Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin

Who He Is

Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin is the son of a merchant who died a month ago leaving two and a half million, dark-haired, wearing a fur coat, pale and feverish, and he returns secretly to Petersburg on the same train and in the same carriage as Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, in ch. I of Part One. Since he saw Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova leave a shop on the Nevsky Prospect he has lived for her: he diverted the money from two of his father's bonds to bring her some diamond earrings, was locked up by his father and endured an hour-long sermon, ran away, fell ill with fever, and the father died without him. The family house, on Gorokhovaya Street, large, gloomy and a dirty green, with the name of the hereditary honorary citizen Rogozhin on the plaque (ch. III of Part Two), is the setting for the three scenes that define him: the exchange of crosses, the painting of the dead Christ and the night beside the body. He is the prince's rival and the only man whom the prince calls brother; the novel makes him the murderer of Nastasya Filippovna and does not make him a villain.

Trajectory

In ch. I of Part One he tells the story of the earrings to a stranger, only to him and never to Lebedev, who sticks to him on hearing talk of the inheritance, and on arriving at the station he adopts the prince:

It is he who gives the prince, in the same carriage, the name that follows him:

In ch. III of Part One, before the portrait, the prince makes about him the prediction that the book fulfills:

In ch. X of Part One he comes into the Ivolgins' house with his gang, calling Ganya a Judas, and on seeing Nastasya Filippovna there, after learning that she will not marry Ganya, he offers her the money:

He raises the bid to forty and then to a hundred thousand, until night. In ch. XV of Part One he spends the afternoon with moneylenders at any rate of interest, enters the party almost sober, puts on the table a packet wrapped in the Stock Exchange Gazette and waits with hanging hands, like someone awaiting a sentence; she repeats the price aloud:

In ch. XVI of Part One, when the prince asks for her hand in marriage, Rogozhin groans that he should give up, shouts that she is his, his queen, and leaves with her in four troikas.

In the six months of ch. I of Part Two, in Moscow, he finds her and loses her twice, and she runs away a third time almost from the altar. In ch. III of Part Two, at the house on Gorokhovaya Street, he receives the prince, pale as a statue, confesses that when far from him he hates him to the point of wanting to poison him, and that when near him the anger passes, and he measures his own love by the rival's word:

He tells what happened in Moscow (the beating, the day and a half without eating or sleeping begging forgiveness, the list of books she gave him to read), and hears the prince's diagnosis:

He completes the sentence with the word the prince was avoiding, that he is going to cut her throat, and reveals what he knows and what hurts him most:

Twice the prince absentmindedly picks up from the table a new garden knife with a deerhorn handle, and twice Rogozhin snatches it from his hand and shoves it into a book. In ch. IV of Part Two, as he leads the prince out, to stand before the copy of the dead Christ that his father bought at an auction, he suddenly asks whether he believes in God and confirms the other's half-joking remark:

On the staircase, he asks for the tin cross that the prince bought from a soldier and gives him his own, of gold; he takes him to be blessed by his mother; he refuses the first embrace with a joke drawn from the story he has just heard:

And, after changing his expression, he gives in:

In ch. V of Part Two, the prince spends the day feeling his eyes upon him and recognizes in a shop window the knife from the table; at night, in the niche of the hotel staircase, he meets Rogozhin with raised hand:

The howl of the epileptic fit paralyzes him, and he flees the hotel. In ch. VI of Part Two he goes every day to Lebedev's dacha to find out about the prince's health, and in ch. X of Part Two, at Nastasya's insistence, he buys Radomsky's IOUs for thirty. In ch. II of Part Three he takes Nastasya away from the Vauxhall, laughing in the face of the officer she had whipped. In ch. III of Part Three he sits beside the prince on a park bench, at midnight, with a message from her, and receives from him the forgiveness that shares the guilt:

He answers without rancor and without reconciliation:

And he tells what she said to him, drawing the conclusion that hurts him most:

He still wears the exchanged cross, he says, and agrees to attend the prince's birthday party. In ch. IV of Part Three he is on the terrace without drinking, like someone waiting for something; in ch. V of Part Three, Hippolyte accuses him in front of everyone of having spent an hour sitting in silence in his room, at one in the morning, and he denies it. In ch. VI of Part Three, Hippolyte's Explanation places his house and the painting above the door at the center of the decision to die. In ch. X of Part Three he takes Nastasya to the carriage after she asks the prince whether he is happy, says he read all her letters to Aglaya, laughs at the razor wrapped in silk that she imagines in his drawer, and says quietly that perhaps she is not mad.

In ch. VIII of Part Four he opens the door of Darya Alexeyevna's house for the meeting of the two women, is expelled by Nastasya after Aglaya runs off, takes his hat and leaves without a word. In ch. X of Part Four he wanders around Pavlovsk during the week of the wedding, and on the day, at the door of Darya Alexeyevna's house, it is him that she grabs:

He takes her to the station and, on the platform, buys for fifty rubles a girl's mantilla to cover the wedding dress. In ch. XI of Part Four he hides from the prince behind the blind, then searches for him in the street, takes him to Gorokhovaya Street, shows him the body behind the curtain and tells the blow as if telling a mystery:

He proposes that they spend the night together beside her, without handing her over to anyone; he raves at dawn, and that is how they are found:

In ch. XII of Part Four he spends two months with brain inflammation, testifies at the trial with clarity about every detail, does not contradict the lawyer, and is sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia; the fortune passes to his brother.

Themes Embodied

Rogozhin is passion that can only express itself as possession, and the novel gives it a single language, money: the earrings bought with his father's bonds (ch. I of Part One), the eighteen, forty and a hundred thousand (ch. X of Part One, ch. XV of Part One), Radomsky's IOUs bought at her request (ch. X of Part Two), the fifty-ruble mantilla on the platform (ch. X of Part Four). That is why he is the clearest figure of the theme of Money and wealth and, at the same time, the one who most refutes the theme: money does not buy Nastasya even once, and he knows this from the first chapter, when he stood mute before her while another was speaking.

What he cannot stand in the prince is not the rivalry, it is the pity. When the prince says he loves her with pity (ch. III of Part Two), Rogozhin defines himself by the opposite, with no pity at all, and that is where the question of faith enters his house: before the dead Christ he keeps above the door (ch. IV of Part Two), the symbol of the Holbein painting, he confirms that one can lose one's faith and says he likes to look at it, and soon after asks for the other man's cross. The exchange of crosses does not keep away the knife, and the knife does not undo the exchange: on the park bench he still wears the cross on his chest (ch. III of Part Three). The book places both things in the same man on the same day, and this is the center of The exchange of crosses and of The knife.

The murderer is among those who tell the prince, without circumlocution, what they feel. He says he hates him when far from him (ch. III of Part Two), that he does not like him (ch. III of Part Three), that perhaps he did not even think about the knife afterwards; and at the trial he confirms everything and does not defend himself (ch. XII of Part Four). What he never says at any point is why he killed, and the book does not say either: in place of the motive it leaves the little blood, the oilcloth, the open vials and the fly (ch. XI of Part Four).

Relationships

• Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova: he offers a hundred thousand rubles for her at the party (ch. XV of Part One), sees her flee the marriage three times (ch. I of Part Two), receives from her the list of books to read (ch. III of Part Two), reads in her letters the prediction of her own death (ch. X of Part Three), is chosen by her in the churchyard (ch. X of Part Four) and kills her (ch. XI of Part Four).
• Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin: the travelling companion on the train (ch. I of Part One), brother by the cross (ch. IV of Part Two), victim of the knife on the staircase (ch. V of Part Two) and the man who keeps vigil with him over the body and strokes his hair (ch. XI of Part Four).
• Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin: the rival whom he calls a Judas, recalls the two hundred rubles that the father lost to him at cards through cheating, and offers three thousand to drop out (ch. X of Part One).
• Lukyan Timofeyevich Lebedev: sticks to him on the train because of the inheritance (ch. I of Part One) and advises him to offer the eighteen thousand to Nastasya (ch. X of Part One).
• Hippolyte Terentyev: visits the house on Gorokhovaya Street, sees the painting, and says he received from Rogozhin, at one in the morning, the silent visit that decided his suicide (ch. VI of Part Three); acts as intermediary between Aglaya and Nastasya, through him (ch. VIII of Part Four).
• Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky: Rogozhin buys his IOUs at Nastasya's insistence (ch. X of Part Two).