60 Fun Facts About Crime and Punishment

In which literary journal was Crime and Punishment first published, in twelve monthly instalments?

The Russian Messenger began printing the novel while its debt-ridden author was still writing it, the ending unwritten when the first part appeared.

In a dream, Raskolnikov is a boy watching drunken peasants beat which animal to death?

A horse: the boy in the dream runs through the crowd to embrace the dead mare; Raskolnikov wakes renouncing his plan, a resolve that lasts only hours.

Before dropping out, what subject had Raskolnikov been studying?

Law. He gave up the university for want of money and broods in a garret that Dostoevsky calls more like a cupboard than a room.

What weapon does Raskolnikov steal to carry out the murder?

An axe: he means to take one from his landlady's kitchen, finds the maid there, and then spots another gleaming in the caretaker's empty room.

What is the trade of the old woman Raskolnikov plans to rob and kill?

Pawnbroker. He first calls on her to pledge a watch, a rehearsal that lets him study the flat and note where she keeps her keys.

Who becomes Raskolnikov's unplanned second victim after he kills the old woman?

Lizaveta, her half-sister, was meant to be out: Raskolnikov picked the hour after overhearing in the market that she would be away at seven. She walks in through a door that had stood open all along.

Fearing a police search, where does Raskolnikov finally hide what he stole?

Under a stone in a yard: he had meant to fling everything into the canal, but too many people were about on the banks. Only afterwards does he realise he never even looked inside the purse.

Why is Raskolnikov summoned to the police station the morning after the murders?

For a debt to his landlady, nothing more. But when the officers start talking about the murders he collapses in a faint, and that is what first makes them look at him twice.

Which loyal university friend nurses Raskolnikov through his delirium and later marries his sister Dunya?

Razumikhin, stung by a strange visit from his old classmate, hunts for his lodging all over the city, finds it through the address bureau and takes charge of the sickroom.

How does Sonya's father, the drunkard Marmeladov, die?

He is struck by a carriage while drunk. Raskolnikov recognises him in the crowd and has him carried home, where he dies in his daughter's arms, begging her to forgive him.

Which Gospel story does Sonya read aloud to Raskolnikov?

The raising of Lazarus, read from a New Testament that one of his own victims had given her. In the epilogue the same book lies under Raskolnikov's pillow in Siberia.

Which investigator pursues Raskolnikov through psychological cat-and-mouse rather than evidence?

Porfiry Petrovich never accuses him outright, only needles him with hints and irony. Then he drops the games, tells Raskolnikov to his face that he is the murderer and advises him to confess.

What was the title of the article Raskolnikov published months earlier, which the investigator brings up?

'On Crime' argued that a few extraordinary men may commit crimes for the sake of an idea. Raskolnikov is astonished to hear it was ever printed: the review he sent it to had closed down.

Which historical figure is Raskolnikov's model of a great man with the right to break moral rules?

Napoleon is his test case: would the great man have balked at killing one old woman if his career had hung on it? He tells Sonya, 'I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her.'

By the investigator's account, why does the painter Mikolka confess to murders he did not commit?

To take on suffering: the investigator says Mikolka grew up among a sect for whom 'one must suffer', all the better at the hands of the authorities, and that jail brought it back to him.

What does Dunya's rejected suitor Luzhin plant on Sonya to frame her as a thief?

A 100-ruble banknote, slipped into her pocket after he had made a show of handing her ten roubles for her stepmother. He hoped to disgrace Sonya and so set Raskolnikov's family against him.

Which young progressive exposes Luzhin's attempt to frame Sonya as a thief, having watched him do it?

Lebezyatnikov shares Luzhin's rooms, so he saw the trick done. His word turns the funeral dinner on the accuser: a drunken guest hurls a glass at him, and within half an hour Luzhin has moved out.

Who overhears Raskolnikov's confession to Sonya from the room next door?

Svidrigailov has taken the room next to Sonya's and listens at the door, even fetching a chair so he can sit in comfort next time. Later he taunts Raskolnikov by quoting his own words back at him.

What does Dunya's former employer do when she shoots at him and misses?

He urges her to reload and try again, then stands waiting while she aims a second time and the gun misfires. Only when she says she can never love him does he hand over the key and let her go.

How does Dunya's former employer die?

He kills himself in a public place: in the early morning he walks up to a watchman on duty by a watchtower, exchanges a few words, and fires the revolver Dunya had thrown down the evening before.

Who is the wife of Dunya's former employer, who wills Dunya 3,000 rubles?

Marfa Petrovna had thrown Dunya out over her husband's advances. Shown a letter that cleared the girl, she went from house to house reading it aloud, and a week before her death she put Dunya in her will.

What sentence does Raskolnikov receive for the two murders?

Eight years of penal servitude, far lighter than expected: he confessed when another man had already claimed the crime, and the court read his never opening the stolen purse as a sign of a disturbed mind.

What happens to Raskolnikov's mother, Pulkheria Alexandrovna, after his sentencing?

She falls ill and dies without ever being told the truth: the family invent a business trip for him, and she never asks to hear it. In her last fever she lets slip that she knew far more than they supposed.

In the original title of Crime and Punishment, the Russian word Prestupleniye literally means what?

A stepping across: the Russian word pictures crime as crossing a line. Raskolnikov turns the image on himself after the murders, admitting that he killed 'but I didn't overstep, I stopped on this side'.

The surname Raskolnikov derives from the Russian raskolnik, meaning what?

Schismatic: the word named the Old Believers who broke with the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century. The novel's innocent house painter, who confesses to Raskolnikov's crime, has religious dissenters in his family.

What does Raskolnikov do with the coin a woman gives him, taking him for a beggar?

He throws it in the river. A coachman has just lashed him with a whip, and a passing woman pities him with twenty kopecks; flinging the coin into the Neva, he feels he has cut himself off from everyone.

On his way to confess, what does Raskolnikov do at the crossroads, as Sonya had told him to?

He kisses the ground, kneeling in the middle of the Haymarket as Sonya had asked. The crowd laughs and takes him for a drunk, and the words she wanted him to say aloud, 'I am a murderer', never come.

From which narrative perspective is Crime and Punishment told in its final form?

Third-person omniscient, but not at first. Dostoevsky planned a short novel told by the murderer himself, then, by his own account, burned what he had and began again in a new form.

Which other novel was Dostoevsky contracted to finish for Stellovsky while writing Crime and Punishment?

The Gambler was owed to a publisher who, if it came late, could print everything Dostoevsky wrote for nine years without paying him. With under a month left he hired a stenographer and dictated it, finishing just in time.

Which stenographer helped Dostoevsky through the crush of deadlines and later became his wife?

Anna Snitkina took down a whole novel from his dictation in under a month, and it was finished just in time. They married a few months later, and she went on to put his chaotic finances in order.

Dunya's former employer pictures eternity as a grimy little bathhouse with what in every corner?

Spiders: 'one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy'. When Raskolnikov protests that eternity must surely be juster than that, the man answers that it is what he would have made it.

Which Tolstoy novel was being serialised in the same journal at the same time as Crime and Punishment?

War and Peace was running there under its first title, 1805, when Dostoevsky's novel joined it. Tolstoy soon broke off the serial and reworked the book to come out in volumes.

Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment partly as an attack on which creed of Russia's young radicals?

Nihilism, whose followers wanted morality rebuilt on reason and utility alone. The novel hands their sum to a student in a bar, 'One death, and a hundred lives in exchange', and then follows it through.

What post did Raskolnikov's sister Dunya hold in the household of her former employer?

Governess. When the master of the house pursued her, it was Dunya his wife blamed: she was packed off home through the rain in an open peasant cart, with her belongings flung in after her.

Which actor played Raskolnikov in the 1935 Hollywood film version?

Peter Lorre played the murderer, with Edward Arnold as the detective on his trail. Their director, Josef von Sternberg, made the film to fulfil a contract and looked back on it with regret.

Who played Raskolnikov in the BBC's 1979 television serial?

John Hurt took the part not long after his Caligula in I, Claudius. Years later he switched sides: in a film released in 2002 he plays the detective, hunting Crispin Glover's Raskolnikov.

Aki Kaurismäki's 1983 debut film moved Crime and Punishment to which modern city?

Helsinki, where Kaurismäki's killer works in a slaughterhouse and shoots a businessman. A young woman walks in on the scene, and finds she cannot bring herself to give him away to the police.

Which manga artist adapted Crime and Punishment as a comic in 1953?

Osamu Tezuka, a year after starting Astro Boy, moved the murder to the eve of the Russian Revolution. A bilingual 1990 edition made it one of his first books to be published in English.

Michel, the hero of which 1959 Robert Bresson film, shares Raskolnikov's belief that superior men stand above common morality?

Pickpocket's Michel steals to prove he is above the rules and, like Raskolnikov, has a good woman who trusts he can be redeemed. Bresson went on to film two Dostoevsky stories outright.

Which 2005 Woody Allen thriller shows its hero reading Crime and Punishment before he turns to murder?

Match Point's social-climbing tennis coach is seen with the novel early on. He goes on to commit a double murder of his own and, unlike Raskolnikov, gets away with it by a stroke of luck.

Confessing to Sonya, Raskolnikov insists that in the old woman he killed only which creature?

A louse, 'a useless, loathsome, harmful creature'. A moment later he takes it back, and admits that what he really wanted to find out was whether he himself was a louse or a man.

What does Sonya hang round Raskolnikov's neck before he goes to the police to confess?

A cypress cross, the plain peasant kind. She keeps for herself the copper one that had belonged to one of his victims, and he laughs bitterly that he is 'taking up the cross'.

On the night of the murder, Raskolnikov hands the old woman a tightly tied parcel that he says holds what?

A cigarette case, and a silver one, he tells her. In fact it is a slip of wood bound to a strip of iron, knotted so tightly that she has to turn to the window to pick at the string.

To which hot-tempered police official, nicknamed 'Gunpowder', does Raskolnikov confess?

Ilya Petrovich is chattering away when Raskolnikov loses his nerve and walks out of the station. Outside he sees Sonya watching him, turns round, climbs the stairs again and says it.

What is the profession of Luzhin, the wealthy suitor Dunya agrees to marry?

A lawyer with years of court cases behind him, Luzhin has come to the capital to open his own office. He lets slip that he wants a wife poor enough to see him as her benefactor, and Raskolnikov loathes him for it.

What tie did Raskolnikov once have to his landlady's family?

He was engaged to her late daughter, a plain, sickly girl who died of typhus before the wedding. He tells his family he thinks he was drawn to her precisely because she was always ill.

Which doctor, interested in 'psychological' illnesses, tends Raskolnikov during his delirium?

Zosimov, a young doctor with a taste for troubled minds, spots a pattern. His patient takes no interest in anything, he remarks on the stairs, until someone mentions the murder.

What is the name of the old woman Raskolnikov murders?

Alyona Ivanovna dies rich, but her killer comes away with little: a purse cut from her neck and a pocketful of gold trinkets from a trunk beneath the bed. Most of her money he never finds.

From what disease is Sonya's stepmother, Katerina Ivanovna, dying?

Consumption: she has been coughing blood since the novel's first pages. Running after her frightened children, she falls in the roadway bleeding from the lungs, and is carried to Sonya's room to die.

Who gets the 10,000 rubles that Dunya's former employer had offered her?

Three orphaned children: he pays for Katerina Ivanovna's funeral, places her little ones in an orphanage with 1,500 roubles settled on each, and tells Raskolnikov to let Dunya know where her 10,000 went.

What colour is the 'ticket' Sonya has to carry once she is registered as a prostitute?

Yellow: the 'yellow ticket' was the card that licensed prostitutes in tsarist Russia. Once Sonya has taken one, her father says, the landlady will not have her in the house, so she must lodge apart from her family.

What do Raskolnikov's fellow convicts, who cannot stand him, affectionately call Sonya?

Little mother: they doff their caps to her and trust her with their letters home. Raskolnikov they once nearly kill as a godless man, though he has never said a word to them about his beliefs.

What paid work does an old university friend press on the penniless Raskolnikov?

Translating German texts, with three roubles paid in advance. Raskolnikov takes the pages and the money without a word, gets as far as the next road, then climbs the stairs again and lays both on the table.

Turned out of her lodgings, what does the dying Katerina Ivanovna make her children do in the street?

Sing and dance for coins: she dresses her terrified little ones as street performers so that the whole city can see well-born children begging. The effort brings on her last collapse.

Handing Sonya money for her future, Dunya's former employer says he may be leaving for where?

America, he says, is why he must settle everything at once: 3,000 roubles for Sonya, who will need them, he tells her, if she means to follow Raskolnikov into exile.

Which translator published her English Crime and Punishment in 1914?

Constance Garnett took up Russian at about thirty, around the birth of her son, and never stopped. For English-speaking readers of the early 20th century, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky largely arrived in her words.

Which French screen legend starred in Georges Lampin's 1956 film of Crime and Punishment?

Jean Gabin played not the murderer but the Paris police inspector who slowly closes in on him. The student killer, renamed René Brunel for a story moved to France, was Robert Hossein.

After her stepfather's death, what does Raskolnikov ask the little girl Polenka to do?

Pray for him, he asks, with just the words 'And Thy servant Rodion'. She promises to do it all her life and hugs him, and he walks off sure that his own life is not over.

Before drink cost him his post, what was Marmeladov's occupation?

Government clerk: taken back into the service out of pity, he brought his first pay home to an overjoyed wife. The next evening he stole what was left of it from her locked box and drank it.

Where does Raskolnikov first meet Marmeladov, the father of Sonya?

In a tavern, where a ragged stranger picks him out as an educated man and pours out his story: the drink, the ruined family, the daughter on the streets. Raskolnikov sees him home and leaves his own small change on the windowsill.