Jim’s Reviews > Crime and Punishment > Status Update

And what if there are only spiders [in the afterlife], or something of that sort? .... We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.

I have known [Raskolnikov] for a year and a half; he is morose, gloomy, proud and haughty, and of late—and perhaps for a long time before—he has been suspicious and fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not at all morbid, but simply cold and inhumanly callous....

Do you suppose I don't feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink, too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!