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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Part 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis:
With the exception of the epilogue, the novel is set in the city of St. Petersburg in the 1860s, then the capital city of the Russian Empire. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator describes this urban setting as Raskolnikov walks through the city after leaving his small apartment:
It was terribly hot out, and moreover it was close, crowded; lime, scaffolding, bricks, dust everywhere, and that special summer stench known so well to every Petersburger who cannot afford to rent a summer house—all at once these things unpleasantly shook the young man’s already overwrought nerves. The intolerable stench from the pothouses, especially numerous in that part of the city, and the drunkards he kept running into even though it was a weekday, completed the loathsome and melancholy coloring of the picture.
Related Themes:
