Blog Entry #1 (9/9/12)

Chapter 7 of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was extremely thrilling and arousing. The author immediately grasped my attention from the moment Alyona Ivanova opened the door to Raskolnikov’s knock. Even after Raskolnikov forced himself inside Alyona’s apartment and presents her with the fake cigarette case, I still questioned whether or not Raskolnikov would go through with the murder. Up to this point in the novel, Raskolnikov has been portrayed as an extremely indecisive and tentative character. I feel that Raskolnikov has a hard time making decisions simply because he does not want to take responsibility for his actions without a justified excuse. This explains why I was so shocked with the outcome of Raskolnikov’s endeavor. As Alyona opened the cigarette case, Raskolnikov struck her in the head with his ax several times until she dropped dead. As Alyona’s corpse sat on the floor surrounded in a pool of her own blood, Raskolnikov went into the other room to rob her of her belongings. Feeling uneasy, Raskolnikov returns to the kitchen where he finds Lizaveta in a state of horror as she stands over her murdered sister’s bloody carcass. Raskolnikov then commits a second murder, killing Lizaveta with one blow to her skull with the ax. Although the murder of Lizaveta was unexpected, I was not particularly surprised that Raskolnikov did this because he is a selfish character who justified Lizaveta’s murder with the act of protecting himself from arrest. Chapter 7 was extremely suspenseful and served as the perfect ending to Part I of the novel.

-Alex