Ch. 1free to read
Crime and Punishment
What It’s About
He believes he belongs to a different order of people, exempt from ordinary rules. To test whether he truly is exceptional, he commits murder. But his theory unravels in the face of reality, and what restores his life isn't logic or confession. It's a woman who knows the worst about him and refuses to leave.
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Crime and Punishment
The boy who counted the steps
A young man counted the steps from the door of his rented room to the gate of another house. Seven hundred thirty. Not roughly. Exactly seven hundred thirty.
Anyone who does that has not slept properly in weeks. Rodion Raskolnikov has walked the same route for a month in the suffocating St. Petersburg summer, believing all the while that he is only thinking. Then one afternoon a drunk shouts after him from a passing cart: "Hey there, German hatter!" The boy freezes. Not from shame. Because his battered old top hat is conspicuous. Easy to remember. Somebody might recall it later.
Stop there for a second. A man preparing for murder is not terrified of killing. He is terrified of being recognized by his hat. A few pages in, Dostoevsky shows you the whole human mind at work: the big decision has already been made underneath, while trifles swirl on the surface. "It is just such trifles that always ruin everything," the boy tells himself, with no idea how right he is.
