Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

ON AN exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. Bridge.

What do you think of this opening line?

The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer—all worked painfully upon the young man’s already overwrought nerves.

What an interesting sentence structure!

She was a diminutive, withered-up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose.

“Raskolnikov, a student,

Everything was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly polished; everything shone.

Double semi colons!!!!

“May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite conversation?

All extroverts should be required to ask this!

compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself,

(for my daughter has a yellow passport),”

What does this mean?

Raskolnikov listened intently but with a sick sensation. He felt vexed that he had come here.

That's what happens when an introvert meets an extrovert!

Are you sorry for me, sir, or not?

Nope. Definitely not.

‘Where is the daughter who gave herself for her cross, consumptive step-mother and for the little children of another? Where is the daughter who had pity upon the filthy drunkard, her earthly father, undismayed by his beastliness?’

It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment that he would knock his head against the ceiling.

What a description!

it was really treating the crazy fellow too harshly.

It is true that he is forty-five years old, but he is of a fairly prepossessing appearance, and might still be thought attractive by women, and he is altogether a very respectable and presentable man, only he seems a little morose and somewhat conceited.

Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help?

Yes. In the story of The Good Samaritian, the good neighbor is the one who helped with action, who didn't just tiptoe by , who didn't just say a prayer and cross the street. He stopped his plans and lifted the beaten man from the ground , tended to his wounds.

“My property!” shouted Mikolka,

Is this a metaphor for the current student loan crisis? Attach loans to a young person that they can never pay back and then society beats the poor student , leaving deep scars.

What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?

“Why are you lying like a log?”

Maybe he is a night owl

He rushed to the door, listened, caught up his hat and began to descend his thirteen steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat.

Reminds me of Shelock Holmes about how you see but you do not observe. In this case, there is a lot of observation.

“What do you want?” he shouted, apparently astonished that such a ragged fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance.

“You are told to come at nine, and now it’s twelve!”

The student is a night owl.

“Poverty is not a vice,

the house is a regular Noah’s Ark,”

yellowish glass filled with yellow water,

It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment.

“Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a student, or formerly a student?”

He was standing, hat and gloves in hand, but before departing he felt disposed to throw off a few more intellectual phrases.

she was young and not repulsive—the only one of the group.

“Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

“Ilya Petrovitch is a blockhead,” he decided.

Most people are.

“I have you once before told that you to call me Amalia Ludwigovna may not dare; I am Amalia Ivanovna.”

“Yes . . . he was so kind . . . Dounia, I promised Luzhin I’d throw him downstairs and told him to go to hell. . . .”

I am a man because I err!

To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.

“God has sent this gentleman to our aid, though he has come from a drinking party.

“Delirious? But you remember everything!” Razumihin interrupted.

Probably because he wasn't staring at a Smartphone

“In his article all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’

“It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery,” thought Raskolnikov.

No, it’s better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.

“I rarely lie,”

“I certainly am idle and depraved,

Assuming an aggrieved air, Luzhin relapsed into dignified silence.

There is a line in everything which it is dangerous to overstep; and when it has been overstepped, there is no return.”

“To my thinking, you, with all your virtues, are not worth the little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you throw stones.”

her helpless position had been a great allurement;

Poverty does necessarily mean helpless. What of hard work and intellect, caring, kindness? All the money in the world can't compete with the warmth of a smile or the hand of friendship.

“Once for all, never ask me about anything.

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity,”

“And what does God do for you?”

She will see God.”

“You are lying all the while,”

Oh my gosh.....just arrest him already! Hee hee hee!