Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov - Plot Role

Plot Role

In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, with an axe he stole from a janitor's woodshed, with the intention of using her money for good causes, based on a theory he had developed of the "great man". Raskolnikov believed that people were divided into the "ordinary" and the "extraordinary": the ordinary are the common rabble, the extraordinary (notably Napoleon or Muhammad) must not follow the moral codes that apply to ordinary people since they are meant to be great men. An extraordinary man would not need to think twice about his actions. Raskolnikov had been contemplating this theory for months, only telling it to his (now deceased) fiancée. (Although earlier, he had written an article along those lines in a journal on the condition that only his initials be used as attribution). Raskolnikov believes himself to be one of these extraordinary men and is thus "allowed" to commit murder. However, his plan goes wrong; before he is able to make his escape from the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna's flat, her meek-tempered half-sister (Lizaveta Ivanovna) arrives and stumbles across the body. Raskolnikov, in a panic, murders the pawnbroker's sister as well, a crime which, for some reason, does not weigh on him anywhere near as heavily as the initial murder. The fact of the murders themselves does not particularly torment him; what torments him is the fact that he has not "transgressed", and that he was not able to be the "great man" he had theorized about.

Raskolnikov finds a small purse on Alyona Ivanovna's body, which he hides under a rock outside without checking its contents. His grand failure is that he lacks the conviction he believed to accompany greatness and continues his decline into madness. After confessing to the destitute, pious prostitute Sonia Semyonovna Marmeladova, she guides him towards admitting to the crime, and he confesses to Ilya Petrovich, a police lieutenant with an explosive temper (the book implies the policeman suspected him from the start). Raskolnikov is sentenced to exile in Siberia, accompanied by Sonia, where he begins his mental and spiritual rehabilitation.