Raskolnikov as a place of confession serves, for Katerina, as a stage.
In chapter VIII of Part Six Raskolnikov comes to Sonia saying, in a mocking tone, that he has come for the crosses, since she sent him to the crossroads, and asks whether she lost her nerve at the crunch. Sonia takes the two crosses out of the drawer, crosses herself and crosses him, and what she does with them closes the agreement about the confession:
Sonia places on Raskolnikov's chest only the cypress cross, the cross of simple folk, and keeps the copper one, which she exchanged with Lizaveta Ivanovna. In Part Five he had refused the cypress one, saying it would be better later, and she had agreed to give it when he went to his suffering, so the scene fulfills the agreement; the victim's cross stays with the woman who will accompany him.
Still in chapter VIII of Part Six, he answers mockingly, asks to see the copper one and asks whether it was the one Lizaveta was wearing at the minute of her death. He then recalls two others, a silver one and an icon, which he says he threw onto the old woman's chest, and adds that they would come in handy now. The description does not match that of chapter VII of Part One, which gave them as cypress and copper, and the Russian does not reconcile the two. At Sonia's insistence, he crosses himself several times.
Это, значит, символ того, что крест беру на себя, хе-хе! И точно, я до сих пор мало страдал!, So that is a symbol that I take the cross upon myself, heh-heh! And it's true, until now I have suffered little!
Still in chapter VIII of Part Six, out in the street, he understands that the visit had no other purpose. It was not the crosses he went to get.
мне слез ее надобно было, мне испуг ее видеть надобно было, смотреть, как сердце ее болит и терзается! Надо было хоть обо что-нибудь зацепиться, помедлить, на человека посмотреть!, I needed her tears, I needed to see her fright, to watch how her heart aches and is torn! I needed to cling to something, to linger a little, to look at a person!
Still in chapter VIII of Part Six, he remembers Sonia's order, and the memory becomes act.
Поди на перекресток, поклонись народу, поцелуй землю, потому что ты и пред ней согрешил, и скажи всему миру вслух: „Я убийца!“, Go to a crossroads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, because you sinned against it too, and say to the whole world, aloud: ‘I am a murderer!’
Still in chapter VIII of Part Six, in the square, the second half of the order, saying aloud that he killed, freezes in him, and the confession is left for the police station; Sonia has followed him, hidden behind a stall. The first half he carries out right there, under the laughter of those who take him for a drunk or a pilgrim on the way to Jerusalem:
Он стал на колени среди площади, поклонился до земли и поцеловал эту грязную землю, с наслаждением и счастием., He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed to the ground and kissed that dirty earth, with delight and happiness.
In the book's two final chapters the crosses are not named. The object that remains between Sonia and Raskolnikov in Siberia is the Gospel, which chapter II of the Epilogue leaves under his pillow.
What It Means
The two pairs of crosses travel in opposite directions. The pawnbroker's are cut from a body and thrown back onto it in chapter VII of Part One; those of Sonia and Lizaveta were exchanged by choice and pass from the one who suffers to the one who is about to suffer. The cypress cross that Sonia gives is that of simple folk, and Raskolnikov receives it as a symbol of taking up the cross and mocks it in the same breath, saying that until now he has suffered little. The crossroads brings the two gestures together: Sonia describes it in chapter IV of Part Five as the place where one asks forgiveness of the earth and of the world, and chapter VIII of Part Six shows the first step, taken without anyone understanding it.
In Russian, crossroads (перекрёсток) and cross (крест) share a root.
The copper cross stays with Sonia and the cypress one goes with Raskolnikov, so that victim and murderer are linked by an exchange the two women made before him: the one who carries Lizaveta's cross is the woman who will follow him to Siberia. Two readings of the cypress cross. In the first, it is an offer of penance, which he postpones in chapter IV of Part Five and accepts with irony in chapter VIII of Part Six. In the second, it is an offer of companionship, the Russian "together," and what the following scene shows he went to get is Sonia's tears, not the crosses.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Suffering, Redemption, Guilt.
- Themes of the work: Suffering, Guilt.
- Characters: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, Lizaveta Ivanovna, Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova.
- Neighboring symbols: the resurrection of Lazarus, because it was Lizaveta who brought Sonia's Gospel; the axe, which cuts the old woman's cord; and the dream of the mare, where the crowd tells Mikolka that he has no cross.