Author(s): Fyodor Dostoevsky; Constance Garnett

Classic

A young man leaves his boardinghouse room on an uncomfortably hot summer's day in St. Petersburg. As he descends the steps, he is overcome with a dread of meeting his landlady, who lives on the floor below. He owes her several months' rent and recoils at the thought of having to make excuses to her. The narrator states that this young man "had fallen into a state of nervous depression akin to hypochondria" and so avoids contact with other people. As he leaves the boardinghouse, the young man turns his thoughts to an extreme, though unspecified, act that he is thinking about committing. He considers himself incapable of the act--if he lacks the stomach even to face his landlady, it seems impossible that he would ever go through with the deed that he now mulls. The narrator identifies the young man as the protagonist ("our hero") and describes him as tall and handsome, with "dark auburn hair and fine dark eyes."The young man wears ridiculously tattered clothes, but he is so contemptuous of the people who live in his wretched neighborhood--which is filthy and populated with drunks, prostitutes, and tradesmen--that he feels no embarrassment about his shoddy appearance. He walks along in a trancelike state, thinking over his awful plan, again considering the idea and then dismissing it. The narrator informs us that, over the last month, the young man has grown increasingly serious about taking action, even though the idea of doing so has disturbed and troubled him. At this particular moment, he is in the middle of a "rehearsal" of the act. He arrives at the apartment house of Alyona Ivanovna, a pawnbroker. As he walks up the stairs to her apartment, he carefully observes the building and its inhabitants in connection with his plan. He introduces himself to the pawnbroker, whom he had first met a month earlier, as a student, and we learn that the young man's name is Raskolnikov. The pawnbroker is an unattractive, shabbily dressed old woman who is suspicious, crude, and has "eyes sparkling with malice."