Raskolnikov Character Analysis: Who He Is and Why He Kills

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is a 23-year-old former law student in St Petersburg who kills an old pawnbroker with an axe, partly for her money and partly to test a theory about himself. Crime and Punishment (1866) is less about the murder than about what it does to him afterwards.

He is proud, poor, generous, cold, feverish and kind, often in the same chapter. Dostoevsky gives him a surname that says as much. Раскол means "split" or "schism", and раскольник was the word for a religious dissenter. Raskolnikov is a man split in two.

This analysis quotes the Russian text from our app with an English translation. It covers the whole novel, so spoilers follow, including the ending.

Who is Raskolnikov?

We meet him leaving his tiny rented room in the July heat. He owes his landlady money, he has stopped going to lectures and he barely eats. Dostoevsky stops on his looks for one line, almost as an afterthought:

Кстати, он был замечательно хорош собою, с прекрасными темными глазами, темно-рус, ростом выше среднего, тонок и строен.

He was, by the way, remarkably handsome, with fine dark eyes and dark-blond hair, taller than average, slim and well built.

The detail matters. Raskolnikov is not a monster from the gutter. He is a gifted young man with a future, and that is what makes his crime so disturbing to everyone around him.

For learners: хорош собою means "good-looking". The instrumental собою (an older form of собой) is fixed in this phrase. You'll meet it in other 19th-century novels too.

The theory of the "extraordinary man"

Months before the murder, Raskolnikov wrote an article called «О преступлении» ("On Crime"). It appeared in a journal without his knowledge. The investigator Porfiry Petrovich has read it, and in Part 3 he makes the young man explain it in front of his friends.

Она именно состоит в том, что люди, по закону природы, разделяются вообще на два разряда: на низший (обыкновенных), то есть, так сказать, на материал, служащий единственно для зарождения себе подобных, и собственно на людей, то есть имеющих дар или талант сказать в среде своей новое слово.

The point is that people, by a law of nature, fall into two classes: a lower one, the ordinary, who are simply material for producing more of their own kind, and people in the true sense, who have the gift or talent to say a new word.

The "extraordinary" few, he argues, have the right to step over the law, even over blood, if their new idea needs it. He names Lycurgus, Solon, Muhammad and Napoleon. The ordinary must obey. The question the whole novel asks is simple: which kind is Raskolnikov?

The Russian title already holds the idea. Преступление (crime) comes from преступить, "to step over", the same root as переступить. Raskolnikov keeps thinking about stepping over a line, and the word keeps appearing in the text.

For learners: разделяются на два разряда means "are divided into two classes". Note на + accusative for dividing into parts. Служащий and имеющих are present active participles, the "-щий" form that literary Russian loves. Our page on participles and gerunds covers them.

The dream of the horse

The night before the murder, Raskolnikov falls asleep in the bushes and dreams he is a little boy again, walking with his father past a tavern. A drunk peasant called Mikolka loads a cart with friends and whips his old, thin mare to make her gallop. The crowd joins in. The horse is beaten to death, and the boy runs to her:

С криком пробивается он сквозь толпу к савраске, обхватывает ее мертвую, окровавленную морду и целует ее, целует ее в глаза, в губы...

Crying out, he pushes through the crowd to the little mare, throws his arms around her dead, bloody muzzle and kisses her, kisses her eyes, her lips...

The dream shows the side of him that the theory tries to silence: a boy who can't bear to watch a creature suffer. He wakes up horrified and asks himself if he will really take the axe. A day later, he does.

There is a quiet echo here. Mikolka is a folk form of Nikolai, and Nikolai is also the name of the house painter who later confesses to the murder he didn't commit.

For learners: the dream is told in the present tense (пробивается, обхватывает, целует), which makes it vivid and easier to read than the narration around it. Савраска is a pet name for a horse of a light brown colour.

A man with two characters

His friend Razumikhin describes him to his mother and sister better than anyone:

...точно в нем два противоположные характера поочередно сменяются.

...as if two opposite characters were taking turns inside him.

It's true throughout the book. Raskolnikov gives his last money to the Marmeladov family for a funeral, then insults his sister's fiancé. He saves a girl from a predator on the boulevard, then wonders why he bothered. In the epilogue we learn that as a student he supported a sick classmate for half a year and once pulled two children out of a burning house.

The murder doesn't make him free. It makes him ill, feverish and paranoid. Within days, the "extraordinary man" is calling himself a louse.

The people around him

Each important character pulls Raskolnikov in a different direction.

Sonya (Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova). The daughter of the drunk clerk Marmeladov, she sells herself to feed her stepmother's children. She too has crossed a line, but for others, not for herself. Raskolnikov chooses her as the first person to confess to. She reads him the story of Lazarus raised from the dead and tells him to confess at the crossroads.

Razumikhin. His university friend, noisy, cheerful, poor and endlessly loyal. His name comes from разум, "reason", and he is the sane centre of the book. He nurses Raskolnikov through his fever and ends up marrying his sister.

Dunya (Avdotya Romanovna). His sister, as proud as he is. She agrees to marry the businessman Luzhin to help her brother, and Raskolnikov sees that this is her own sacrifice, close to Sonya's. He refuses to accept it.

Porfiry Petrovich. The investigator who never arrests him until he is ready. Their three conversations are cat-and-mouse games. Porfiry has no proof, only psychology, and he wants Raskolnikov to come in on his own.

Svidrigailov. Dunya's former employer, a rich man with a dark past, who follows the family to Petersburg. He tells Raskolnikov more than once that they are alike:

Ну, не правду я сказал, что мы одного поля ягоды?

Well, wasn't it true what I said, that we're birds of a feather?

Literally, "berries of one field". Svidrigailov is what Raskolnikov might become if the theory won: a man who has stepped over every line and feels nothing but boredom. He shows the hero a dead end.

"Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right?"

The novel's most famous line comes in Part 5, when Raskolnikov finally tells Sonya why he killed. He gives one reason after another: money for his mother, a career, Napoleon. Then he drops them all:

Тварь ли я дрожащая или право имею...

Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right...

He killed to find out which of the two kinds of people he was. The answer, he tells her, is that he isn't the extraordinary kind. A real Napoleon wouldn't be lying awake asking.

For learners: ли turns a statement into a yes/no question and follows the word in focus, here тварь. Дрожащая is a present active participle of дрожать (to tremble), and it agrees with the feminine noun тварь, even though the speaker is a man. Право иметь means "to have the right". In everyday Russian you'd say Имею ли я право?

Crime, then punishment

The punishment in the title is not Siberia. It's the weeks between the murder and the confession, when Raskolnikov can't eat, can't sleep and can't stand the people who love him. In Part 6, after Svidrigailov's suicide, he walks to the police station and confesses.

He is sentenced to eight years of hard labour, and Sonya follows him to Siberia. For a long time he still doesn't repent. He only regrets that he failed. The change comes in the last pages, when he suddenly finds himself at her feet, and Dostoevsky ends the book on a new life rather than an answer.

Read it in Russian

Raskolnikov's arguments are long and slippery, but his speech is often easier than the narration, and the people around him talk in clear, lively Russian. If Dostoevsky is new to you, start with our tips on how to read Dostoevsky in Russian, then read the opening pages of Crime and Punishment free on our site, with a translation under every line. Our guide to Crime and Punishment for Russian learners has the full list of names and a part-by-part reading plan, and our Crime and Punishment quotes collect his most famous lines.

The best way to understand Raskolnikov is to hear him argue with himself in his own language. Our Learn Russian app has Crime and Punishment in full, with a translation under every line, along with the vocabulary and grammar to get you there. It's free to download, though some books and extra content need diamonds you earn while learning, or Premium.