“Crime and Punishment” (end Part 2) by Dostoevsky: Raskolnikov has abrupt changes in his level of function and frame of mind

Raskolnikov’s state of mind has been changing throughout the day. He has been suicidal; on the verge of turning himself in to the police and confessing to murder; he almost confesses in social banter with a man associated with the police; and then he comes upon a traffic accident in which an alcoholic friend of his has been trampled nearly to death by carriage horses.

He identifies the victim to the police, gets him taken home to his desperately impoverished family, and seen by a doctor and priest. His friend dies. Raskolnikov gives all his money to the family. And then changes his mind about not visiting his friend Razumikhin.

“ ‘Enough!’ he said [to himself] resolutely and solemnly. ‘Away with mirages, away with false fears, away with spectres!…My life hasn’t died with the old crone! [one of the women he murdered]…Now is the kingdom of reason and light…and will and strength…and now we shall see! Now we shall cross swords!’ he added…as if addressing some dark force and challenging it…

“Pride and self-confidence were growing in him every moment; with each succeeding moment he was no longer the man he had been the moment before. What special thing was it, however, that had turned him around? He himself did not know…”(1, p. 188).

His friend Razumikhin has consulted the doctor involved in treating Raskolnikov’s recent physical prostration. The doctor—apparently basing his new opinion on his patient’s abrupt change in level of function and frame of mind—thinks it may be a mental illness.

“ ‘And why have I been put down as mad?’ [Raskolnikov asks].

“ ‘Well, not mad, exactly…’ [Razumikhin replies]” (1, pp. 188-191).

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts with Epilogue [1866]. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, Vintage Classics/Random House, 1993.