The Axe

What It Is

The weapon of the two murders committed by Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. Long before the crime, Raskolnikov decides 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 one by chance under the porter's bench. With it he kills Alyona Ivanovna, with the blunt side, and Lizaveta Ivanovna, with the edge. He washes the blade in the kitchen bucket and returns the axe to the same bench. After that the object leaves the scene, and the book keeps the word: the image of the blow to the head, Zamyotov's joke, the confession naming the weapon, the astonishment of the prisoners.

Where It Appears

Before it becomes an object, the axe is an image that Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is frightened by. In chapter V of Part One, on waking from the dream of the mare, he says to himself, in plain words, what the plan would require: take the axe, strike the head, split the skull. He trembles like a leaf. Within the dream itself the word already circulates, because someone in the crowd shouts that the mare should be finished off with axe blows, and Mikolka kills her with the iron bar.

In chapter VI of Part One the weapon takes shape, first as a loop. Raskolnikov tears a strip from an old shirt and sews it inside his coat, under the left armpit, an idea of two weeks, so that he can carry the axe without holding it in sight of anyone. Then comes the axe itself, which he had chosen as the weapon long before, because he does not trust the garden penknife or his own strength, and which he intends to take from the landlady's kitchen. He goes down the thirteen steps softly and finds Nastasya at home, hanging up laundry and watching him the whole time. He leaves shattered, without a weapon, and stops under the gate asking himself why he assumed she would be out. Then he sees something gleam under the porter's bench, where the porter is not, and it is an axe, which he fastens to the loop and takes with him. The find cheers him, and he credits the devil for it, not reason.

In chapter VII of Part One the axe does what the loop was made to allow. When the old woman turns toward the window, her back to him, to undo the difficult knot of the false pledge, he takes the axe out of the loop and brings the blunt side down on her head, almost without effort. The strength only comes after that first blow, and with it he gives two more, still with the blunt side, until she dies.

Still in chapter VII of Part One, with Lizaveta Ivanovna, the axe changes sides. She has come back earlier than expected and sees her sister dead; he throws himself at her with the axe raised, and the blow falls with the edge and opens her forehead up to the top of the skull. The pawnbroker, whom the plan anticipated, dies from the blunt side; Lizaveta, whom the plan did not anticipate, dies from the edge.

Still in chapter VII of Part One, he washes his hands and the axe in the kitchen bucket. When the visitors knock at the door, which is bolted from inside, he stands with the axe clutched in his hand, ready to fight if they come in. He leaves without being seen and returns the axe to the porter's bench, under the logs where it had been.

In chapter I of Part Two, the next morning, he tears out the loop he had sewn under his armpit for the axe and finds blood in the lining of his pocket and on his stocking. What frightens him most is having forgotten the loop and the stains, a sign that memory and judgment are abandoning him.

In chapter VI of Part Two, in front of Zamyotov, the terrible word he almost lets slip recalls the instant when, behind the door of the old woman's apartment, with the axe jumping in his hand, he wanted to shout at those knocking. The axe has already gone back to the bench, and what returns is the memory of the body.

In chapter V of Part Three the axe returns as a joke. When Porfiry Petrovich asks who, in Russia today, does not consider himself a Napoleon, Zamyotov asks from the corner whether some future Napoleon did not also dispatch old Alyona Ivanovna with an axe the week before. Raskolnikov does not answer and fixes his gaze on Porfiry.

In chapter VI of Part Three he accuses himself of having taken the axe knowing what he was: he should have known he would not hold up. Asleep, he dreams the crime again, takes the axe out of the loop and strikes the old woman twice, and she does not move, and with each blow the laughter and whispering from the other room grow louder.

In chapter V of Part Four the image of the back returns without the object. To mock the method of the examining magistrate, Raskolnikov describes the interrogation as a kind of doze over distant matters that ends by stunning the accused, suddenly, on the top of the head, with the most dangerous question. Porfiry Petrovich accepts the image and completes it: the blow, he says, comes from the back, as Raskolnikov himself would have said, although the word back never came out of his mouth. The top of the head is where the blow fell on Alyona Ivanovna, in chapter VII of Part One. In Russian, the verb Raskolnikov uses for stunning is the same one the dream of the mare uses for Mikolka's blow with the iron bar.

In chapter VI of Part Four the first thing the false confessor names is the axe. Nikolai says he killed Alyona Ivanovna and Lizaveta with an axe, which he had prepared, and that he ran off with Mitka to throw off suspicion. Porfiry Petrovich cuts him off, furious, because the answers are rehearsed.

In chapter IV of Part Five, sitting on the bed of Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova to confess, Raskolnikov feels what he felt behind the old woman, with the axe already freed from the loop. When Sonia looks at him, her face gives him back Lizaveta's face at the moment he approached with the axe, hand outstretched, the fright of a child, and the terror passes from one to the other.

In chapter V of Part Six the axe enters the mouth of Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, who repeats to Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova the confession he overheard behind the door: the crime, the two victims killed with the axe he had carried, the money hidden under a stone.

In chapter VIII of Part Six, at the police station, the word returns to Raskolnikov's mouth in the formal confession: he tells Ilya Petrovich that he killed the old woman and Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.

In chapter II of the Epilogue, in prison, the convicts, who have done worse things, laugh at his crime and tell him that walking around with an axe is no gentleman's business.

What It Means

In the book, the axe is the point where the plan and chance meet. The loop, the choice of weapon, the false pledge and the descent to the kitchen belong to the plan; the find under the bench is chance, and Raskolnikov takes it as a sign, because it settles exactly what the plan had left open. Its use divides in the same way, between the blunt side and the edge: the blunt side, which the almost mechanical blow against Alyona Ivanovna exploits in chapter VII of Part One, and the edge, which strikes Lizaveta without his having foreseen her. After the crime the object goes back to the bench and does not reappear as a thing, and what the book keeps are the uses of the word: the image of the interrogation, the joke, the confession naming the weapon, the contempt of the prisoners.

The axe is the only piece of the plan that Raskolnikov did not choose: he sewed the loop, prepared the false pledge and calculated the hour, and the weapon came to him from a bench with no owner. Two readings hold. In the first, chance only confirms what was already decided, since the loop, the rejected penknife and the kitchen all come before the find in chapter VI of Part One. In the second, chance decides: without the porter's bench the plan would have been left without a weapon, and Raskolnikov, who had just failed in the kitchen, would have lacked the sign he needed to go on.

Relationships

• Default themes: Guilt, Reason.
• Themes in the novel: Guilt, Reason.
• Characters: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, Lizaveta Ivanovna, Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, Porfiry Petrovich, Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova.
• Related symbols: the dream of the mare, where the word appears before the object and the verb for the blow repeats, and the crosses, whose cord Raskolnikov cuts with this same axe.