What does Raskolnikov's dream give hope for? The role of dreams in the novel "Crime and Punishment"
Raskolnikov's dreams are the semantic and plot supports of Dostoevsky's entire novel. Raskolnikov's first dream occurs before the crime, precisely when he is most hesitant in making a decision: whether to kill or not to kill the old money-lender. This dream is about Raskolnikov's childhood. She and her father are walking through their small hometown after visiting their grandmother's grave. There is a church next to the cemetery. Raskolnikov the child and his father pass by a tavern.
We immediately see two spatial points where the hero of Russian literature rushes about: the church and the tavern. More precisely, these two poles of Dostoevsky’s novel are holiness and sin. Raskolnikov will also rush throughout the novel between these two points: either he will fall deeper and deeper into the abyss of sin, or he will suddenly surprise everyone with miracles of self-sacrifice and kindness.
The drunken coachman Mikolka brutally kills his inferior, old and emaciated horse only because she is unable to pull the cart, where a dozen drunken people from the tavern sat down to laugh. Mikolka hits his horse in the eyes with a whip, and then finishes off the shafts, going into a rage and thirsting for blood.
Little Raskolnikov throws himself at Mikolka’s feet to protect the unfortunate, downtrodden creature - the “horse”. He stands up for the weak, against violence and evil.
“- Sit down, I’ll take everyone! - Mikolka shouts again, jumping first into the cart, taking the reins and standing on the front at his full height. “The bay one left with Matvey,” he shouts from the cart, “and this little mare, brothers, only breaks my heart: it would seem that he killed her, she eats bread for nothing.” I say sit down! Let me gallop! Let's gallop! - And he takes the whip in his hands, preparing to whip the Savraska with pleasure. (...)
Everyone climbs into Mikolka’s cart with laughter and witticisms. Six people got in, and there are still more to be seated. They take with them one woman, fat and ruddy. She's wearing red coats, a beaded tunic, cats on her feet, cracking nuts and chuckling. All around in the crowd they are also laughing, and indeed, how can one not laugh: such a frothing mare and such a burden will be carried at a gallop! The two guys in the cart immediately take a whip each to help Mikolka. The sound is heard: “Well!”, the nag pulls with all her might, but not only can she gallop, but she can even barely manage a step; she just minces with her legs, grunts and crouches from the blows of three whips raining down on her like peas. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd doubles, but Mikolka gets angry and, in a rage, strikes the filly with rapid blows, as if he really believed that she would gallop.
- Let me in too, brothers! - shouts one overjoyed guy from the crowd.
- Sit down! Everyone sit down! - Mikolka shouts, - everyone will be lucky. I'll spot it!
- And he whips, whips, and no longer knows what to hit with out of frenzy.
“Daddy, daddy,” he shouts to his father, “daddy, what are they doing?” Daddy, the poor horse is being beaten!
- Let's go, let's go! - says the father, - drunk, playing pranks, fools: let's go, don't look! - and wants to take him away, but he breaks out of his hands and, not
remembering himself, he runs to the horse. But the poor horse feels bad. She gasps, stops, jerks again, almost falls.
- Slap him to death! - Mikolka shouts, - for that matter. I'll spot it!
- Why don’t you have a cross on, or something, you devil! - one old man shouts
from the crowd.
“Have you ever seen such a horse carry such luggage,” adds another.
- You'll starve! - shouts the third.
- Don't touch it! My goodness! I do what I want. Sit down again! Everyone sit down! I want you to go galloping without fail!..
Suddenly, laughter erupts in one gulp and covers everything: the filly could not stand the rapid blows and began to kick in helplessness. Even the old man couldn’t resist and grinned. And indeed: such a yapping mare, and she kicks too!
Two guys from the crowd take out another whip and run to the horse to whip it from the sides. Everyone runs from their own side.
- In her face, in her eyes, in her eyes! - Mikolka shouts.
- A song, brothers! - someone shouts from the cart, and everyone in the cart joins in. A riotous song is heard, a tambourine clangs, and whistles are heard in the choruses. The woman cracks nuts and chuckles.
...He runs next to the horse, he runs ahead, he sees how it is being whipped in the eyes, right in the eyes! He is crying. His heart rises, tears flow. One of the attackers hits him in the face; he doesn’t feel, he wrings his hands, screams, rushes to the gray-haired old man with a gray beard, who shakes his head and condemns everything. One woman takes him by the hand and wants to lead him away; but he breaks free and runs to the horse again. She is already making her last efforts, but she begins to kick again.
- And to those devils! - Mikolka screams in rage. He throws the whip, bends down and pulls out a long and thick shaft from the bottom of the cart, takes it by the end in both hands and swings it with effort over the Savraska.
- It will explode! - they shout all around.
- My goodness! - Mikolka shouts and lowers the shaft with all his might. A heavy blow is heard.
And Mikolka swings another time, and another blow lands with all its might on the back of the unfortunate nag. She sinks all over, but jumps up and pulls, pulls with all her last strength in different directions to take her out; but from all sides they take it with six whips, and the shaft again rises and falls for the third time, then for the fourth, measuredly, with a sweep. Mikolka is furious that she cannot kill with one blow.
- Tenacious! - they shout all around.
“Now it will certainly fall, brothers, and this will be the end of it!” - one amateur shouts from the crowd.
- Ax her, what! Finish her at once,” shouts the third. - Eh, eat those mosquitoes! Make way! - Mikolka screams furiously, throws the shaft, bends down into the cart again and pulls out the iron crowbar. - Be careful!
- he shouts and with all his strength he stuns his poor horse. The blow collapsed; the filly staggered, sagged, and wanted to pull, but the crowbar again fell with all its might on her back, and she fell to the ground, as if all four legs had been cut off at once.
- Finish it off! - Mikolka shouts and jumps up, as if unconscious, from the cart. Several guys, also flushed and drunk, grab whatever they can - whips, sticks, shafts - and run to the dying filly. Mikolka stands on the side and starts hitting him on the back with a crowbar in vain. The nag stretches out his muzzle, sighs heavily and dies.
- Finished! - they shout in the crowd.
- Why didn’t you gallop!
- My goodness! - Mikolka shouts, with a crowbar in her hands and with bloodshot eyes. He stands there as if regretting that there is no one else to beat.
- Well, really, you know, you don’t have a cross on you! - Many voices are already shouting from the crowd.
But the poor boy no longer remembers himself. With a cry, he makes his way through the crowd to Savraska, grabs her dead, bloody muzzle and kisses her, kisses her on the eyes, on the lips... Then suddenly he jumps up and in a frenzy rushes with his little fists at Mikolka. At that moment his father, who had been chasing him for a long time, finally grabs him and carries him out of the crowd.”
Why is this horse being slaughtered by a man named Mikolka? This is not at all accidental. After the murder of the old money-lender and Lizaveta, suspicion falls on the painter Mikolka, who picked up the box of jewelry dropped by Raskolnikov, a mortgage from the old money-lender's chest, and drank the find in a tavern. This Mikolka was one of the schismatics. Before he came to St. Petersburg, he was under the leadership of a holy elder and followed the path of faith. However, St. Petersburg “whirled” Mikolka, he forgot the elder’s covenants and fell into sin. And, according to the schismatics, it is better to suffer for the big sin of others in order to more fully atone for your own small sin. And now Mikolka takes the blame for a crime that he did not commit. While Raskolnikov, at the moment of the murder, finds himself in the role of that coachman Mikolka, who brutally kills the horse. The roles in reality, unlike in the dream, were reversed.
So what then is the meaning of Raskolnikov’s first dream? The dream shows that Raskolnikov is initially kind, that murder is alien to his nature, that he is ready to stop, even if only a minute before the crime. At the very last minute he can still choose good. Moral responsibility remains entirely in the hands of man. God seems to give a person a choice of action until the very last second. But Raskolnikov chooses evil and commits a crime against himself, against his human nature. That is why, even before the murder, conscience stops Raskolnikov, draws terrible pictures of a bloody murder in his sleep, so that the hero gives up his crazy thought.
The name Raskolnikov takes on a symbolic meaning: schism means splitting. Even in the surname itself we see the beat of modernity: people have ceased to be united, they are split into two halves, they constantly fluctuate between good and evil, not knowing what to choose. The meaning of Raskolnikov’s image is also “twofold”, splitting in the eyes of the characters around him. All the heroes of the novel are attracted to him and make biased assessments of him. According to Svidrigailov, “Rodion Romanovich has two roads: either a bullet in the forehead, or along Vladimirka.”
Subsequently, remorse after the murder and painful doubts about his own theory had a detrimental effect on his initially handsome appearance: “Raskolnikov (...) was very pale, absent-minded and gloomy. From the outside, he looked like a wounded person or someone enduring some kind of severe physical pain: his eyebrows were knitted, his lips were compressed, his eyes were inflamed.”
Around Raskolnikov's first dream, Dostoevsky places a number of contradictory events that are in one way or another associatively connected with Raskolnikov's dream.
The first event is a “test”. This is how Raskolnikov calls his trip to the old pawnbroker Alena Ivanovna. He brings her his father’s silver watch as a pawn, but not because he needs money so much so as not to die of hunger, but in order to check whether he can “step over” the blood or not, that is, whether he is capable of murder. By pawning his father’s watch, Raskolnikov symbolically renounces his family: it is unlikely that the father would approve of his son’s idea of committing murder (it is no coincidence that Raskolnikov’s name is Rodion; he seems to betray this name at the moment of murder and “trial”), and having committed a crime, he seems to “ uses scissors to cut himself off from people, especially from his mother and sister. In a word, during the “test” Raskolnikov’s soul leans in favor of evil.
Then he meets Marmeladov in a tavern, who tells him about his daughter Sonya. She goes to the panel so that Marmeladov’s three young children do not die of hunger. Meanwhile, Marmeladov drinks away all the money and even asks Sonechka forty kopecks to get over his hangover. Immediately after this event, Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother. In it, the mother talks about Raskolnikov’s sister Duna, who wants to marry Luzhin, saving her beloved brother Rodya. And Raskolnikov unexpectedly brings Sonya and Dunya closer together. After all, Dunya also sacrifices herself. Essentially, she, like Sonya, sells her body for her brother. Raskolnikov does not want to accept such a sacrifice. He sees the murder of the old pawnbroker as a way out of the current situation: “...eternal Sonechka, while the world stands!”; “Oh yes Sonya! What a well, however, they managed to dig! and use it (...) They cried and got used to it. A scoundrel of a man gets used to everything!”
Raskolnikov rejects compassion, humility and sacrifice, choosing rebellion. At the same time, the motives for his crime lie in the deepest self-deception: to free humanity from the harmful old woman, give the stolen money to his sister and mother, thereby saving Dunya from the voluptuous Luzhins and Svidrigailovs. Raskolnikov convinces himself of simple “arithmetic”, as if with the help of the death of one “ugly old woman” humanity can be made happy.
Finally, just before the dream about Mikolka, Raskolnikov himself saves a fifteen-year-old drunken girl from a respectable gentleman who wanted to take advantage of the fact that she did not understand anything. Raskolnikov asks the policeman to protect the girl, and angrily shouts to the gentleman: “Hey, you, Svidrigailov!” Why Svidrigailov? Yes, because from his mother’s letter he learns about the landowner Svidrigailov, in whose house Dunya served as a governess, and it was the voluptuous Svidrigailov who encroached on his sister’s honor. By protecting the girl from the depraved old man, Raskolnikov symbolically protects his sister. This means he is doing good again. The pendulum in his soul swung again in the opposite direction - towards good. Raskolnikov himself evaluates his “test” as an ugly, disgusting mistake: “Oh God, how disgusting it all is... And could such horror really come into my head...” He is ready to retreat from his plan, throw out his erroneous, destructive theory from his consciousness: “ -Enough! - he said decisively and solemnly, - away with mirages, away with feigned fears... There is life!... - But I already agreed to live on a yard of space!
Raskolnikov’s second dream is, rather, not even a dream, but a daydream in a state of slight and short oblivion. This dream appears to him a few minutes before he commits a crime. In many ways, Raskolnikov’s dream is mysterious and strange: This is an oasis in the African desert of Egypt: “The caravan is resting, the camels are lying quietly; There are palm trees growing all around; everyone is having lunch. He keeps drinking water, straight from the stream, which is right there, by his side, flowing and babbling. And it’s so cool, and such wonderful, wonderful blue water, cold, runs over multi-colored stones and over such clean sand with golden sparkles...”
Why does Raskolnikov dream of a desert, an oasis, clean transparent water, to the source of which he leans and drinks greedily? This source is exactly the water of faith. Raskolnikov, even a second before a crime, can stop and fall to a source of pure water, to holiness, to return the lost harmony to his soul. But he doesn’t do this, but, on the contrary, as soon as six o’clock strikes, he jumps up and, like an automaton, goes for the kill.
This dream about a desert and an oasis is reminiscent of a poem by M.Yu. Lermontov "Three Palms". It also spoke of an oasis, clean water, and three flowering palm trees. However, nomads approach this oasis and cut down three palm trees with an ax, destroying the oasis in the desert. Immediately after the second dream, Raskolnikov steals an ax in the janitor's room, puts it in a loop under the arm of his summer coat and commits a crime. Evil conquers good. The pendulum in Raskolnikov's soul again darted to the opposite pole. In Raskolnikov there are, as it were, two people: a humanist and an individualist.
Contrary to the aesthetic appearance of his theory, Raskolnikov’s crime is monstrously ugly. At the moment of murder, he acts as a maverick. He kills Alena Ivanovna with the butt of an ax (as if fate itself were pushing Raskolnikov’s lifeless hand); smeared in blood, the hero uses an ax to cut the cord on the old woman’s chest with two crosses, an icon and a wallet, and wipes his bloody hands on the red set. The merciless logic of murder forces Raskolnikov, who claims aestheticism in his theory, to hack Lizaveta, who returned to the apartment, with the edge of an ax, so that he split her skull right up to her neck. Raskolnikov definitely gets the taste for bloody carnage. But Lizaveta is pregnant. This means that Raskolnikov kills a third, not yet born, but also a person. (Remember that Svidrigailov also kills three people: he poisons his wife Marfa Petrovna, a fourteen-year-old girl, molested by him, and his servant commit suicide.) If Koch had not been frightened and would not have run down the stairs when Koch and the student Pestrukhin were pulling the door of the old woman’s apartment, pawnbroker, closed from the inside with one hook, then Raskolnikov would have killed Koch too. Raskolnikov held an ax at the ready, hiding on the other side of the door. There would be four corpses. In fact, the theory is very far from practice; it is not at all similar to the aesthetically beautiful theory of Raskolnikov, created by him in his imagination.
Raskolnikov hides the loot under a stone. He laments that he did not “step over the blood”, did not turn out to be a “superman”, but appeared as an “aesthetic louse” (“Did I kill the old woman? I killed myself...”), suffers because he suffers, because Napoleon would not have suffered, because “forgets the army in Egypt (...) spends half a million people on the Moscow campaign.” Raskolnikov does not realize the dead end of his theory, which rejects the immutable moral law. The hero violated the moral law and fell because he had a conscience, and it takes revenge on him for violating the moral law.
On the other hand, Raskolnikov is generous, noble, sympathetic, and uses his last means to help a sick comrade; Risking himself, he saves children from a fire, gives his mother’s money to the Marmeladov family, protects Sonya from Luzhin’s slander; he has the makings of a thinker, a scientist. Porfiry Petrovich tells Raskolnikov that he has a “great heart,” compares him to the “sun,” to Christian martyrs who go to execution for their idea: “Become the sun, everyone will see you.”
In Raskolnikov's theory, as if in focus, all the contradictory moral and spiritual properties of the hero are concentrated. First of all, according to Raskolnikov’s plan, his theory proves that every person is a “scoundrel”, and social injustice is in the order of things.
Life itself comes into conflict with Raskolnikov’s casuistry. The hero's illness after the murder shows the equality of people before conscience; it is a consequence of conscience, so to speak, a physiological manifestation of the spiritual nature of man. Through the mouth of the maid Nastasya (“It’s the blood screaming in you”) the people judge Raskolnikov’s crime.
Raskolnikov's third dream occurs after the crime. Raskolnikov's third dream is directly related to Raskolnikov's torment after the murder. This dream is also preceded by a number of events. In the novel, Dostoevsky precisely follows the well-known psychological observation that “the criminal is always drawn to the scene of the crime.” Indeed, Raskolnikov comes to the pawnbroker’s apartment after the murder. The apartment is being renovated, the door is open. Raskolnikov, as if out of the blue, begins to pull the bell and listen. One of the workers looks at Raskolnikov suspiciously and calls him a “burnout.” The tradesman Kryukov pursues Raskolnikov as he walks from the house of the old pawnbroker and shouts to him: “Murderer!”
Here is this dream of Raskolnikov: “He forgot; It seemed strange to him that he did not remember how he could have ended up on the street. It was already late evening. The dusk deepened, the full moon grew brighter and brighter; but somehow the air was especially stuffy. People walked in crowds along the streets; artisans and busy people went home, others walked; it smelled of lime, dust, and stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked sad and worried: he remembered very well that he had left the house with some intention, that he had to do something and hurry, but he forgot what exactly. Suddenly he stopped and saw that on the other side of the street, on the sidewalk, a man was standing and waving at him. He walked towards him across the street, but suddenly this man turned and walked as if nothing had happened, with his head down, without turning around and without giving any sign that he was calling him. “Come on, did he call?” - thought Raskolnikov, but he began to catch up. Not ten steps away, he suddenly recognized him and was frightened; it was a tradesman from a long time ago, in the same robe and hunched over in the same way. Raskolnikov walked from a distance; his heart was beating; We turned into the alley - he still didn’t turn around. “Does he know that I’m following him?” - thought Raskolnikov. A tradesman entered the gates of a large house. Raskolnikov quickly walked up to the gate and began to look to see if he would look back and call him. In fact, having gone through the entire gateway and already going out into the yard, he suddenly turned around and again seemed to wave to him. Raskolnikov immediately passed through the gateway, but the tradesman was no longer in the yard. Therefore, he entered here now on the first staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. In fact, two stairs up, someone else's measured, unhurried steps could be heard. Strange, the stairs seemed familiar! There's a window on the first floor; the moonlight passed sadly and mysteriously through the glass; here is the second floor. Bah! This is the same apartment in which the workers smeared... How did he not find out immediately? The steps of the man in front died down: “it means he stopped or hid somewhere.” Here is the third floor; should we go further? And how quiet there is, it’s even scary... But he went. The noise of his own steps frightened and worried him. God, how dark! The tradesman must be hiding in a corner somewhere. A! the apartment was wide open to the stairs, he thought and entered. The hallway was very dark and empty, not a soul, as if everything had been taken out; Quietly, on tiptoe, he walked into the living room: the whole room was brightly bathed in moonlight; everything is still there: the chairs, the mirror, the yellow sofa and the framed pictures. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked straight into the windows. “It’s been so quiet for a month,” thought Raskolnikov, “he’s probably asking a riddle now.” He stood and waited, waited for a long time, and the quieter the month was, the stronger his heart beat, and it even became painful. And all is silence. Suddenly, an instant dry crack was heard, as if a splinter had been broken, and everything froze again. The awakened fly suddenly hit the glass and buzzed pitifully. At that very moment, in the corner, between the small wardrobe and the window, he saw a cloak as if hanging on the wall. “Why is there a cloak here? - he thought, “after all, he wasn’t there before...” He approached slowly and guessed that someone seemed to be hiding behind the cloak. He carefully pulled back his cloak with his hand and saw that there was a chair standing there, and an old woman was sitting on a chair in the corner, all hunched over and her head bowed, so that he could not see her face, but it was her. He stood over her: “Afraid!” - he thought, quietly released the ax from the loop and hit the old woman on the crown, once and twice. But it’s strange: she didn’t even move from the blows, like she was made of wood. He got scared, leaned closer and began to look at her; but she also bent her head even lower. He then bent down completely to the floor and looked into her face from below, looked and froze: the old woman was sitting and laughing - she burst into quiet, inaudible laughter, trying with all her might so that he would not hear her. Suddenly it seemed to him that the door from the bedroom opened slightly and that there, too, seemed to be laughing and whispering. Fury overcame him: with all his might he began to hit the old woman on the head, but with each blow of the ax the laughter and whispers from the bedroom were heard louder and louder, and the old woman was shaking all over with laughter. He rushed to run, but the entire hallway was already full of people, the doors on the stairs were wide open, and on the landing, on the stairs and down there - all the people, head to head, everyone was watching - but everyone was hiding and waiting, silent... His heart was embarrassed, his legs don’t move, they’re rooted... He wanted to scream and woke up.”
Porfiry Petrovich, having learned about Raskolnikov’s arrival at the scene of the murder, hides the tradesman Kryukov behind the door of the next room, so that during the interrogation of Raskolnikov he will unexpectedly release the tradesman and expose Raskolnikov. Only an unexpected confluence of circumstances prevented Porfiry Petrovich: Mikolka took upon himself Raskolnikov’s crime - and Porfiry Petrovich was forced to let Raskolnikov go. The tradesman Kryukov, who was sitting outside the door of the investigator’s room and heard everything, comes to Raskolnikov and falls to his knees in front of him. He wants to repent to Raskolnikov that he accused him of murder unfairly, believing after Mikolka’s voluntary confession that Raskolnikov did not commit any crime.
But that will happen later, but for now Raskolnikov is dreaming of this particular tradesman Kryukov, who threw this menacing word “murderer” in his face. So, Raskolnikov runs after him to the apartment of the old money-lender. He dreams of an old woman hiding from him under a cloak. Raskolnikov hits her with an ax with all his might, but she just laughs. And suddenly there are a lot of people in the room, on the threshold, and everyone looks at Raskolnikov and laughs. Why is this motif of laughter so important to Dostoevsky? Why is Raskolnikov madly afraid of this public laughter? The thing is that more than anything else he is afraid of being funny. If his theory is ridiculous, then it is not worth a penny. And in this case, Raskolnikov himself, together with his theory, turns out to be not a superman, but an “aesthetic louse,” as he declares this to Sonya Marmeladova, confessing to the murder.
Raskolnikov's third dream includes a mechanism of repentance. Raskolnikov Between the third and fourth dreams, Raskolnikov looks in the mirror of his “doubles”: Luzhin and Svidrigailov. As we said, Svidrigailov kills, like Raskolnikov, three people. In this case, why is Svidrigailov worse than Raskolnikov?! It is no coincidence that, having overheard Raskolnikov’s secret, Svidrigailov, mockingly, tells Raskolnikov that they are “birds of a feather,” considers him as if his brother in sin, distorts the hero’s tragic confessions “with the appearance of some kind of winking, cheerful trickery.”
Luzhin and Svidrigailov, distorting and mimicking his seemingly aesthetic theory, force the hero to reconsider his view of the world and man. The theories of Raskolnikov’s “doubles” judge Raskolnikov himself. Luzhin’s theory of “reasonable egoism,” according to Raskolnikov, is fraught with the following: “But bring to the consequences what you preached just now, and it will turn out that people can be slaughtered...”
Finally, Porfiry’s dispute with Raskolnikov (cf. Porfiry’s mockery of how to distinguish “extraordinary” from “ordinary”: “is it not possible to have special clothes here, for example, to wear something, there are brands there, or something?” .") and Sonya’s words immediately cross out Raskolnikov’s cunning dialectic, forcing him to take the path of repentance: “I only killed a louse, Sonya, a useless, disgusting, harmful one.” - “This is a great man!” - Sonya exclaims.
Sonya reads Raskolnikov the Gospel parable about the resurrection of Lazarus (like Lazarus, the hero of Crime and Punishment is in the “coffin” for four days - Dostoevsky compares Raskolnikov’s closet to a “coffin”). Sonya gives Raskolnikov her cross, leaving on herself the cypress cross of Lizaveta, whom he killed, with whom they exchanged crosses. Thus, Sonya makes it clear to Raskolnikov that he killed his sister, for all people are brothers and sisters in Christ. Raskolnikov puts into practice Sonya’s call - to go out to the square, fall to his knees and repent before all the people: “Accept suffering and atone for yourself with it...”
Raskolnikov's repentance on the square is tragically symbolic, reminiscent of the fate of the ancient prophets, as he indulges in popular ridicule. Raskolnikov’s acquisition of faith, desired in the dreams of the New Jerusalem, is a long journey. The people do not want to believe in the sincerity of the hero’s repentance: “Look, you got whipped! (...) It is he who goes to Jerusalem, brothers, says goodbye to his homeland, worships the whole world, the capital city of St. Petersburg and kisses its soil” (cf. Porfiry’s question: “So you still believe in the New Jerusalem?”).
It is no coincidence that Raskolnikov had his last dream about “trichinas” on Easter days, during Holy Week. Raskolnikov’s fourth dream Raskolnikov is sick, and in the hospital he has this dream: “He spent the entire end of Lent and the Holy Day in the hospital. Already recovering, he recalled his dreams when he was still lying in the heat and delirious. In his illness, he dreamed that the whole world was condemned to be a victim of some terrible, unheard of and unprecedented pestilence coming from the depths of Asia to Europe. All were to perish, except for a few, very few, chosen ones. Some new trichinae appeared, microscopic creatures that inhabited people’s bodies. But these creatures were spirits, gifted with intelligence and will. People who accepted them into themselves immediately became possessed and crazy. But never, never have people considered themselves as smart and unshakable in the truth as the infected believed. They have never considered their verdicts, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakable. Entire villages, entire cities and peoples became infected and went crazy. Everyone was in anxiety and did not understand each other, everyone thought that the truth lay in him alone, and he was tormented, looking at others, beating his chest, crying and wringing his hands. They didn’t know who to judge and how, they couldn’t agree on what to consider as evil and what as good. They didn’t know who to blame, who to justify. People killed each other in some senseless rage. Whole armies gathered against each other, but the armies, already on the march, suddenly began to torment themselves, the ranks were upset, the warriors rushed at each other, stabbed and cut, bit and ate each other. In the cities they sounded the alarm all day long: they called everyone, but who was calling and why, no one knew, and everyone was in alarm. They abandoned the most ordinary crafts, because everyone proposed their thoughts, their amendments, and they could not agree; Agriculture stopped. Here and there people gathered in heaps, agreed to something together, swore not to part, but immediately started something completely different from what they themselves had immediately intended, began to blame each other, fought and cut themselves. Fires started, famine began. Everything and everyone was dying. The ulcer grew and moved further and further. Only a few people in the whole world could be saved; they were pure and chosen, destined to start a new race of people and a new life, to renew and cleanse the earth, but no one saw these people anywhere, no one heard their words and voices.”
Raskolnikov never fully repented of his crime in hard labor. He believes that it was in vain to succumb to pressure from Porfiry Petrovich and came to the investigator to confess. It would be better if he committed suicide like Svidrigailov. He simply did not have the strength to dare commit suicide. Sonya followed Raskolnikov to hard labor. But Raskolnikov cannot love her. He doesn't love anyone, just like him. The convicts hate Raskolnikov and, on the contrary, love Sonya very much. One of the convicts rushed at Raskolnikov, wanting to kill him.
What is Raskolnikov’s theory if not “trikhin”, which moved into his soul and made Raskolnikov think that in him alone and in his theory lies the truth?! Truth cannot dwell in man. According to Dostoevsky, truth lies in God alone, in Christ. If a person decides that he is the measure of all things, he is capable of killing another, like Raskolnikov. He gives himself the right to judge who deserves to live and who deserves to die, who is a “nasty old woman” who should be crushed, and who can continue to live. These questions are decided only by God, according to Dostoevsky.
Raskolnikov's dream in the epilogue about the "trichinas", which shows the perishing humanity, which imagines that the truth lies in man, shows that Raskolnikov has matured in order to understand the fallacy and danger of his theory. He is ready to repent, and then the world around him changes: suddenly he sees in the convicts not criminals and animals, but people with a human appearance. And the convicts suddenly also begin to treat Raskolnikov kinder. Moreover, until he repented of his crime, he was not able to love anyone at all, including Sonya. After a dream about “trichinas,” he falls on his knees in front of her and kisses her foot. He is already capable of love. Sonya gives him the Gospel, and he wants to open this book of faith, but is still hesitating. However, this is another story - the story of the resurrection of “fallen man,” as Dostoevsky writes in the finale.
Raskolnikov's dreams are also part of his punishment for the crime. This is a mechanism of conscience that is turned on and works independently of a person. Conscience transmits these terrible dream images to Raskolnikov and forces him to repent of his crime, to return to the image of a person who, of course, continues to live in Raskolnikov’s soul. Dostoevsky, forcing the hero to take the Christian path of repentance and rebirth, considers this path the only true one for man.
RASKOLNIKOV'S DREAMS
In his novels, Dostoevsky reveals the complex processes of the inner life of the characters, their feelings, emotions, secret desires and fears. In this aspect, the characters' dreams are especially important. However, Dostoevsky’s dreams often also have plot-forming significance.
Let's try to analyze Raskolnikov's dreams and dreams in the novel "Crime and Punishment." The hero sees his first dream on Petrovsky Island. In this dream, Rodion’s childhood comes to life again: together with his father on a holiday, he travels out of town. Here they see a terrible picture: a young man, Mikolka, coming out of a tavern, with all his might he whips his “skinny... savras nag”, which is not able to carry an oversized cart, and then finishes her off with an iron crowbar. Rodion's pure childish nature protests against violence: with a cry, he rushes to the slaughtered Savraska and kisses her dead, bloody face. And then he jumps up and throws himself at Mikolka with his fists. Raskolnikov experiences here a whole range of very different feelings: horror, fear, pity for the unfortunate horse, anger and hatred for Mikolka. This dream shocks Rodion so much that, upon waking up, he renounces “his damned dream.” This is the meaning of the dream directly in the external action of the novel. However, the meaning of this dream is much deeper and more significant. Firstly, this dream anticipates future events: red shirts of drunken men; Mikolka’s red, “like a carrot” face; woman "in red"; an ax that can be used to kill the unfortunate nag at once - all this predetermines future murders, hinting that blood will still be shed. Secondly, this dream reflects the painful duality of the hero’s consciousness. If we remember that a dream is an expression of a person’s subconscious desires and fears, it turns out that Raskolnikov, fearing his own desires, still wanted the unfortunate horse to be beaten to death. It turns out that in this dream the hero feels like both Mikolka and a child, whose pure, kind soul does not accept cruelty and violence. This duality and contradictory nature of Raskolnikov in the novel is subtly noticed by Razumikhin. In a conversation with Pulcheria Alexandrovna, Razumikhin notes that Rodion is “gloomy, gloomy, arrogant and proud,” “cold and insensitive to the point of inhumanity,” and at the same time “generous and kind.” “It’s as if two opposite characters are alternately replaced in him,” exclaims Razumikhin. Two opposing images from his dream – a tavern and a church – also testify to Raskolnikov’s painful duality. The tavern is what destroys people, it is the center of depravity, recklessness, evil, this is the place where a person often loses his human appearance. The tavern always made a “most unpleasant impression” on Rodion; there was always a crowd there, “they were screaming, laughing, cursing... ugly and hoarsely singing and fighting; There were always such drunken and scary faces wandering around the tavern.” The tavern is a symbol of depravity and evil. The church in this dream personifies the best that is in human nature. It is typical that little Rodion loved church and went to mass with his father and mother twice a year. He liked the ancient images and the old priest; he knew that memorial services for his deceased grandmother were served here. The tavern and the church here, thus, metaphorically represent the main guidelines of a person in life. It is characteristic that in this dream Raskolnikov does not reach the church, does not enter it, which is also very significant. He is delayed by the scene near the tavern.
The image of a skinny peasant Savras woman who cannot withstand an unbearable burden is also significant here. This unfortunate horse is a symbol of the unbearable suffering of all the “humiliated and insulted” in the novel, a symbol of Raskolnikov’s hopelessness and dead end, a symbol of the misfortunes of the Marmeladov family, a symbol of Sonya’s situation. This episode from the hero’s dream echoes the bitter exclamation of Katerina Ivanovna before her death: “They drove away the nag! I tore it!”
The image of Raskolnikov’s long-dead father is also significant in this dream. The father wants to take Rodion away from the tavern and does not tell him to look at the violence being committed. The father here seems to be trying to warn the hero against his fatal act. Recalling the grief that befell their family when Rodion’s brother died, Raskolnikov’s father leads him to the cemetery, to the grave of his deceased brother, towards the church. This is precisely, in our opinion, the function of Raskolnikov’s father in this dream.
In addition, let us note the plot-forming role of this dream. It appears as “a kind of core of the entire novel, its central event. Concentrating in itself the energy and power of all future events, the dream has a formative significance for other storylines, “predicts” them (the dream is dreamed in the present tense, talks about the past and predicts the future murder of the old woman). The most complete representation of the main roles and functions (“victim”, “tormentor” and “compassionate” in the terminology of Dostoevsky himself) sets the dream of killing a horse as a plot core subject to textual development,” note G, Amelin and I. A. Pilshchikov. Indeed, threads from this dream stretch throughout the novel. Researchers identify character “triples” in the work, corresponding to the roles of “tormentor,” “victim,” and “compassionate.” In the hero’s dream it is “Mikolka – the horse – Raskolnikov the child”, in real life it is “Raskolnikov – the old woman – Sonya”. However, in the third “troika” the hero himself acts as a victim. This “troika” is “Raskolnikov - Porfiry Petrovich - Mikolka Dementyev.” The same motives are heard in the development of all plot situations here. Researchers note that in all three plots the same textual formula begins to unfold - “to stun” and “with a butt on the head.” So, in Raskolnikov’s dream, Mikolka uses a crowbar to “bash her poor little horse with all her might.” In approximately the same way, the hero kills Alena Ivanovna. “The blow hit the very top of the head...”, “Then he hit with all his might, once and twice, all with the butt and all on the top of the head.” Porfiry also uses the same expressions in a conversation with Rodion. “Well, tell me, who, of all the defendants, even the most humble peasant, doesn’t know that, for example, they will first begin to lull him to sleep with extraneous questions (as you happily put it), and then suddenly they will hit him right in the head with a butt of a blow - s...”, the investigator notes. Elsewhere we read: “On the contrary, I should have<…>distract you in the opposite direction, and suddenly, like a blow to the head (in your own expression), and stun you: “What, they say, sir, did you deign to do in the apartment of the murdered woman at ten o’clock in the evening, and almost not at eleven?"
In addition to dreams, the novel describes three visions of Raskolnikov, three of his “dreams”. Before committing a crime, he sees himself “in some kind of oasis.” The caravan is resting, camels are lying peacefully, and there are magnificent palm trees all around. A stream gurgles nearby, and “wonderful, wonderful blue water, cold, runs over multi-colored stones and over such pure sand with golden sparkles...” And in these dreams the painful duality of the hero’s consciousness is again indicated. As B.S. notes Kondratiev, the camel here is a symbol of humility (Raskolnikov resigned himself, renouncing his “damned dream” after his first dream), but the palm tree is “the main symbol of triumph and victory,” Egypt is the place where Napoleon forgets the army. Having abandoned his plans in reality, the hero returns to them in a dream, feeling like a victorious Napoleon.
The second vision visits Raskolnikov after his crime. It’s as if in reality he hears how the quarter warden Ilya Petrovich terribly beats his (Raskolnikov’s) landlady. This vision reveals Raskolnikov’s hidden desire to harm the landlady, the hero’s feeling of hatred and aggression towards her. It was thanks to the landlady that he found himself in the police station, forced to explain himself to the assistant quarter warden, experiencing a mortal sense of fear and almost without self-control. But Raskolnikov’s vision also has a deeper, philosophical aspect. This is a reflection of the hero’s painful state after the murder of the old woman and Lizaveta, a reflection of his feeling of alienation from his past, from “previous thoughts,” “previous tasks,” “previous impressions.” The landlady here is obviously a symbol of Raskolnikov’s past life, a symbol of what he loved so much (the story of the hero’s relationship with the landlady’s daughter). The quarterly warden is a figure from his “new” life, the start of which was his crime. In this “new” life, he “seemed to cut himself off from everyone with scissors,” and at the same time from his past. Raskolnikov is unbearably burdened in his new position, which is imprinted in his subconscious as damage, harm caused to the hero’s past by his present.
Raskolnikov's third vision occurs after his meeting with a tradesman who accuses him of murder. The hero sees the faces of people from his childhood, the bell tower of the Second Church; “a billiard in a tavern and some officer at the billiard, the smell of cigars in some basement tobacco shop, a drinking room, a back staircase... from somewhere you can hear the ringing of Sunday bells...”. The officer in this vision is a reflection of the hero’s real life experiences. Before his crime, Raskolnikov hears a conversation between a student and an officer in a tavern. The very images of this vision echo the images from Rodion’s first dream. There he saw a tavern and a church, here - the bell tower of the Second Church, the ringing of bells and a tavern, the smell of cigars, a drinking establishment. The symbolic meaning of these images is preserved here.
Raskolnikov sees his second dream after his crime. He dreams that he again goes to Alena Ivanovna’s apartment and tries to kill her, but the old woman, as if mocking her, bursts into quiet, inaudible laughter. He can hear laughter and whispers in the next room. Raskolnikov is suddenly surrounded by a lot of people - in the hallway, on the landing, on the stairs - silently and expectantly, they look at him. Overwhelmed by horror, he cannot move and soon awakens. This dream reflects the subconscious desires of the hero. Raskolnikov is burdened by his position, wanting to reveal his “secret” to someone, it’s hard for him to carry it inside himself. He literally suffocates in his individualism, trying to overcome the state of painful alienation from others and himself. That is why in Raskolnikov’s dream there are many people next to him. His soul yearns for people, he wants community, unity with them. In this dream, the motif of laughter, which accompanies the hero throughout the novel, reappears. After committing the crime, Raskolnikov feels that “he killed himself, and not the old woman.” This truth seems to be revealed to the people surrounding the hero in a dream. An interesting interpretation of the hero’s dream is offered by S.B. Kondratiev. The researcher notes that laughter in Raskolnikov’s dream is “an attribute of the invisible presence of Satan,” demons laugh and tease the hero.
Raskolnikov sees his third dream already in hard labor. In this dream, he seems to rethink the events that happened and his theory. Raskolnikov imagines that the whole world is condemned to be a victim of a “terrible... pestilence.” Some new microscopic creatures, trichinae, have appeared, infecting people and making them possessed. The infected do not hear or understand others, considering only their own opinion to be absolutely true and the only correct one. Having abandoned their occupations, crafts and agriculture, people kill each other in some senseless rage. Fires begin, famine begins, everything around dies. In the whole world, only a few people, “pure and chosen,” can be saved, but no one has ever seen them.” This dream represents the extreme embodiment of Raskolnikov’s individualistic theory, showing the threatening results of its harmful influence on the world and humanity. It is characteristic that individualism is now identified in Rodion’s mind with demon possession and madness. In fact, the hero’s idea of strong personalities, Napoleons, to whom “everything is permitted” now seems to him to be illness, madness, clouding of the mind. Moreover, the spread of this theory throughout the world is what causes Raskolnikov's greatest concerns. Now the hero realizes that his idea is contrary to human nature itself, reason, and the Divine world order. Having understood and accepted all this with his soul, Raskolnikov experiences moral enlightenment. It is not for nothing that it is after this dream that he begins to realize his love for Sonya, which reveals to him faith in life.
Thus, Raskolnikov’s dreams and visions in the novel convey his inner states, feelings, innermost desires and secret fears. Compositionally, dreams often precede future events, become the causes of events, and move the plot. Dreams contribute to the mixing of real and mystical narrative plans: new characters seem to grow from the hero’s dreams. In addition, the plots in these visions echo the ideological concept of the work, with the author’s assessment of Raskolnikov’s ideas.
Dreams of Rodion RaskolnikovF. M. Dostoevsky
"Crime and
punishment"
Danilina T.V.
Raskolnikov's first dream. (Part 1, chapter 5)
A painful dream that carriesgreat semantic load. He
reveals to us the true state
souls of Rodion, shows that
the murder he planned contradicts
his nature. There are 2 in the dream
opposite places: tavern and
church in the cemetery. Kabak is
the personification of evil, violence, blood, and
the church is the personification of purity, in
life begins and ends there
on the ground.
Raskolnikov's second dream (part 1, chapter 6)
Raskolnikov dreamed that he was in Africain Egypt near some oasis. This
a small oasis of happiness among
endless desert of grief,
inequality and sadness. Raskolnikov
dreams in that eternal peace that
I saw it many times in my dreams.
Raskolnikov's third dream (part 2, chapter 2)
Rodion dreams after the murderold women. In a dream, a quarterly
warden Ilya Petrovich strongly
beats up the landlady
Raskolnikov. The vision reveals
hidden desire to harm the old woman,
feeling of hatred, aggression of the hero
towards her.
Raskolnikov's fourth dream (part 3, chapter 6)
Rodion dreams that he is pursuingtradesman. According to the dream book this means
realizing one's own mistake,
which, unfortunately, is no longer possible
to correct. He also dreams of an old woman,
who laughs at him. Rodion
trying to kill her, but she's getting louder
laughs. Rodion becomes scared:
his heart rate increases. Before him
the horror begins to sink in
deed.
Raskolnikov's fifth dream (Epilogue, Chapter II)
Rodion dreams of being in hard labor. To himI dream that the whole world is about to perish
from a disease that there is a virus that
inhabits people, making them
crazy, although infected
consider themselves smart and healthy.
After Raskolnikov's last nightmare
healed - both physically and
spiritually. 1. Novel "Crime and Punishment"- first published in the magazine "Russian Bulletin" (1866. N 1, 2, 4, 6–8, 11, 12) with the signature: F. Dostoevsky.
The following year, a separate edition of the novel was published, in which the division into parts and chapters was changed (in the magazine version the novel was divided into three parts, not six), individual episodes were slightly shortened, and a number of stylistic corrections were made.
The idea for the novel was nurtured by Dostoevsky for many years. The fact that one of his central ideas had already taken shape by 1863 is evidenced by an entry dated September 17, 1863 in the diary of A.P. Suslova, who was at that time with Dostoevsky in Italy: “When we had dinner (in Turin, in the hotel, at the table d'hote'om.), he (Dostoevsky), looking at the girl who was taking lessons, said: “Well, imagine, such a girl with an old man, and suddenly some kind of Napoleon says: “Exterminate the whole city". It has always been like this in the world.”1 But Dostoevsky turned to creative work on the novel, thinking about its characters, individual scenes and situations only in 1865–1866. “Notes from Underground” (1864; see vol. 4 of this edition) The tragedy of the thinking hero-individualist, his proud rapture of his “idea” and defeat in the face of “living life”, the embodiment of which in “Notes” is the direct predecessor of Sonya Marmeladova, a girl from a brothel , - these main general contours of the “Notes” directly prepare “Crime and Punishment.” (Suslova A.P. Years of intimacy with Dostoevsky. M., 1928. P. 60.) ()
Episodes from the novel "Crime and Punishment"
3. Part 3, ch. VI.
Both walked out carefully and closed the door. Another half hour passed. Raskolnikov opened his eyes and threw himself up on his back again, clasping his hands behind his head... [...]
He forgot; It seemed strange to him that he did not remember how he could have ended up on the street. It was already late evening. The dusk deepened, the full moon grew brighter and brighter; but somehow the air was especially stuffy. People walked in crowds along the streets; artisans and busy people went home, others walked; it smelled of lime, dust, and stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked sad and worried: he remembered very well that he left the house with some intention, that he had to do something and hurry, but he forgot what exactly. Suddenly he stopped and saw that on the other side of the street, on the sidewalk, a man was standing and waving at him. He walked towards him across the street, but suddenly this man turned and walked as if nothing had happened, with his head down, without turning around and without giving any sign that he was calling him. “Come on, did he call?” - thought Raskolnikov, but began to catch up. Not ten steps away, he suddenly recognized him and was frightened; it was a tradesman from a long time ago, in the same robe and hunched over in the same way. Raskolnikov walked from a distance; his heart was beating; We turned into the alley - he still didn’t turn around. “Does he know that I’m following him?” - thought Raskolnikov. A tradesman entered the gates of a large house. Raskolnikov quickly walked up to the gate and began to look: would he look back and call him? In fact, having gone through the entire gateway and already going out into the yard, he suddenly turned around and again seemed to wave to him. Raskolnikov immediately passed through the gateway, but the tradesman was no longer in the yard. Therefore, he entered here now on the first staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. In fact, two stairs up, someone else's measured, unhurried steps could be heard. Strange, the stairs seemed familiar! There's a window on the first floor; the moonlight passed sadly and mysteriously through the glass; here is the second floor. Bah! This is the same apartment in which the workers smeared... How did he not find out immediately? The steps of the man in front died down: “it means he stopped or hid somewhere.” Here is the third floor; should we go further? And how quiet it was there, it was even scary... But he went. The noise of his own steps frightened and worried him. God, how dark! The tradesman must be hiding in a corner somewhere. A! the apartment is wide open to the stairs; he thought and entered. The hallway was very dark and empty, not a soul, as if everything had been taken out; Quietly, on tiptoe, he walked into the living room: the whole room was brightly bathed in moonlight; everything is the same here: chairs, a mirror, a yellow sofa and framed pictures. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked straight into the windows. “It’s been so quiet for a month,” thought Raskolnikov, “he’s probably asking a riddle now.” He stood and waited, waited for a long time, and the quieter the month was, the stronger his heart beat, and it even became painful. And all silence. Suddenly, an instant dry crack was heard, as if a splinter had been broken, and everything froze again. The awakened fly suddenly hit the glass and buzzed pitifully. At that very moment, in the corner, between the small wardrobe and the window, he saw a cloak as if hanging on the wall. “Why is there a cloak here? - he thought, “after all, he wasn’t there before...” He approached slowly and guessed that someone seemed to be hiding behind the cloak. He carefully pulled back his cloak with his hand and saw that there was a chair standing there, and an old woman was sitting on a chair in the corner, all hunched over and her head bowed, so that he could not see her face, but it was her. He stood over her: “Afraid!” - he thought, quietly released the ax from the loop and hit the old woman on the crown, once and twice. But it’s strange: she didn’t even move from the blows, like she was made of wood. He got scared, leaned closer and began to look at her; but she also bent her head even lower. He then bent down completely to the floor and looked into her face from below, looked and froze: the old woman was sitting and laughing - she burst into quiet, inaudible laughter, trying with all her might so that he would not hear her. Suddenly it seemed to him that the door from the bedroom opened slightly and that there, too, seemed to be laughing and whispering. Fury overcame him: with all his might he began to hit the old woman on the head, but with each blow of the ax, laughter and whispers from the bedroom were heard more and more loudly, and the old woman was shaking all over with laughter. He rushed to run, but the entire hallway was already full of people, the doors on the stairs were wide open, and on the landing, on the stairs and down there - all the people, head to head, everyone was watching - but everyone was hiding and waiting, silent... His heart he felt embarrassed, his legs didn’t move, they were frozen... He wanted to scream and woke up.
He took a deep breath, but strangely, the dream seemed to still continue: his door was open wide, and a complete stranger to him stood on the threshold and looked at him intently.
Raskolnikov had not yet had time to fully open his eyes and immediately closed them again. He lay on his back and did not move. “Is this dream continuing or not,” he thought, and slightly, inconspicuously, again raised his eyelashes to look: the stranger stood in the same place and continued to peer at him.
(Raskolnikov’s third dream includes a mechanism of repentance. Raskolnikov Between the third and fourth dreams (the dream in the epilogue of the novel) Raskolnikov looks in the mirror of his “doubles”: Luzhin and Svidrigailov.) (
Dostoevsky called his novel “Crime and Punishment,” and the reader has the right to expect that it will be a court novel, where the author will depict the story of a crime and criminal punishment. The novel definitely contains the murder of an old pawnbroker by a beggar student Raskolnikov, his mental torment for nine days (that’s how long the action of the novel lasts), his repentance and confession. The reader’s expectations seem to be justified, and yet “Crime and Punishment” does not look like a tabloid detective story in the spirit of Eugene Sue, whose works were very popular during the time of Dostoevsky. “Crime and Punishment” is not a judicial novel, but a social and philosophical novel, and it is precisely thanks to the complexity and depth of its content that it can be interpreted in different ways.
In Soviet times, literary critics paid main attention to the social problems of the work, repeating mainly the ideas of D.I. Pisarev from the article “The Struggle for Life” (1868). In post-Soviet times, attempts appeared to reduce the content of “Crime and Punishment” to the search for God: behind the detective intrigue, behind the moral question about the crime, the question about God is hidden. This view of the novel is also not new; it was expressed by V.V. Rozanov at the beginning of the 20th century. It seems that if these extreme points of view are combined, the most correct view of both the novel itself and its idea will be obtained. It is from these two points of view that Raskolnikov’s first dream should be analyzed (1, V).
It is known that the tragic dream of the main character is reminiscent of N.A. Nekrasov’s poem from the cycle “About the Weather” (1859). The poet paints an everyday city picture: a skinny, crippled horse is dragging a huge cart and suddenly stands up because she has no strength to go further. The driver grabs a whip and mercilessly slashes the nag in the ribs, legs, even in the eyes, then takes a log and continues his brutal work:
And he beat her, beat her, beat her!
Legs somehow spread wide,
All smoking, settling back,
The horse just sighed deeply
And I looked... (that's how people look,
Submitting to unjust attacks).
The owner’s “work” was rewarded: the little horse went forward, but somehow sideways, trembling nervously, with all his strength. Various passers-by watched the street scene with interest and gave advice to the driver.
Dostoevsky in his novel enhances the tragedy of this scene: in Raskolnikov’s dream (1, V), drunken men beat a horse to death. The horse in the novel is a small, skinny peasant nag. An absolutely disgusting sight is presented by the driver, who from Dostoevsky receives a name (Mikolka) and a repulsive portrait: “... young, with such a thick neck and a fleshy face, red as a carrot.” Drunk, drunk, he cruelly, with pleasure, whips the Savraska. Two guys with whips help Mikolka finish off the nag, and the excited owner shouts at them to hit them in the eyes. The crowd at the tavern watches the whole scene with laughter: “... the little nag pulls the cart with all his strength, but not only gallops, but even a little can’t cope with a step, he just minces with his feet, grunts and crouches from the blows of three whips raining down she looks like a pea.” Dostoevsky intensifies the terrible details: the audience cackles, Mikolka goes wild and pulls out the shaft from the bottom of the cart. The blows of sticks and whips cannot quickly finish off a horse: it “jumps up and jerks, pulls with all its last strength in different directions in order to take it out.” Drunk Mikolka takes out an iron crowbar and hits the nag on the head; his torturer assistants run up to the collapsed horse and finish it off.
In Nekrasov, only one young girl, who watched the beating of a horse from a carriage, felt sorry for the animal:
Here is a face, young, welcoming,
Here is the pen, - the window opened,
And stroked the unfortunate nag
Handle white...
In Dostoevsky, at the end of the scene, the crowd of spectators no longer shouts advice, but reproaches, that there is no cross on Mikolka, but only a boy (this is how Raskolnikov sees himself) runs among the crowd and asks first some old man, then his father to save the horse. When Savraska falls dead, he runs up to her, kisses her death head, and then throws his fists at Mikolka, who, it must be said, did not even notice this attack.
In the analyzed scene, Dostoevsky emphasizes the ideas necessary for the novel, which are not present in Nekrasov’s poem. On the one hand, the truth in this scene is expressed by a weak child. He cannot stop the killings, although in his soul (and not in his mind) he understands the injustice and the inadmissibility of reprisals against a horse. On the other hand, Dostoevsky raises the philosophical question of resistance to evil, of the use of force against evil. This formulation of the question logically leads to the right to shed blood in general and is condemned by the author. However, in the scene described, blood cannot be justified in any way; it cries out for vengeance.
The dream reveals the character of Raskolnikov, who will become a killer tomorrow. A beggar student is a kind and gentle person who is able to sympathize with the misfortunes of others. Such dreams do not occur to people who have lost their conscience (Svidrigailov’s nightmare dreams are about something else) or who have come to terms with the eternal and universal injustice of the world order. The boy is right when he rushes at Mikolka, and the father, without even trying to intervene in the killing of the horse, behaves indifferently (the Savraska belongs to Mikolka after all) and cowardly: “They are drunk, playing pranks, it’s none of our business, let’s go!” Raskolnikov cannot agree with such a position in life. Where is the way out? Character, intelligence, desperate family circumstances - everything pushes the main character of the novel to resist evil, but this resistance, according to Dostoevsky, is directed along the wrong path: Raskolnikov rejects universal human values for the sake of human happiness! Explaining his crime, he tells Sonya: “The old lady is nonsense! The old woman is probably a mistake, it’s not her fault! The old woman is only an illness... I wanted to get over it as quickly as possible... I didn’t kill a person, I killed a principle!” (3, VI). Raskolnikov means that he violated the commandment “thou shalt not kill!”, on which human relationships have been built for centuries. If this moral principle is abolished, people will kill each other, as depicted in the hero's last dream in the epilogue of the novel.
In Raskolnikov's dream about a horse, there are several symbolic moments that connect this episode with the further content of the novel. The boy ends up at the tavern where the nag is killed by accident: he and his father were going to the cemetery to venerate the graves of his grandmother and brother and go to the church with the green dome. He loved visiting it because of the kind priest and the special feeling he felt while there. Thus, in a dream, a tavern and a church appear nearby as two extremes of human existence. Further, the dream already predicts the murder of Lizaveta, which Raskolnikov did not plan, but was forced to commit by coincidence. The innocent death of the unfortunate woman in some details (someone from the crowd shouts to Mikolka about the ax) is reminiscent of the death of Savraska from a dream: Lizaveta “trembled like a leaf, with small tremors, and convulsions ran all over her face; she raised her hand, opened her mouth, but still did not cry out and slowly, backwards, began to move away from him into the corner...” (1, VII). In other words, Dostoevsky, before Raskolnikov’s crime, shows that the hero’s bold ideas about a superman will necessarily be accompanied by innocent blood. Finally, the image of a tortured horse will appear at the end of the novel in the scene of the death of Katerina Ivanovna, who will utter her last words: “Enough! (5, V).
The dream about the horse was like a warning for Raskolnikov: the entire future crime is “coded” in this dream, like an oak tree in an acorn. No wonder when the hero woke up, he immediately exclaimed: “Am I really going to do this?” But Raskolnikov was not stopped by the warning dream, and he received in full all the suffering of the murderer and the disappointment of the theorist.
To summarize, it should be noted that Raskolnikov's first dream in the novel occupies an important place on social, philosophical and psychological grounds. Firstly, in the scene of the murder of the little horse, painful impressions of the surrounding life are expressed, seriously wounding Raskolnikov’s conscientious soul and giving rise to the legitimate indignation of any honest person. Dostoevsky's boy's indignation can be contrasted with the cowardly irony of Nekrasov's lyrical hero, who from afar, without interfering, watches the beating of an unfortunate nag on the street.
Secondly, in connection with the dream scene, a philosophical question arises about counteracting world evil. How to fix the world? Blood must be avoided, warns Dostoevsky, since the path to the ideal is inextricably linked with the ideal itself; the abolition of universal moral principles will only lead a person to a dead end.
Thirdly, the dream scene proves that in the hero’s soul there is pain for the weak and defenseless. The dream already at the beginning of the novel indicates that the killer of the old pawnbroker is not an ordinary robber, but a man of ideas, capable of both action and compassion.
