In sum, like Julien, Raskolnikov has been gripped body and soul by an idea. With Julien, the idea can be roughly equated with ambition. It includes but is not circumscribed by the intention of rising to the top, scaling the peaks of society. And, despite appearances to the contrary, he is successful in his aim, though at the cost of being guillotined. In prison, waiting for execution, he tells himself “Je suis isolé ici dans ce cachot, mais je n’ai pas vécu isolé sur la terre; j’avais la puissante idée du devoir” (“Here in this cell I am isolated, but I have not lived in isolation on the earth; I had the powerful idea of duty”). And he is right in his feeling of triumph. He has distinguished himself, made an indelible mark on his surroundings, as the marble-encrusted mountain sanctuary housing his remains will testify for a great many years, perhaps centuries, to come.
The idea possessing Raskolnikov is ambitious in another sense. He will eliminate an old usuress for the sake of humanity at large. In robbing her, he will also be settling a claim of humanity—the claim of the deserving poor against the undeservedly rich. He expects no glory in return, only the knowledge in his own heart of being equal to the conception he started with, that of the extraordinary individual superior to the rule of law. But—the duty laid on him being weightier, encompassing more than the mere recognition of the self—the result is a total failure. Not the slightest benefit accrues to humanity from his murdering two women (he is obliged to kill her sister too), and the point he wished to prove fails to be made, owing to his inner vacillations, which betray him as not being “up” to the requirements. By ordinary standards, his reluctance to commit the crime would show that he was better than he had thought, but those standards, self-evidently, cannot be Raskolnikov’s. Dostoievsky, however, has other views; he intends us to see that his hero is better than he knows. Indeed, the punishment of the title consists in Raskolnikov’s being forced to come to terms with this humiliating discovery. Yet the author is too considerate, that is, too respectful of Raskolnikov’s pride, to show us a conversion taking place. That is withheld from view, kept for another story, as Dostoievsky says at the end. At the close of this story, Raskolnikov has begun his atonement, but his reasoning does not yet match the new man he will become.
It will be no surprise to you to hear that on Raskolnikov’s list of extraordinary men who were also criminals the familiar name of Napoleon figures. On that honor roll are leaders and legislators who “transgressed the old law” in order to make a new one and shed innocent blood in the process—that is only to be expected, Raskolnikov argues. Otherwise it would be hard for them to get out of the common rut; “and to remain in the common rut is what they can’t submit to, from their very nature...and to my mind they ought not to submit to it.” This conversation, prompted by Raskolnikov’s old article, which has unexpectedly come back to haunt him, takes place a week after the double murder, and, though it is a social occasion, an examining magistrate “happens” to be present. With a pair of dreadful winks, the magistrate, Porfiry Porfirovich, wonders whether Raskolnikov, a quite extraordinary young man to all appearances, would bring himself to put his theory into practice. Raskolnikov contemptuously evades the question: “If I did I certainly should not tell you.” Porfiry Porfirovich insists that he is speaking from a purely literary point of view. The conversation continues. Then, from a corner of the room, comes the voice of a disagreeable acquaintance: “Perhaps it was one of these future Napoleons who did for Alyona Ivanovna last week?” Raskolnikov does not answer and after an angry look around him turns to go.
At this moment it is obvious that his goose is cooked. His article, taken together with his generally suspicious behavior, has done for him. Though the magistrate, rather frighteningly, seems to be in no hurry to confront him, Raskolnikov knows that it is just a question of time before he is caught in a net mainly of his own fabrication. The memory of his ineptitude fills him with self-hatred. Taking stock a few hours later, alone in his garret room, he whispers to himself in despair, appalled at his past temerity. “And how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I should be, take up an axe and shed blood!” A thought brings him to a standstill. “No, those men are not made so. The real Master to whom all is permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up for him after his death, and so all is permitted. No, such people...are not of flesh but of bronze!” And he gives a wild laugh, picturing Napoleon creeping under an old pawnbroker’s bed.