Crime and Punishment: Allusions 12 key examples

While presenting the details of his life to Raskolnikov in a seedy bar, Semyon Marmeladov alludes to the city of Sodom as depicted in the Bible: 

It is now a year and a half since we finally ended up, after much wandering and numerous calamities, in this splendid capital adorned with numerous monuments. And here I found a position…Found it, and lost it again. Do you understand, sir? This time I lost it through my own fault, for this trait of mine appeared again…We now live in a corner at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippewechsel’s, and what we live on and pay with I do not know. There are many others living there besides ourselves…A Sodom, sir, a most outrageous one. 

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Dostoevsky makes a satirical allusion to the work of Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quételet in his depiction of Raskolnikov’s response to seeing a young girl walking around in a drunken haze in the early afternoon: 

In two or three years she’ll be a wreck, so altogether she’ll have lived to be nineteen, or only eighteen years old [...] Pah! And so what! They say that’s just how it ought to be. Every year, they say, a certain percentage has to go…somewhere…to the devil, it must be, so as to freshen up the rest and not interfere with them. A percentage! Nice little words they have, really: so reassuring, so scientific. A certain percentage, they say, meaning there’s nothing to worry about. Now, if it was some other word…well, then maybe it would be more worrisome…

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Dostoeveky employs paradox in his depiction of Raskolnikov’s complex emotional reaction to a letter from his mother informing him of his sister’s betrothal. At first, Raskolnikov objects strongly to the planned marriage and plans to put an end to it. However, he then asks himself what right he has to demand that she call off the marriage when he himself is unable to provide financially for the family: 

How are you going to protect them from the Svidrigailovs, from Afanasy Ivanovich Vakhrushin, you future millionaire, you Zeus disposing of their fates? In ten years? But in ten years your mother will go blind from those kerchiefs, and maybe from tears as well; she’ll waste away with fasting; and your sister? Go on, think what may happen to your sister after those ten years, or during those ten years. Have you guessed?” He kept tormenting and taunting himself with these questions, even taking a certain delight in it.

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Raskolnikov alludes to the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order, in his condemnation of Dunya’s plan to marry the wealthy Luzhin. After reading a letter from his mother detailing the planned marriage, Raskolnikov concludes that Dunya has only consented to the plan in order to assist him: 

Oh, in that case, given the chance, we’ll even crush our moral feeling; our freedom, peace of mind, even conscience—all, all of it goes to the flea market. Perish our life! So long as these beloved beings of ours are happy. Moreover, we’ll invent our own casuistry, we’ll take a lesson from the Jesuits, and we may even reassure ourselves for a while, convince ourselves that it’s necessary, truly necessary, for a good purpose. That’s exactly how we are, and it’s all clear as day. 

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Dostoevsky alludes to German writer Friedrich Schiller in his depiction of Raskolnikov’s cynical response to a letter from his mother informing him of his sister’s betrothal to the wealthy Luzhin. After reading the letter, an irate Raskolnikov reflects upon the naive idealism of his sister and mother:  

So they’re putting their hopes on the nobility of Mr. Luzhin’s feelings after all [...] Good luck to them! And that’s how it always is with these beautiful, Schilleresque souls: till the last moment they dress a man up in peacock’s feathers, till the last moment they hope for the good and not the bad; and though they may have premonitions of the other side of the coin, for the life of them they will not utter a real word beforehand; the thought alone makes them cringe; they wave the truth away with both hands, till the very moment when the man they’ve decked out so finely sticks their noses in it with his own two hands.

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Raskolnikov alludes to the biblical site of Golgatha after reading a letter sent by his mother Pulcheria concerning the engagement of his sister Dunya to the lawyer Luzhin: 

I also know what you were thinking about all night, pacing the room, and what you prayed about to the Kazan Mother of God that stands in mama’s bedroom. It’s hard to ascend Golgotha. Hm…So it’s settled definitively: you, Avdotya Romanovna, are so good as to be marrying a practical and rational man, who has his own capital (who already has his own capital; that’s more solid, more impressive), who serves in two posts and shares the convictions of our newest generations (as mama writes), and who ‘seems to be kind,’ as Dunechka herself remarks.

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When Raskolnikov goes to visit Razumikhin, his friend and fellow former-student is shocked by Raskolnikov’s ill appearance and offers him some translation work as means to support himself financially. Razumikhin’s humorous chatter both alludes to various then-trendy literary topics and satirizes the publishing and translation industries of 19th-century Russia: 

Now, here we have two sheets and a bit more of German text—the stupidest sort of charlatanism, in my opinion; in short, it examines whether woman is or is not a human being. Well, and naturally it solemnly establishes that she is a human being. Cherubimov is preparing it in line with the woman question;[...] That done, we’ll start translating something about whales; then we’ve marked out some of the dullest gossip from the second part of the Confessions for translation—somebody told Cherubimov that Rousseau is supposedly some sort of Radishchev. 

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As Razumikhin escorts Dunya and Pulcheria to the apartment of Raskolnikov, he uses paradox and allusion while reflecting upon the dignified appearance of the two destitute women: 

She was busily throwing on her cape and putting on her hat as she spoke; Dunechka also readied herself. Her gloves were not only worn out but even torn, as Razumikhin noticed, and yet the obvious poverty of their dress even lent both ladies an air of some special dignity, as always happens with those who know how to wear poor clothing. Razumikhin looked at Dunechka with awe and was proud to be escorting her. “That queen,” he thought to himself, “who mended her own stockings in prison—of course, she looked like a real queen at that moment, even more so than during the most splendid solemnities and appearances.”

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Before meeting with detective Porfiry Petrovich to discuss the items that Raskolnikov previously pawned to the old woman, he teases his friend Razumikhin about his growing attraction to Dunya using both simile and allusion: 

“But why are you embarrassed? Romeo! Wait, I’m going to tell on you today—ha, ha, ha! Mama will have a laugh…and so will someone else…” 

“Listen, listen, listen, but this is serious, it’s…ah, the devil, I don’t know what it is!” Razumikhin became utterly muddled and went cold with terror. “What are you going to tell them? I, brother…pah, what a swine you are!” “

“Just like a rose in springtime! And you have no idea how it becomes you; a six-and-a-half-foot Romeo! And so well scrubbed today; you even cleaned under your fingernails, eh? When did that ever happen before! [...] Bend down!” 

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Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov draws extensive allusions to French military general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. For Raskolnikov, Bonaparte exemplifies the bold, fearless characteristics of the “superior” type of person who, he feels, has a natural right to transgress laws and rule over the weak. After testing out his ideas by murdering the pawnbroker, however, he panics and makes many small errors that almost lead to his arrest and that force him to confront his own inadequacies: 

“I should have known,” he thought, with a bitter smile, “and how, knowing myself, anticipating myself, did I dare take an axe and bloody my hands! [... At times he stopped still at some thought. “No, those people are made differently; the true master, to whom all is permitted, sacks Toulon, makes a slaughterhouse of Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, expends half a million men in a Moscow campaign, and gets off with a quip in Vilno; and when he dies they set up monuments to him—and thus everything is permitted. No, obviously such men are made not of flesh but of bronze!”

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In his private and frank conversation with Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov alludes to the martyrs of early Christianity when describing Dunya to her brother: 

You know, from the very beginning I’ve always felt sorry that fate did not grant your sister to be born in the second or third century of our era, as the daughter of some princeling or some other sort of ruler, or a proconsul in Asia Minor. She would undoubtedly have been among those who suffered martyrdom, and would have smiled, of course, while her breast was burned with red-hot iron tongs. She would have chosen it on purpose, and in the fourth or fifth century she would have gone to the Egyptian desert and lived there for thirty years [...] 

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In a scene in which he finally confesses to Dunya that he murdered the pawnbroker and Lizaveta, Raskolnikov uses metaphor, simile, and allusion: 

“Brother, brother, what are you saying! You shed blood!” Dunya cried out in despair. 

“Which everyone sheds,” he picked up, almost in a frenzy, “which is and always has been shed in torrents in this world, which men spill like champagne, and for which they’re crowned on the Capitoline and afterwards called benefactors of mankind. But just look closer and try to see! I wished people well and would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds, instead of this one stupidity—or not even stupidity, but simply clumsiness

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