In chapters 7 and 8 Raskolnikov finally decides to take matters into his own hands and murders Alyona Ivanova. Raskolnikov had despised this women since the day that he met her. He first started having ideas of killing her once he heard a student and police officer speaking about the old lady and how they too despised her. They all mentioned how they would not care at all if they knew she was dead, but none of them would ever even think of actually committing the crime of killing her.
Raskolnikov leaves them and decides that he will actually grow the courage to commit the murder. In his mind he struggles between what is morally right and what he thinks he should do. He constantly tells himself before the murder is committed that this is something that he should not even think of doing, but then quickly forces himself to find reasons and motifs as to why he should kill her. He continues to contradict himself on what the correct thing to do is until he finally forces himself to bring out the axe and murder Alyona, along with her sister that later walks in.
Because Raskolnikov was very indecisive about what he should do and kept making himself think of reasons as to why he had to kill this lady, I was not surprised at all when he suddenly began to feel guilt right after the crime was committed. I want to keep on reading just to see if he will get away with the murder, or if his guilt will get to the better of him and force him to confess and take responsibility for his actions.
I agree with Sofia about Rashkolinkov's decisions to murder Alyona Ivanova. In this chapter we see how mentally unstable he really is. Like Sophia, I wasn't surprised when he actually went along with killing her. I was under the impression he was going to do something to her when we first met her at the start of the novel. His constant questioning of morals before he kills her is ironic. His moral beliefs in this chapter play a significant role to prove just how insane he really is. In his mind, the logical way to not be caught is to kill the sister as well. I personally think that he will get caught for killing Alyona and her sister based of the title of the book: Crime and Punishment.
ReplyDeleteI still cannot decide if Rashkolinkov really despises Alyona Ivanova or if because of his mental instability or something that happened in the past, he is unable to let go of thoughts of killing her. There has to be something that made him hook on so much to the conversation between the student and police. People hear thing all the time just in a day, but that dose not mean we take everything to hear like he did. He is extremely conflicted about the thoughts he is having, and is almost trying to fight them. However, I find it interesting that his planning for the murder almost comes second nature to him. When he hears that Alyona's sister won't be in the house, or when Alyona's sister walks in, he automatically knows what action he will take despite his conflicted thoughts in other times. The guilt is just starting to build up and with his mental state the way it is, it may drastically increase.
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