The girl rushed after me … “Here ‘unfortunate,’ take a little kopeck for Christ’s sake,” she cried, running ahead of me and putting the coin in my hand. I took her little kopeck, and the girl went back to her mother perfectly content. I held on to that little kopeck for a long time.
My heart is broken this is literally that scene from CNP Part II Chapter III where Rodya walks along K Bridge and a girl with hse mother gives him a quarter kopeck saying the same things. Except when Rodya threw the coin into the water, Sasha kept it.
Water is a symbol of physical and spiritual suicide in CNP. When Rodya threw the alms given to him "for Christ's sake," he rejected salvation. But Sasha does the opposite. This prisoner wants freedom.
