Crime and Punishment; Part 6, Svidrigaylov's Suicide Analysis

Crime and Punishment; Part 6, Chapter
Svidrigailov’s suicide:

The exterior of this scene reflects the desolate and despairing interior landscape of Svidrigailov. After his restless, almost hallucinogenic night spent in a sleazy hotel, Svidrigailov trudges along the river, a symbol of redemption and past the bridge, a symbol of transition and change. His path is littered by a drunken man passed out in a death-like stupor; a shivering filthy cur crosses his path. He walks past and looks with disapproval at the small, yellow houses standing, dejected, as silent witnesses to his last promenade. And he reads with studious care the signs hanging from the rundown businesses as if to imprint for the last time images from this world to carry with him into the next. Filth and despair and cold are the colors used to paint this scene. At last, the watery cold begins to penetrate him to the bone and he thinks, “Why go to Petrovsky?” This place will do and he almost smiles at the notion. He eventually finds a sullen faced sentry - his Charon, the boatsman who ferries the dead across the River Styx - standing guard in front of some large grand building of stone. The sentry, dubbed by Dostoevsky in an ironic allusion as “Achilles” is not the great hero of Greek epics beloved of a great people or of the gods. He is a runty fellow with a perennial look of aggrievement which Dostoevsky describes in an unsavory bit of anti-semitism as ”…the eternal expression of resentful affliction which is so sharply etched on every Jewish face, without exception.” Svidrigailov, a would be ubermensch who bends other people, vulnerable people – little girls, servants, older women – to serve his sensual will – chooses this runty little fellow to witness his last few moments of life, and to witness his death. Svidrigailov greets “Achilles” with a “Good morning!” and tells the little guardsman that he is going to foreign parts – “a distant bourn from which no traveler has returned” – “To America!” When he takes out Dounia’s pistol and cocks it, “Achilles” tells him that this is no place for jokes. Svidrigailov, in an existential shrug, answers “Why not?” and then replies that it doesn’t really matter and pulls the trigger.