Crime and Punishment Trivia
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60 free Crime and Punishment trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in a panic of debt, dictating a second novel to a stenographer at the same time, and it came out as the literary sensation of its year. This quiz walks through the whole book: Raskolnikov's theory of the extraordinary man, the two murders, the feverish days that follow, the investigator's cat-and-mouse interviews, Sonya's reading of Lazarus, Luzhin's planted banknote, the pistol shot that misses, the confession and the Siberian epilogue. It also covers the things a first reading skips: what the Russian title literally means, why the hero's surname signals a man divided, how the book was drafted in the first person and rewritten in the third, the critics who fought over it, and the long tail of adaptations from Peter Lorre and John Hurt to Bresson's Pickpocket, Kaurismäki's Helsinki and Osamu Tezuka's manga. It is written for students, book-club readers and anyone who has finished the novel and wants to check what stuck. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, its protagonist and its author, and each question shows the sentence that supports it once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which literary journal was Crime and Punishment first published, in twelve monthly instalments?
The Russian Messenger
The Russian Messenger began printing the novel while its debt-ridden author was still writing it, the ending unwritten when the first part appeared.
Q 02In a dream, Raskolnikov is a boy watching drunken peasants beat which animal to death?
Horse
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.
Q 03Before dropping out, what subject had Raskolnikov been studying?
Law
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.
Q 04What weapon does Raskolnikov steal to carry out the murder?
An axe
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.
Q 05What is the trade of the old woman Raskolnikov plans to rob and kill?
Pawnbroker
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.
Q 06Who becomes Raskolnikov's unplanned second victim after he kills the old woman?
Lizaveta, her half-sister
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.
Q 07Fearing a police search, where does Raskolnikov finally hide what he stole?
Under a stone in a yard
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.
Q 08Why is Raskolnikov summoned to the police station the morning after the murders?
For a debt to his landlady
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.
Q 09Which loyal university friend nurses Raskolnikov through his delirium and later marries his sister Dunya?
Razumikhin
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.
Q 10How does Sonya's father, the drunkard Marmeladov, die?
He is struck by a carriage
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.
Q 11Which Gospel story does Sonya read aloud to Raskolnikov?
The raising of Lazarus
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.
Q 12Which investigator pursues Raskolnikov through psychological cat-and-mouse rather than evidence?
Porfiry Petrovich
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.
Q 13What was the title of the article Raskolnikov published months earlier, which the investigator brings up?
'On Crime'
Q 21Who is the wife of Dunya's former employer, who wills Dunya 3,000 rubles?
Marfa Petrovna
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.
Q 22What sentence does Raskolnikov receive for the two murders?
Eight years of penal servitude
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.
Q 23What happens to Raskolnikov's mother, Pulkheria Alexandrovna, after his sentencing?
'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.
Q 14Which historical figure is Raskolnikov's model of a great man with the right to break moral rules?
Napoleon
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.'
Q 15By the investigator's account, why does the painter Mikolka confess to murders he did not commit?
To take on suffering
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.
Q 16What does Dunya's rejected suitor Luzhin plant on Sonya to frame her as a thief?
A 100-ruble banknote
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.
Q 17Which young progressive exposes Luzhin's attempt to frame Sonya as a thief, having watched him do it?
Lebezyatnikov
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.
Q 18Who overhears Raskolnikov's confession to Sonya from the room next door?
Svidrigailov
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.
Q 19What does Dunya's former employer do when she shoots at him and misses?
Urges her to reload and try again
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.
Q 20How does Dunya's former employer die?
Kills himself in a public place
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.
She falls ill and dies
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.
Q 24In the original title of Crime and Punishment, the Russian word Prestupleniye literally means what?
A stepping across
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'.
Q 25The surname Raskolnikov derives from the Russian raskolnik, meaning what?
Schismatic
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.
Q 26What does Raskolnikov do with the coin a woman gives him, taking him for a beggar?
Throws it in the river
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.
Q 27On his way to confess, what does Raskolnikov do at the crossroads, as Sonya had told him to?
Kisses the ground
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.
Q 28From which narrative perspective is Crime and Punishment told in its final form?
Third-person omniscient
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.
Q 29Which other novel was Dostoevsky contracted to finish for Stellovsky while writing Crime and Punishment?
The Gambler
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.
Q 30Which stenographer helped Dostoevsky through the crush of deadlines and later became his wife?
Anna Snitkina
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.