Krishna
A young man renting a small room in an apartment complex in St Petersburg was deeply in dept to his landlady and was in morbid fear of running into her because she could remind him of the overdue money.
His name is Raskolnikov. He goes to an old crone and pawns a watch. It appears that he has already pawned something else before and the time when she is entitled to sell it has come. He is shocked at how little she is offering for the watch but does not think he has any choise. The old woman’s name is Alyona Ivanovna.
He meets another poor man called Marmeladov, who uses flowery language and is the butt of everyone’s joke. He sleeps on hay and claims he is married to a classy lady, Katerina Ivanovna, sharp tempered. Her first husband was a military officer but lost to gambling; he was lost to drink. He had a young daughter, Sofya Semyonovna, by his first marriage whom the second wife forced to go into prostitution to provide for the family.
He is Marmeladov, who got his job back, promised to reform but it lasted only three days. He begged and took the last of the money from his own daughter (ill gotten) and went straight to the bar to drink it off. In four or five days he had drunk it all. He asks Raskolnikov to take him back to his house and his wife is livid to see him return drunk again.
Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother with money. In that she says that his sister Dunya was employed in a shop as assistant by one Mr Svidrigovlov who lusted after her and she declined. This created a scandal and then her name was clearted. She then agreed to marry an old, cold but slightly more wealthy man – One Pyotr Petrovich. He realizes that both his mother who wrote about it and his sister are trying to sacrifice their lives for him. He is enraged and does not want that.
Natasya, his landlady’s only servant and a cook, used to give him meals but since he was late on rent, that stopped.
But while he was absently walking in a street, he spots a young girl who was drunk and unsteady and another man who he thought was trying to take advantage of her. He decides to go after the rogue and is stopped by a policeman.
The story is weird. He suddenly abandons the girl to a policeman who wanted to intervene, even giving him some of the money. Then he walks home tired, and decides to sleep in a bush before even reaching home. And has a vivid nightmare of a tiny pony struggling to carry a huge load and the owner, beating it until it died. And none of this seems to have anything at all with the main tale, if there is one. Add that to the rambling style, and this book, a revered classic, is sure to test your patience.
He overhears when the lady to whom he had pawned his possessions would be alone in the house. In a bar earlier, he had heard a man joking with a friend, an officer, about how nice it would be to get rid of the very same old hag who was causing so much misery to every one. This solidifies a plan in his mind. On the day when he knows the old woman would be alone, he goes with a hidden axe acquired from a neighbour to the old woman’s large house.
He goes and commits the deed but when he is in the room still, the niece of the woman, the simple minded Lizaveta, comes back unexpectedly. He is forced to kill her too. He thinks he is done for when Koch, a man he hardly knew comes and tries to knock on the door and the housekeeper asks him who he wants to see. But fortunately, they both go away and Raskolnikov uses the opportunity and runs away. But before she came, he had stuffed the contents of a large drawer into his pockets without checking them out.
Then he goes home and lies down and sleeps. Later he tries to check and obliterate any evidence. When he is called to the police headquarters for an ‘interview’ he concludes that all is lost and is about to make a confession of it but then realizes that he was hauled in for nonpayment of rent. He meets Nikodym Fovich and Ilya Petrovich and explains his situation. He is made to sign on a document and does it in a daze.
He goes to visit his college friend Razumikhin. His friend is into translations and barely making both ends meet and Raskolnikov declines to work for such a pittance and walks off.
The story turns absurdist often. Raskolnikov meets Zamyotov and, unprovoked, asks how Zamiotov would feel if Raskolnikov turned out to be the murderer of the old woman they were all looking for. And also shows that suddenly he had come into money, as proof. And walks out. What the hell was that?
Anyway his sister and mother reach the city he lives in. His new friend Marmeladov is killed by a carriage running over him when a carriage ran over him when he was drunk and jaywalking.
Yes I know; it is like reading several disjointed incidents that contribute not even a bit to the central plot. Is it any wonder that you feel you want to stop reading to save yourselves some time?
When first Peytr Petrovich and then his mother and sister come to visit him, Raskolnikov is absolutely rude to all of them. It is Razumikhin who arranges for the stay of his mother and sister, not Raskolnikov.
Razhumikin takes an interest in the well being of Raskolnikov and falls in love with the pretty sister of his. He is a drunk too.
Raskolnikov behaves like an idiot in front of his mother and sister and still insists that Dunya (his sister) not marry Peytr. She claims that it is not a sacrifice for her brother but a calculated decision.
Yes I know. So ho hum. So unpredictable. Not much of a plotline at all. I am surprised that it is as famous as it is. Even if it takes off like a rocket at this point, it has been terribly draggy and pointless thus far.
It goes on in this vein with people behaving unpredictably, Raskolnikov insulting everyone who wants to help him, friends behaving weirdly and it goes on and on like this.
The old man, who was pursuing Dunya while she was alive is now a widower and wastes no time to come to St Petersburg to harass Dunya (Raskolnikov’s sister) again.
And the betrothed comes in to visit Dunya, is surprised and angry to find Raskolnikov there and is rude to them. They throw him out. Razhumikin is inordinately pleased. But Raskolnikov behaves like an idiot again and walks out on them all. (Why? Not just why he is behaving so irrationally but why is this book so well known? It reads like a load of garbled nonsense to a lay reader like me!)
And then he leaves to meet Sonya, and is cruel to her for no reason, pointing out the cesspool she has descended to and how that is in the end futile because it will still not save her family. Why? Who knows? He seems to be alternating between lucidity and many different kinds of madness. There is no indication that the murder he committed has anything to do with his shifting passions. He comes out as more than half insane. With absolutely no explanation as to the cause. It is all so distressing to read.
Then he suggests that they run away together “somewhere”. Wait, what?
It goes in this insane manner many times through various conversations, all of which will be too tedious to record here. Suffice it to say that almost everyone behaves in an odd and non logical fashion – I am not talking of the idiosyncrasies of behaviour here. I am talking about plain dialog and the thoughts that run in everyone’s mind. It is so close to being tinged with lunacy and incoherence that you wonder why this book is so famous. Again.
There is the old man who is trying to help Sonya and the mother and too many side characters to recount here. The man Petyr, who wanted to marry Roskolnikov’s son, slips a hundred rouble note into Sonya’s bag and then accuses her of stealing it, in front of the assembled guests of Sonya’s father’s funeral. He is exposed but still threatens to go to the police.
The landlady, already upset with Katerina, Sofya’s mother, asks her to leave the apartment right away and Katerina goes to complain to the authorities against this breach of contract.
Rashkolnikov confesses to Sonia and she is devastated. Asks him to surrender to the police but he refuses.
The story goes on in this vein. Crazy behaviour all around; paranoia by everyone; unnatural discussions and talks. To repeat : I do not understand why this is so famous and is a classic.
Major items include the death of the mother of Sonia, and a rich man giving money to the family so that they can survive and the kids enrolled into a comfortable orphanage.
Even the bombshell where the detective Porfiry Petrovich confronts Raskolnikov and says that ‘he knows that Raskolnikov is the murderer’ is a damp squib. He says that he knows it without a doubt but since he does not have concrete evidence, he simply came to warn him that ‘he, Porfiry, will get him in the end’. From a practicality point of view, this is completely absurd.
The guy Svirgilidov who was lusting after Dunya, finally gets engaged to a barely teen girl and then in several acts of magnanimity, distributes his wealth among everyone who needs money and finally takes a final decision about his life in front of a tower guard.
The epilog is slightly better – I think I can safely say the ‘Punishment’ part of the title without spoiling it for anybody – but still the stilted language and the strange narrative, not to mention the weird behaviour of almost all characters does not endear this book to a reader such as me.
2/10
— Krishna