Notes on CRIME and PUNISHMENT: Part One

Notes on CRIME  and PUNISHMENT

Part 1

Page 1:

End of an afternoon in July in St. Petersberg. It is unbearably hot and the streets of St. Petersburg are fetid with garbage and sewage.

The young man, unnamed, lives in isolation.

The ubermensch does not need people.

What terrible act is he contemplating?

Page 2:

Conflict of thought vs. action. Example of Hegelian Theory of synthesis.

“Can I really be capable of that?”

The root word of Raskolnikov is Raskol which means schism in Russian - a perfect name for this conflicted man hanging between his emotions to do good, to be compassionate, and his cool analytical intellect to sit back and judge.

Page 3:

Contemplating an unspeakable but at this point unknown act. The young man is strikingly good looking, darkly handsome and taller than average, but he is dressed in rags. He is strangely  concerned with the conspicuousness of his hat. But why should that distress him so?

Pages 4-5:

There is a vivid description of the pawnbroker, the wretched Alena Ivanovna, who has a reputation for cheating people.

The color yellow motif is introduced: the walls of the pawnbroker’s apartment; her fur, her skin.

Alena refers to Raskolnikov’s family heirloom as trash and undervalues the worth of Raskolnikov’s father’s silver watch.

Page 7:

The young man goes down into the dank interior of a tavern for beer. He hasn’t eaten in several days.

 Chapter 2:

Page 8 - 23:

Raskolnikov meets Marmeladov, a drunken civil servant. Marmeladov mentions Lebezyatnikov, a follower of the Utilitarianism Theory (one can use a mathematical formula that the greater number of people content in a society, the better the society. The majority’s happiness is more important than the happiness of a few, which is the application of Hegelian dialectics: a dialectic will create its opposite which in turn will create a synthesis: French Revolution is a prime example of this theory: the needs of the aristocrats (the few) versus the needs of the many (the peasants). The pendulum will swing too far in one direction - the fatted opulence of the French aristocracy living at the expense of the wretched many who, unable to endure their own miserable existence,  rise up in terrible protest against the few, resulting in a bloodletting. The synthesis occurs when there is relative equality among the many who live in quiet comfort.  Lebezyatnikov has beaten Marmeladov’s wife.

Page 10: The motif of no place to turn, of hopelessness is introduced by the drunken Marmeladov.

Pages 11, 12 and 13: Marmeladov confesses drinking his family to destitution; he lost his last job due to drink; his daughter has been forced into prostitution (she carries a yellow i.d. card. Again, yellow represents disease and moral disrepute.)

There is an admiring description of his wife, Katerina Ivanovna: she is well born, she speaks French, and had the great distinction of dancing the “Shawl Dance” for the province’s governor when she graduated from the girls' finishing school she attended. She was married to an infantry officer and had three children, but the officer died and left her destitute; Marmeladov,  taking pity on her, married her.

Page 13: Katerina is Sonia’s stepmother. Sonia, shy, timid, plain little Sonia has been driven into prostitution by the sharp tongue of Katerina, who is angry, hysterical, starving and dying of consumption. Marmeladov describes the evening that while he laid on the sofa, drunk,  Katerina, half mad with starvation and consumption, screams at Sonia to go to "work" so that they may eat. Sonia, terrified, quietly puts on her shawl and hat, and departs for the streets.  She comes back a few hours later, shaken and in a state of shock from streetwalking and gives Katerina 30 pieces of silver (which echoes the thirty pieces of silver Judas received for betraying Christ.) Silently she hands the thirty rubles to Katerina, and then lies down with her face turned to the wall. Katerina rises, sobbing and in a state of  abject sorrow, cradles her feet - which echoes the Biblical allusion of the prostitutes bathing Christ's feet. 

Page 14: *Beautiful description of the scene where Katerina drives Sonia into taking to the streets, and then later, Sonia, shaking, in shock, comes back with the silver rubles and gives them to Katerina.

Sonia, because of her yellow i.d. card, is no longer allowed by the landlady, Amalie Fedorovna, to stay in the family tenement apartment.

Pages 20-23: Marmeladov takes Raskolnikov back to his apartment which is of unimaginable squalor. Raskolnikov sees Katerina beat Marmeladov and sees her three small children’s destitution - they are starving. Marmeladov stole his paycheck from Katerina and went on a bender for five days, not reporting to work and drinking up the money. He even sold his nice civil servant uniform, and dressed in another man's rags, fell asleep in the hay on a barge. He has not been home for a week. Katerina is furious and beats him. Raskolnikov leaves money for them which he got by pawning his father’s watch at the pawnbroker’s. He leaves the money on a window sill and walks out, which he immediately regrets.

Chapter 3:

Page 23: Raskolnikov wakes up bilious (yellow) and feverish. The wallpaper in his wretched little room, a cupboard actually, is also yellow and peeling. Nastasya, the maid, enters his room.

Nastasya gives him a letter from his mother, Pulkheria Raskolnikova.

Dounia is Raskolnikov’s sister.

Pages 26 - 29: Dounia worked for the Svidrigaylovs as a governess. Marfa is married to Svidrigaylov and is older and wealthier than Svidrigaylov, which is why he married her. Svidrigaylov is a lout and has fallen in love with the beautiful Dounia. Marfa thinks that Dounia has intentionally stolen her husband away from her and ran around the community gossiping and besmirching Dounia’s name. Svidragaylov felt guilty and showed his wife a letter from Dounia proving her innocence. Now Marfa is running around the town showing people the letter and writing out copies and allowing other people to copy the letter to show to their friends.

Pages 29 - 33: Dounia is now engaged to be married to an older man by the name of Luzhin who is 45 years old and has let slip that he wants to marry a woman who is destitute so that she will be grateful to him. He is a follower of all the new ideas of the young people (Utilitarianism.) It is obvious that Dounia is marrying him to sacrifice herself for Raskolnikov. Luzhin is rich and a lawyer, and it is Pulkheria Raskolnikova's devout wish that he will help Raskolnikov, which he probably won't -  he only paid for the transportation of Dounia’s and Pulkheria’s luggage to St. Petersberg, which probably didn't cost him anything.  His fiancee and her mother he allowed to fend for themselves. They paid to travel third class in an old cart for 90 versts. Filled with scalding guilt, Raskolnikov cries at the end of reading the letter and then, not able to stand the squalor of his miserable flat,  goes out into the fetid streets of St. Petersburg, talking and muttering to himself.

Chapter Four:

Pages 33 - 44: Raskolnikov is tortured by sacrifice. Religious symbolism: “The way to Golgotha is hard”. Raskolnikov says this about himself and Dounia. (page 34) Raskolnikov in his head rails against Luzhin. Pulkheria mentions that Luzhin is up on the latest theories, which Raskolnikov derides.

The low status of women: The sacrifice of the daughter for the son.

(Page 37) Raskolnikov compares Dounia’s marriage to Luzhin to Sonia’s prostitution. However, marriage to Luzhin will bring physical comfort and Sonia’s prostitution only provides a temporary respite from starvation.

“....we invent cauistical arguments for ourselves, we take a lesson from the Jesuits...” We invent intellectual rationalizations.

His mother’s letter shows that destruction is imminent and that he cannot put off taking action any longer. He must be a man of action (an ubermensche!)

Page 38: Pivotal moment: Raskolnikov suddenly realizes as he is walking, “Or renounce life all together! Submit obediently, once and for all, to destiny....”

Page 39 - 43: Raskolnikov sees a very young girl (fifteen or sixteen) tottering down the street looking very drunk. She seems violated, with her dress hastily put back on by rough male hands. She may have been raped. She is followed by a fat, dandyish man of about 30 or so, pinkish white skin and red lips who clearly wants to abuse her further. Raskolnikov is so angered by the dandy’s lechery that he actually seizes upon him to hit him until he is stopped by a policeman. Raskolnikov informs on the dandy and points out the girl to the policeman who is moved to compassion by the obviously abused state of the young girl. Raskolnikov gives the cop money to get her a cab home but while trying to get the girl to tell them her address, the girl suddenly gets up from the bench she was slouched on and staggers away muttering about how they won’t stop pestering her. Raskolnikov is suddenly filled with revulsion and tells the cop to let the dandy have his way with the girl - that it doesn’t matter. The cop will probably just pocket the money, the fat dandy or some other horrible man will wind up raping her anyway and she will die a few years later used up and destroyed. Afterwards he realizes that he just gave away 20 copecks to the cop, and regrets his generosity.

Failure of the Hegelian theory: Raskolnikov cannot overcome the chasm between his emotions, his impulses and his intellect - there is no synthesis.

According to the Utilitarianism a few must die so that the majority will live. According to Jeremy Bentham it is a mathematical formula that a society’s happiness can be determined by what percentage of its people are happy.

Raskolnikov recounts what will probably happen to this girl: she will be hunted by a pimp (the Darya Franzovnas of the world) and after trips to the hospital, drunkenness and drug use, her life will be over at 18 or 19.

Background: Rasolnikov keeps to himself at the University - another example of an ubermensche. He does not crave the company of others.

He finds himself at Razumikhin’s apartment (Rah zu mee khin).

(Page 44) There is a description of Razumikhin who is a friend of Raskolnikov at the university: He is generous, loud, carousing, loving, kind, compassionate, emotional, physically very strong, tough. He is described as  endlessly resourceful in finding way to make money.

 Chapter V (pages 44 - 53)

Again delirious, Raskolnikov finds himself at Razumikhin’s apartment. Razumikhin has given him work - translations, etc. Rask tells himself he will see him after the "event". He cannot bear to go home, and crosses the bridge to the beautiful rich part of town which is filled with greenery. He has spent quite a bit of his money - 3 copecks to Nastasya for his mother’s letter, 20 to the cop to take care of the drunken young girl and about 37 - 40 to the Marmeladovs. He has about 30 copecks left. He buys a drink of vodka and a pastry and becomes very sleepy from the alcohol.
He falls asleep and has a deeply disturbing dream about a peasant Mikolka who beats his old mare to death (pages 47 - 50). Raskolnikov is a little boy with his father who witnesses the horrible torture and death of the poor old mare. The mare is a symbol of the treatment of women. The scene may be a recollection of an actual event and takes place near a tavern and a winding road that leads to a church cemetery where his grandmother are buried.

After the horrific dream, he is again feverish and asks himself in astonishment could he really have contemplated taking an axe and ......which he then shakes his head and reassures himself that he could never do anything so vile. He is then relieved and is freed from the terrible burden he was carrying of planning to kill the old woman.

(Pages 52 - 53) Raskolnikov cuts across the Haymarket Square to go home and there overhears a conversation between Lizaveta and two rag salespeople, a countryish man and woman who have newly arrived to St. Petersberg and have women’s clothing to sell. It would not profit them to sell the articles in market, but rather to find a dealer, like Lizavita, to sell the rags for them. The rags people are telling her to meet with them tomorrow at 6 pm, but not to tell Alyona where she is going. Raskolnikov is thunderstruck that fate should place this so neatly in his hands - that tomorrow at 6 the pawnbroker will be alone, quite alone in her apartment. This deed obviously meets with the approval of the Universe for omens and signs are signaling him to do this deed - a thread that runs along the course of the Ubermenche's life story for he is a special being raised above the heads of mere mortals.

Chapter Vl (pages 53 - 64) His visit six weeks earlier to the old pawnbroker's home is recounted when  he pawned a keepsake from his sister - a ring with three red stones. The minute he met Alyona, the pawnbroker he had taken an almost immediate dislike to her. On the way back with his few copecks he stopped at a tavern for a drink and overheard a young student and a soldier discussing the  wretched old pawnbroker.

The student laid out the Utilitarian doctrine which Raskolnikov overheard while he is drinking in the tavern. The ends justify the means and that the death of a few for the benefit of the many is morally correct.  The old crone cheats hard working, innocent people out of their money and while many are starving to death and living lives of abject misery, she is hoarding the money she cheated from them to pay some priest to pay for her wretched soul after death to kept it out of hell where it so richly deserves to go.

The point of view suddenly shifts to the far future, where the narrator notes  that the older Raskolnikov muses on the days leading up to the "event" when he had become quite superstitious; and the older Raskolnikov has in subsequent years mulled over those few hours, days, weeks and months looking for the strange coincidences, the omens that seemingly ordained the murder. 

The soldier and the student spoke of Lizaveta,  Alyona’s half sister (they had different mothers), and how she was horribly abused by Alyona.  Lizaveta is 35, stands about 5’ 10”, compliant as a child and is totally under the control of the old woman who beats her,  forces her to clean and cook, and to hand over all her money to her.  Lizaveta is also pregnant because she is so eager to please everyone. Lizaveta is probably mentally challenged.

Utilitarian Theory: That according to Jonathan Bentham and John Mills (18th Century philosophers/thinkers) a society’s happiness can be calibrated mathematically by the ratio of happy people to unhappy people, and that there will always be those who will be unhappy, who will “fall between the cracks” and that  is the price to be paid for the greater good of society.

The student offered the following theory that by killing the nasty old woman, robbing her of her fortune, and by spreading the fortune to those who are in great need, one would actually be doing the world a favor, and that this good would negate the deed of the murder - essentially, the end would justify the means.



Nature must be guided and corrected, otherwise there will never be one great man (Nietzsche’s Ubermensche theory).

Raskolnikov ponders WHY he should overhear THIS particular conversation after visiting the wretched old woman, AFTER he had thought the EXACT SAME THOUGHT himself??? He sees this as yet another example of this event as preordained and predetermined.

He returns home and is again plagued with chills and fevers, and falls into a dreamless sleep. Nastasya, the maid, laughing and in perpetual good cheer, wakens him the next day and gives himself something to eat and drink - although he hasn’t paid his room or board in quite a while. He is quite weak.

However,  an ubermensche does not fall into a weakened feverish state after merely contemplating murder and would not have a simple maid taking care of him - an Ubermenche does not need help.

(Page 58) He is having calming dreams of being in an oasis in the middle of the Egyptian desert (one of Napoleon’s campaigns?). But why of Napolean? Napolean was definitely an Ubermensche, leading thousands of men willing to lay down their lives for him across vast continents to shift the course of History. Perhaps this is Raskolnikov's subconscious yearnings or whisperings to his sleeping self that yes, he is an ubermensche too. He wakens with a start, hearing the tolling of a bell - is it six already? Is this his call to his fate? This harks to MACBETH and the tolling of the bell, calling MacBeth to do the dirty deed. And he begins the preparation for the murder, tearing a strip from an old shirt and making a loop inside his jacket to suspend the axe from.

The more he prepares, the more absurd it’s beginning to seem.

Raskolnikov maintains that most crimes fail because of the collapse of the criminal’s will. He falls into a state of childish heedlessness when he should be the most focused. This heedlessness begins right before the commission of the crime and continues until sometime past the crime. He maintains that he will not be like that.

Nastasya is hanging linen on the line so he cannot go into the kitchen to get the axe but on his way out, he sees the axe in the porter’s lodge - with the door open and the porter no where to be seen! He quickly dives for the axe and leaves for his date with destiny. It is the devil’s doing, he thinks to himself.

Page 63: He arrives at the pawnbroker’s apartment. Painters are on the second floor working in an empty flat with the door open, but they do not look up as he passes. Paint is usually a sign of an important change in CRIME and PUNISHMENT - a covering up of ancient crimes, misdeeds - covering them up but not totally cleansing or eradicating them. 

The third floor flat below the old woman’s is unoccupied, as is the flat opposite the old woman’s flat on the fourth floor. Again, the Universe is preparing the stage for Raskolnikov's strike for justice!

Page 64: There is a very creepy description, almost like a scene from a Polansky movie,  of Raskolnikov ringing the bell three times and the sensation that Alyona is on the other side of the door breathing and listening.  The ringing of the bell, like the ringing of the bell in MACBETH, becomes a motif that haunts his dreams in the months to follow. At that moment his mind clouds over and he loses consciousness of his body. A moment later, he hears the bolt being lifted.

Chapter Vll (pages 64 - 74)

The killing of the pawnbroker and her sister.

The old woman is distrustful, suspicious when he comes in. She demands to know why he is so pale and trembling. He responds that he is feverish from lack of food. As she attempts to undo the complicated knot on the “pledge” (which is  a piece of metal Raskolnikov placed between two pieces of wood to suggest a cigarette case) she turns to the windows (all of which are closed on this hot, muggy day in St. Petersburg) and fumbles with the package. (Page 65) Raskolnikov pulls the axe out of the loop inside his coat pocket, but all the strength has drained out of him and he can barely lift the axe to strike but gravity takes over, and as soon as the axe descends on her head (“almost mechanically, without any force behind it”) his strength returns and he strikes her several more times.

His mind is clear but his hands are trembling, and when he gets the key ring he has trouble finding the right key to fit into the keyhole of the chest of drawers in the bedroom. He finally figures out that the larger key is probably to a large trunk which he finds under her bed and sure enough, the toothed key fits it.

Note: Dostoevsky goes into great detail describing Raskolnikov’s thinking and behavior in these moments after the crime. Remember, an ubermensche is clear headed with cool, calm hands that do not tremble!

He stashes in his pockets a bag full of money he has cut from a cord hanging from around the old woman’s neck, and valuables he finds from the trunk.

Then he hears footsteps!

It is Lizaveta! He runs into the room to find her standing with an armload of clothing by the slain body of her sister.  She is so horrified she cannot cry out and when she sees him run into the room her face twitches spasmodically.

(Page 68) Raskolnikov raises the ax. Lizaveta is so beaten down by life and by her sister, that she doesn’t even put up a defensive arm to shield her face. Her mouth twitches like a frightened child and she stares at the object that will murder her. She holds out her arm as if to push the hated object away.

He kills her with one blow, splitting her skull into two. Horrible, pathetic murder!

Raskolnikov then loses focus and begins doing the very thing he said he would not do - he begins to behave erratically and foolishly. He forgets the important things and begins to focus on the unimportant, trivial things:

He spends long moments washing the blood from the axe. He is suddenly struck with the terrifying thought that he has gone mad and is incapable reasoning or of protecting himself.

He is in a state of terror and repulsion over the two bodies that are in the other room.

Then he realizes that he has left the door to the apartment open! The door is standing open a hand’s breadth! He closes and bolts the door and then decides, “NO! NO!” He must leave immediately! He unbolts, opens the door and is about to leave when he hears voices - a quarrel in the courtyard, and then a ruckus from the flat below him. When it dies down he is about to leave again when he hears voices on the stairs. They are coming up the stairs towards him!

Page 70: Alfred Hitchcock suspense. At the last moment he steps back inside the apartment and instinctively bolts the lock.

He and the intruder are in mirror positions  he and the old woman were in earlier - except that now he is on the inside, trapped,  listening to the heavy breathing of the intruder.

One of the men leaves the other, Koch, at the door while he gets the porter. Koch plays with the bell, and begins to rattle the handle of the door, and to stoop down to look through the keyhole. Eventually, he becomes impatient and runs downstairs to find the porter himself.

Now Raskolnikov bolts out the door and runs downstairs. He hears laughter from below him: “Mitka!” And then a shriek and a tumble of feet down the stairs and out the courtyard, followed by a stampede of feet coming up the stairs towards him! He steps into the empty apartment on the second floor - the one that the painters had been in - just in time to avoid the men (Koch and the other man) returning up the stairs. He waits a few moments and then makes his escape from the apartment.

He returns home and replaces the axe in the porter’s apartment right where he found it. He then falls into a stupor on his sofa.