Time Line of Major Events in CRIME and PUNISHMENT
Part 1
Chapter 1
Raskolnikov goes to the apartment of Alyona's to pawn a watch, a family heirloom, and to case her apartment.Chapter 2
Introduction of "No Where to Turn" motif
Marmeladov takes Raskolnikov to his wretched apartment where he meets his family
Chapter 3
Raskolnikov wakes up in his bed, feeling irritable and unrefreshed.Receives disturbing letter from his mother: his sister, Dounia, is sacrificing herself by marrying a man named Luzhin to help Raskolnikov out.
Luzhin wants a poor girl who will be obedient and grateful to him for saving her. Raskolnikov is enraged.
Dounia and their mother, Pulkheria, are all coming to St. Petersberg to live after the marriage.
Letter introduces:
Scandal involving Svidrigaelov, his wife Marfa, and Dounia who was a governess in their home.
Chapter 4
Raskolnikov walks the streets of St. Petersberg railing against Luzhin.The young drunken girl:
This scene introduces the Utilitarian Theory and the failure of the Hegelian Theory of Dialectics.
Raskolnikov sees a young teen aged girl being harassed by a much older dandy. He tries to enlist the help of a cop to intervene, and winds up giving the 20 kopeks he received from the pawning of the watch to the cop to give to the girl. Instantly, he sees all humanity as being selfish, corrupt and uncaring, and therefore, it is useless trying to help anyone. He walks away disgusted by the cop and the dandy, and thinks the girl's future is already laid out for her - it will be short, brutal, and diseased.
The character of Razumikhin is described by the narrator.
Chapter 5
He wakes up confused and wanders out into the street, bedeviled by the thoughts of murder.
Raskonikov cuts across the Haymarket Square and there overhears two rag sellers talking to Lisavita, the sister of Alyona, that they will meet her at a certain place at a certain time to discuss business - LEAVING HER SISTER ALONE IN THE APARTMENT.
He marvels at the omens the universe is sending him to DO IT!
Chapter 6
Raskolnikov is becoming increasingly superstitious and is seeing omens and portents which are all urging him onto this crime. There is a flashback of an incident which occurred six weeks earlier: He remembered that a fellow student had given him a pawnbroker's address in case he ever needed to pawn something. He found the address and pawned his father's silver watch and Dounia's gold ring with three red stones; for his family's heirlooms, the pawnbroker, a wretched old woman - whom he disliked on sight - gave him two paltry roubles. With this pathetic sum, he went in to a tavern for food where he overheard a conversation between a student and a soldier discussing the very woman he had just visited - the strangeness was too odd to be a mere coincidence. The student gave a very vivid description of the old woman and her sweet natured, but feckless younger half-sister whom she beats and exploits. The student began to advance a very fashionable theory, the Utilitarian Theory, which Raskolnikov had also been thinking about and had even applied it to the wretched old woman whom he had just met. Kill her, take her money, urged the student - which she will only give to some corrupt priest after her death to pray her soul out of purgatory - and give the money to the needy, for there are many, and she has made her fortune out of exploiting them. Raskolnikov is deeply affected by this chance encounter and reads great importance into it - it is indeed the universe giving him permission to kill this creature and become the oppressed people's benefactor.
Return to the present: Raskolnikov returns home from the Haymarket, and sits for a long time on his dilapidated sofa in a sort of trance. His chills and fever return and he sinks at last into a deep sleep until at ten the next morning, Nastasya comes into his hovel and after a great deal of effort, wakes him and give him his morning tea - taken from her own breakfast. After his small breakfast, he again falls into a sort of Napoleonic reverie of an Egyptian oasis with camels. A clock strikes somewhere, shaking him violently from his daydream. It's already six in the evening. He must make preparations! He finds some material to make a loop in his jacket to hide the ax. He retrieves the "pledge" he had prepared and hidden in the crevices of his sofa - two thin pieces of wood sandwiching a thin plate of metal to give it weight, and wrapped in clean white paper so it would look like a cigarette case. He walks past the kitchen to steal the ax but Nastasya is right outside hanging laundry. He avoids her eye and makes his way past the porter's hut where - lo and behold! - is an ax! Fate has taken him by the hand! He grabs the ax, placing it inside the loop he has sewn inside his jacket, and makes his way to the pawnbroker's apartment. On the second floor of the pawnbroker's apartment a door is open and two painters are inside working but they do not even glance at him as he passes. The flat below, on the third floor, and the flat directly opposite the pawnbroker's on the fourth, are empty. His heart is thudding as he stands outside her door. He rings the bell. Twice. But no answer. He knows that she is there. He has the sensation that she is standing right inside the door. He hears a hand being placed on the door handle from the inside and the rustle of clothes. He purposely mutters something so she won't think he's being furtive and he rings a third time. He hears the door opening.....
CHAPTER 7
The murder of Alyona and her sister, Lizaveta:
Alyona, the pawnbroker, is suspicious of Raskolnikov. He hands her the "cigarette case" and as she fumbles to untie the complicated not, he pulls out the ax and bludgeons her to death with several blows on top of the head. He then searches her pockets for the keys and finds a key ring with many keys of various sizes on it.
He finds that he is experiencing a sudden loss of power and concentration - the very things he chided ordinary criminals about - and struggles with fitting the right key into the lock of the chest of drawers in the bedroom. He collects himself and realizes that the large key obviously does not fit the chest of drawers but probably a large chest and the large chest is probably where most old women keep their chests - under the bed. This assumption proves correct and as he is frantically stuffing his pockets with the treasures - probably old pledges left uncollected - he hears foot steps in the apartment! He has left the door wide open!
Raskolnikov steps back into the living room and finds Lizaveta standing there gazing in horror at her dead sister. He picks up the ax and with one blow fells the poor luckless Lizaveta, splitting her skull from the top of the forehead to the crown of the head, killing her instantly. Now is when he completely loses his train of thought and does inexplicable, irrational actions - finding a pail half filled with water he loses long minutes washing the ax and then his hands, drying and examining the ax, his hands, his clothes for blood, for stains. A frightening, insidious thought like a worm, begins to gnaw at him - perhaps he is covered in blood, apparent to all, yet he cannot see it. Then another insidious fear, unspoken, shapeless, yet dark and sinister begins to gnaw - and then the fear assumes a shape and it strikes him - he has left the door open! The very door through which Lizaveta walked through to her death!
He runs to the living room - the door is open a hand's width apart. He steps onto the landing and listens intently. Below he hears two voices engaged in a loud argument. Another moment, a door opens below and a person, exiting a flat, hums a tune loudly. Quiet. And then, just as he is about to step onto the stairs to leave, he hears heavy footsteps, at first far away, of people entering the building far below, and as these steps make their journey up the stairs, the steps grow louder, heavier - men's footsteps. The men are climbing the stairs to Alyona's apartment! Raskolnikov dashes back into the flat, and closes and bolts the door. The men stop, and one of them begins to ring the bell outside the door. Raskolnikov stands a few inches on the other side of the door, paralleling the same position he shared with Alyona a little while ago, before he murdered her. He listens to their breathing, their conversation, the clanging of the bell, the rattling and dancing of the bolt in its socket on the flimsy wood as the men pound on the door. One of the men realizes that the door is bolted on the inside so the old woman must be home but is not answering. He decides to get the porter, leaving the other man at the door.
Alyona, the pawnbroker, is suspicious of Raskolnikov. He hands her the "cigarette case" and as she fumbles to untie the complicated not, he pulls out the ax and bludgeons her to death with several blows on top of the head. He then searches her pockets for the keys and finds a key ring with many keys of various sizes on it.
He finds that he is experiencing a sudden loss of power and concentration - the very things he chided ordinary criminals about - and struggles with fitting the right key into the lock of the chest of drawers in the bedroom. He collects himself and realizes that the large key obviously does not fit the chest of drawers but probably a large chest and the large chest is probably where most old women keep their chests - under the bed. This assumption proves correct and as he is frantically stuffing his pockets with the treasures - probably old pledges left uncollected - he hears foot steps in the apartment! He has left the door wide open!
Raskolnikov steps back into the living room and finds Lizaveta standing there gazing in horror at her dead sister. He picks up the ax and with one blow fells the poor luckless Lizaveta, splitting her skull from the top of the forehead to the crown of the head, killing her instantly. Now is when he completely loses his train of thought and does inexplicable, irrational actions - finding a pail half filled with water he loses long minutes washing the ax and then his hands, drying and examining the ax, his hands, his clothes for blood, for stains. A frightening, insidious thought like a worm, begins to gnaw at him - perhaps he is covered in blood, apparent to all, yet he cannot see it. Then another insidious fear, unspoken, shapeless, yet dark and sinister begins to gnaw - and then the fear assumes a shape and it strikes him - he has left the door open! The very door through which Lizaveta walked through to her death!
He runs to the living room - the door is open a hand's width apart. He steps onto the landing and listens intently. Below he hears two voices engaged in a loud argument. Another moment, a door opens below and a person, exiting a flat, hums a tune loudly. Quiet. And then, just as he is about to step onto the stairs to leave, he hears heavy footsteps, at first far away, of people entering the building far below, and as these steps make their journey up the stairs, the steps grow louder, heavier - men's footsteps. The men are climbing the stairs to Alyona's apartment! Raskolnikov dashes back into the flat, and closes and bolts the door. The men stop, and one of them begins to ring the bell outside the door. Raskolnikov stands a few inches on the other side of the door, paralleling the same position he shared with Alyona a little while ago, before he murdered her. He listens to their breathing, their conversation, the clanging of the bell, the rattling and dancing of the bolt in its socket on the flimsy wood as the men pound on the door. One of the men realizes that the door is bolted on the inside so the old woman must be home but is not answering. He decides to get the porter, leaving the other man at the door.
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