The Theme in the Work
In the novel redemption comes neither from an argument nor from a repentance. It is offered by concrete hands, those of Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, Porfiry Petrovich and Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova, as a rite and as a path. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov refuses it, accepts it by half and, in the Epilogue, gains it as love, in an instant and without reasoning. The book announces it and refuses to narrate it, and sets it beside the opposite outcome, the shot of Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.
In Chapter I of Part Four, when Raskolnikov declares that he does not believe in a future life, Svidrigailov offers him his image of eternity. It consoles no one and does not even try to, and it is the worst case described as if it were probable:
вместо всего этого, представьте себе, будет там одна комнатка, эдак вроде деревенской бани, закоптелая, а по всем углам пауки, и вот и вся вечность., instead of all that, imagine, there will be one little room there, something like a village bathhouse, black with soot, with spiders in every corner, and that is all: that is the whole of eternity.
In Chapter IV of Part Four, Raskolnikov seeks what sustains Sonia, after ruling out the canal, the madhouse and debauchery, and asks whether she prays a great deal. The answer comes quickly and emphatically:
Что ж бы я без бога-то была?, and what would I be without God?
Still in Chapter IV of Part Four, at his request, she reads the resurrection of Lazarus (The Resurrection of Lazarus). What weighs in the scene is the way this text enters it, and the book to which he will return at the end:
The Gospel enters the page in long passages, read aloud, and no one discusses it in the scene: Raskolnikov, who argues with all the other characters, listens to the reading in silence, without interrupting, because what it answers is not an argument, it is the account of a dead man coming out of the tomb. The Epilogue returns to this book: the Gospel that Raskolnikov finds under his pillow is the same one from which Sonia read him the resurrection of Lazarus.
In Chapter IV of Part Five, confessing the murder, Raskolnikov says why he called her, and the answer shows that what he asked for the day before was company:
За одним и звал, за одним приходил: не оставить меня. Не оставишь, Соня?, it was for one thing alone that I called you, for one thing alone that I came: so that you would not leave me. You will not leave me, Sonia?
Sonia answers with the only thing she knows, and it is not absolution: it is a rite, with a place, a gesture and a word set down.
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, kiss first the earth you have defiled, and then bow to the whole world, to the 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, because he does not recognize himself in the judges who await him. She offers him the cypress cross (The Crosses), he holds out his hand and withdraws it: not now.
In Chapter II of Part Six, Porfiry promises to prepare the ground so that the voluntary surrender appears unexpected and the crime shows itself as a disturbance of judgment. He asks Raskolnikov not to despise life, to seek God or faith and to accept suffering, and Raskolnikov answers that he has confessed nothing.
In Chapter VI of Part Six, Svidrigailov hands Sonia the receipts for the orphans and three bonds totaling three thousand rubles, and justifies the money by the fate he foresees for Raskolnikov:
У Родиона Романовича две дороги: или пуля в лоб, или по Владимирке., Rodion Romanovich has two roads: either a bullet in the forehead, or the Vladimirka.
Still in Chapter VI of Part Six, at dawn, it is Svidrigailov who takes the road of the bullet, in front of a sentry, and the scene is dry:
Он приставил револьвер к своему правому виску. [...] Свидригайлов спустил курок., he pressed the revolver to his own right temple. [...] Svidrigailov pulled the trigger.
In Chapter VII of Part Six, Raskolnikov, who had been keeping his mother and sister at a distance, goes to his mother on the eve of the surrender and asks her the only question he allows himself:
Маменька, что бы ни случилось, что бы вы обо мне ни услышали, что бы вам обо мне ни сказали, будете ли вы любить меня так, как теперь?, Mamma, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever they tell you about me, will you go on loving me as you do now?
In Chapter VIII of Part Six, in Sonia's house, what she does with the two crosses closes what had been left pending in Chapter IV of Part Five and brings Lizaveta Ivanovna back into the scene:
Sonia places on Raskolnikov's chest only the cypress cross, the one for ordinary people, and keeps the copper one, which she exchanged with Lizaveta Ivanovna. In Part Five he had refused the cypress cross, saying it would be better later, and she had agreed to give it to him when he went into 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, in the square, he fulfills the first half of Sonia's rite, and the text describes the gesture in words that are the opposite of the shame he was going to avoid:
Он стал на колени среди площади, поклонился до земли и поцеловал эту грязную землю, с наслаждением и счастием., he knelt in the middle of the square, bowed down to the ground and kissed that filthy earth, with delight and happiness.
In Chapter II of the Epilogue, the prisoners react to Sonia and to Raskolnikov in opposite ways, and this reaction is the book's last judgment on the theory:
The prison makes, without any speech, the demonstration that the novel owed to the theory: among convicts guilty of far worse crimes, the one everyone accepts is the woman who never formulated an idea, and the one who is hated is the only one who arrived there with a system explaining why he was right.
Still in Chapter II of the Epilogue, on a bright day by the riverbank, he falls at her feet, and the narrator names in a single sentence what happened to the two of them:
Их воскресила любовь, сердце одного заключало бесконечные источники жизни для сердца другого, love resurrected them: the heart of one held infinite springs of life for the heart of the other.
That same night, still in Chapter II of the Epilogue, under his pillow is her Gospel, the same one from which she read the resurrection of Lazarus. He picks it up without opening it and wonders whether her convictions might also be his own. The book closes by refusing to tell what comes next:
тут уж начинается новая история, история постепенного обновления человека, история постепенного перерождения его, постепенного перехода из одного мира в другой, знакомства с новою, доселе совершенно неведомою действительностью. Это могло бы составить тему нового рассказа, - но теперешний рассказ наш окончен, but here a new story already begins, the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual rebirth, of his gradual passage from one world into another, of contact with a new reality, until then entirely unknown. That could form the subject of a new tale, but our present tale is over.
The book sets two answers side by side, and the one called redemption has nothing of triumph about it. Raskolnikov arrives at the Epilogue without repenting, and what changes him is Sonia's love, received in an instant, after months in which he performed her rite only by half and refused Porfiry's reduction. The other answer, Svidrigailov's, is complete and dry, and it is by contrast with it that the protagonist's ending counts as a difference. The book makes the protagonist's redemption begin and leaves it outside the page.
Who Embodies It
Sonia is the redemption that no one disputes. In Chapter IV of Part Four she reads Lazarus, trembling, and closes the book saying only that it is all about the resurrection, and in Chapter II of the Epilogue she never touches on religion, until he asks for the Gospel.
Porfiry is the other side: he closes the siege by offering a way out, the voluntary surrender, and offers it from a lowered place, that of a finished man. In Chapter II of Part Six, to convince Raskolnikov, Porfiry turns to the young man who confessed in his place:
не смейтесь над этим, в страдании есть идея. Миколка-то прав., don't laugh at this, there is an idea in suffering. Mikolka is the one who is right.
Dunya arrives by another path. In Chapter VII of Part Six she tells her brother, without discussing whether the crime is or is not a crime, that whoever goes to suffering already washes away half of it.
Polenka has a small and decisive part. In Chapter VII of Part Two, when the girl catches up with him, running on the stairs, he makes her a request that does not fit the man of the theory, and receives from the child the promise of a prayer; on the bridge, soon after, he laughs at it and tells himself it was just in case:
Полечка, меня зовут Родион; помолитесь когда-нибудь и обо мне: « и раба Родиона» — больше ничего., Polenka, my name is Rodion; pray for me too, someday: and for the servant Rodion, nothing more.
Where It Appears
- Part Two, Chapter VII: Raskolnikov asks little Polenka to pray for the servant Rodion, after giving the money he had to the Marmeladov family and feeling that life has come back to him.
- Part Four, Chapter I: Svidrigailov imagines eternity as a sooty room full of spiders and tells Raskolnikov that they are of the same stuff, while Raskolnikov denies a future life.
- Part Four, Chapter IV: Sonia says that without God she would be nothing and reads, at Raskolnikov's request, the resurrection of Lazarus, while he listens in silence.
- Part Five, Chapter IV: Raskolnikov tells Sonia he came to her so that she would not leave him, and she orders him to kiss the earth and confess to the world, and offers him the cypress cross, which he refuses for now.
- Part Six, Chapter II: Porfiry advises Raskolnikov to seek God or faith and to accept suffering, promises to prepare the ground for the voluntary surrender, and grants him a day and a half.
- Part Six, Chapter VI: Svidrigailov hands Sonia money for the orphans, says Raskolnikov has two roads, the bullet or the Vladimirka, and at dawn kills himself in front of a sentry.
- Part Six, Chapter VII: Raskolnikov asks his mother whether she will go on loving him whatever happens, kneels and kisses her feet, and she blesses him.
- Part Six, Chapter VIII: Sonia places the cypress cross on Raskolnikov's chest and keeps Lizaveta's, and in the square he kneels and kisses the dirty earth.
- Epilogue, Chapter II: In prison, the prisoners call Sonia mother, and Raskolnikov falls at her feet by the river, where love resurrects them, while her Gospel stays under his pillow.
Where the Readings Diverge
The Epilogue can be treated as a forced graft: if conversion is announced and not shown, Sonia works as a device of the ending and not as a character who wins an argument, because the argument is never confronted, only abandoned. If Raskolnikov is mad, the Epilogue becomes a cure and the theory never needed an answer; if he is lucid and discovers himself in stages, the Epilogue is the one point where the book should answer and does not.
The Chapter II of the Epilogue itself leaves two doors open. In announcing the regeneration and referring it to another book, the narrator may be trusting that the change is guaranteed and needs no showing, or admitting that the novel, which followed every twist of the murderer's consciousness, does not follow the single one that would save him.
The divergence is less about Sonia and more about what counts as an answer: whoever reads by a religious key accepts that a life can refute a thesis without arguing, and whoever reads by an analytical key demands from the book the demonstration it refuses to give. Against the first, Sonia converts no one in the six hundred pages in which she acts, and against the second, the book never promised to defeat dialectics with dialectics.