Xavier Ray’s Reviews > Crime and Punishment > Status Update

I’ve fallen in love with Crime and Punishment. The night of the murders is one of the most feverish, gripping, and psychologically charged passages I’ve ever read. The pacing feels manic and inevitable, every sentence pushing forward like a heartbeat. Dostoevsky writes madness and guilt with such control that it feels almost symphonic. He’s an absolute master.

Absolutely love Dostoyevsky’s pacing and rhythm.

What stands out here is how quickly Raskolnikov’s compassion turns to disgust. The letter fills him with guilt, and the drunk girl in the street triggers the same outrage—but it collapses just as fast. Dostoevsky shows a man who wants to be good yet doubts goodness itself. The policeman is secondary; the real conflict is in his mind, where every moral impulse argues with itself.

This is where Dostoevsky’s genius really shows. Raskolnikov is both right and wrong, both sane and unraveling. His disgust for these “respectable” men says as much about his own pride and alienation as it does about their corruption. It’s a breathtakingly complex scene—one letter pulling him closer to the edge.

What’s striking is that he doesn’t even know them. Everything he believes about them comes straight from the letter and from his own imagination. But his instincts are sharp. He sees through the hypocrisy immediately, sensing how power and morality get twisted together in their world. At the same time, his reasoning already feels fevered. It’s hard to tell where his moral clarity ends and his paranoia begins.

Raskolnikov’s reaction might be my favorite psychological moment so far. The letter itself is full of love and hope, but it’s also painfully naïve. She tells him all about Dunya’s disgrace with her employer and this new engagement to Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, as if it’s a happy turn of fate. Raskolnikov reads it like it’s a warning from hell. He’s furious, disgusted, protective, and ashamed all at once.

Just hit a fascinating turning point as Raskolnikov leaves the Marmeladovs. After leaving them a bit of money and feeling both pity and disgust, he suddenly flips into a kind of philosophical rebellion. He wonders out loud if all morality is just a set of fears imposed on us, and if that’s true, then maybe there are no barriers at all.

Marmeladov feels like a mirror of Raskolnikov—both men trapped between intellect and redemption, both convinced they’re beyond saving. The scene is chaotic, but it already carries the heartbeat of the novel.