Crime and Punishment: Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Raskolnikov does not know why exactly he wishes to see his friend—he does not really want any of Razumikhin’s teaching lessons, nor does he want advice about Dunya’s situation. But he also does not wish to return to his cramped apartment. He decides simply to walk where his feet take him. He walks through a nicer part of town, eats pie and drinks a glass of vodka, and overcome by sleepiness he collapses in the bushes.

Raskolnikov has a vivid dream, which the narrator attributes to his “morbid” condition. In the dream he is about seven and walking with his father on a holiday. He passes a tavern en route to a cemetery to pay respect to his deceased grandmother and younger brother, who died when Raskolnikov himself was quite young. Near the tavern, a group of drunk peasants are standing around a small, old horse fixed to an enormous, heavy cart. One of the peasants shouts that he will take all assembled in the cart, although no one believes it is possible.

The peasants get into the cart. The man says he will make the horse gallop, though she is old and probably hasn’t galloped for years. The peasants begin whipping the horse, which can only manage a very slow walk under the cart’s strain. The man says he will whip the horse to death, and when whipping is no longer sufficient he takes a large shaft from the cart and beats her on the back. One peasant cries that they ought to use an ax, but the man continues with the shaft until the horse is dead. He justifies the killing by saying the horse is his own property.

Young Raskolnikov rushes toward the peasant and tries to fight him; his father has to pull him away. Raskolnikov awakes in the bushes in a fever and sweat. For the first time he wonders aloud whether he really can hit the pawnbroker with an axe, kill her, and take her money. Although he made a “trial run” yesterday, the dream leads Raskolnikov to believe that he would not be able to carry out the murder in reality. He decides to return home but takes a longer route, through the Haymarket.

It is nighttime. Raskolnikov enjoys walking through the Haymarket because his rags and poor appearance do not attract people’s attention here, amidst other signs of poverty. Suddenly, as if ordained by a kind of fate (he thinks later), he sees Lizaveta speaking to a man and woman on a corner. The man and woman insist that Lizaveta disregard her sister’s orders, whatever they may be (Raskolnikov hears only the middle of the conversation), and come back to the Haymarket the next day between six and seven.

Raskolnikov recognizes that this means the old woman will be alone for one hour tomorrow. Now the freedom and aversion to murder he experienced after his dream disappear. He feels fate has ordained this set of circumstances; he must carry out his original murderous plan. Even if he had tried to learn the old woman’s schedule, he would never have known with such exactness when to find her alone. The chance encounter in the Haymarket must, then, have been fated.