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

I’m finding Razumikhin harder to like than most readers seem to. His energy feels performative—too eager, too self-conscious. Even when he’s helping Rodya or comforting the family, there’s an undercurrent of insecurity and self-importance, as if he needs to be the savior in every room. Dostoevsky makes even his “good” characters complicated, and Razumikhin’s kindness never feels entirely selfless.

This passage is the novel’s moral heartbeat. Amid guilt and chaos, Raskolnikov suddenly senses what Dostoevsky believes to be the truth of the human condition: the instinct to cling to life, even at its bleakest, is stronger than reason, pride, or despair. It’s the beginning of conscience reasserting itself — the pulse of humanity still alive beneath his crime.