“He was so immersed in himself and had isolated himself so much from everyone that he was afraid not only of meeting his landlady but of meeting anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty; but even his strained circumstances had lately ceased to burden him.”
By portraying the protagonist as an individual who is going through major suffering, Dostoevsky allows the audience to establish that Raskolnikov is beginning to detach and isolate himself from the world, thus allowing the audience to understand his actions later on in the novel. The second sentence creates a sense of apathy because even though he is “crushed by poverty”, the circumstances that he faces “ceased to burden him”.
“Raskolnikov had a terrible dream...To shouts of ‘Giddap!’ the little mare starts pulling with all her might, but she can scarcely manage a slow walk, much less a gallop... ‘Take an axe to her! Finish her off fast,’ shouts a third... The nag stretches out her muzzle, heaves a deep sigh, and dies... ‘Papa! What did they...kill...the poor horse for!’ [Raskolnikov] sobs, but his breath fails, and the words burst like cries from his straining chest.
Chindasook2
Dostoevsky uses the story of the murder of the horse to foreshadow the oncoming violence that will happen later on in the novel. The author conveys this scene to be very graphic by using imagery, and this accentuates the concept of guilt that Raskolnikov feels about committing a crime, thus suggesting that it is not his nature to be violent, however the suffering that he has encountered has driven him to the point of violence.
“Kill her and take her money, so that afterwards with its help you can devote yourself to the service of all mankind and the common cause’... ‘Of course, she doesn’t deserve to be alive,’...”
Raskolnikov overheard this conversation between men in a bar, which shows that it isn’t a coincidence as he was also contemplating doing a similar act himself. This conversation