Crime and Punishment

The narrator uses a simile that compares Raskolnikov to a “drunk man” when describing his distracted mental state following his “trial” visit to the apartment of Alyona Ivanovna, whom he intends to murder: 

He went down the sidewalk like a drunk man, not noticing the passers-by and running into them, and was in the next street before he came to his senses. Looking around, he noticed that he was standing by a pothouse, the entrance to which was downstairs from the sidewalk, in the basement. At that same moment two drunks came walking out the door and, supporting and cursing each other, climbed up to the street.

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Dostoevesky employs imagery, simile, and hyperbole in his description of the bar where Raskolnikov first meets former government official Semyon Marmeladov: 

The proprietor of the establishment was in another room, but frequently came into the main room, descending a flight of stairs from somewhere [...] He was wearing a long-skirted coat and a terribly greasy black satin waistcoat, with no necktie, and his whole face was as if oiled like an iron padlock [...] There were chopped pickles, rusks of black bread, and fish cut into pieces, all quite evil-smelling. It was so stuffy that it was almost impossible to sit there, and everything was so saturated with wine-smell that it seemed one could get drunk in five minutes from the air alone.

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The narrator employs a series of metaphors and a simile to depict Raskolnikov’s inner turmoil. After Raskolnikov berates himself for his inability to provide for his mother and sister, tormenting himself with painful questions concerning his own future, the narrator notes that: 

None of the questions was new or sudden, however; they were all old, sore, long-standing. They had begun torturing him long ago and had worn out his heart. Long, long ago this present anguish had been born in him, had grown, accumulated, and ripened recently and become concentrated, taking the form of a horrible, wild, and fantastic question that tormented his heart and mind, irresistibly demanding resolution. And now his mother’s letter suddenly struck him like a thunderbolt.

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The narrator uses a simile that compares Raskolnikov to a man who has been condemned to death at the end of an important scene in which he decides to murder an elderly pawnbroker. The fact that he feels condemned to death even though he has decided to kill someone else is situationally ironic:

It was only a few more steps to his place. He walked in like a man condemned to death. He was not reasoning about anything, and was totally unable to reason; but he suddenly felt with his whole being that he no longer had any freedom either of mind or of will, and that everything had been suddenly and definitively decided. Of course, even if he had waited years on end for a good opportunity, having his design in mind, he could not have counted with certainty on a more obvious step towards the success of this design than the one that had suddenly presented itself now.

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The narrator employs a series of similes when describing Raskolnikov’s feeling of being trapped by fate in the hour before his murder of the elderly pawnbroker: 

But in the final instance he simply did not believe himself, and stubbornly, slavishly, sought objections on all sides, gropingly, as if someone were forcing him and drawing him to it. This last day, which had come so much by chance and resolved everything at once, affected him almost wholly mechanically: as if someone had taken him by the hand and pulled him along irresistibly, blindly, with unnatural force, without objections. As if a piece of his clothing had been caught in the cogs of a machine and he were being dragged into it.

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The narrator uses a simile that compares an unpleasant thought to a flash of lightning in a passage that describes Raskolnikov’s distracted walk to the home of the elderly pawnbroker, whom he plans to murder and rob: 

[He] suddenly became interested in precisely why the people of all big cities are somehow especially inclined, not really out of necessity alone, to live and settle in precisely those parts of the city where there are neither gardens nor fountains, where there is filth and stench and all sorts of squalor [...] “It must be the same for men being led out to execution—their thoughts must cling to every object they meet on the way,” flashed through his head, but only flashed, like lightning; he hastened to extinguish the thought…

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The narrator uses vivid imagery and a series of similes to describe Lizaveta when she enters the apartment and discovers that her sister has been murdered and the murderer is still in the apartment: 

Lizaveta was standing in the middle of the room, with a big bundle in her hands, frozen, staring at her murdered sister, white as a sheet, and as if unable to utter a cry. Seeing him run in, she trembled like a leaf, with a faint quivering, and spasms ran across her whole face; she raised her hand, opened her mouth, yet still did not utter a cry, and began slowly backing away from him [...]. He rushed at her with the axe; she twisted her lips pitifully, as very small children do when they begin to be afraid of something, stare at the thing that frightens them, [...]

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After Raskolnikov cruelly demands that Razumikhin leave him alone, Razumikhin retorts with his own insults, using both simile and metaphor to critique Raskolnikov’s resentful and lifeless personality: 

“Listen to me. I announce to you that you’re all, to a man, babblers and braggarts! Some little suffering comes along, and you brood over it like a hen over an egg! Even there you steal from other authors! There isn’t a sign of independent life in you! You’re made of spermaceti ointment, with whey instead of blood in your veins! I don’t believe a one of you! The first thing you do in any circumstances is try not to resemble a human being!

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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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Anxious, for good reason, that Svidrigailov will attempt to exploit his knowledge of Raskolnikov’s guilt in order to harass or pursue Dunya, Raskolnikov finds the older gentleman at a bar in Haymarket, where they speak candidly in a private room. Reflecting upon Svidrigailon’s handsome yet unsettling appearance, Raskolnikov uses a simile that compares his face to a mask: 

Raskolnikov lowered his right elbow to the table, propped his chin from underneath with the fingers of his right hand, and fixed his eyes on Svidrigailov. For a minute or so he studied his face, which had always struck him before as well. It was somehow a strange face, more like a mask: white, ruddy, with ruddy, scarlet lips, a light blond beard, and still quite thick blond hair. The eyes were somehow too blue, and their look was somehow too heavy and immobile. There was something terribly unpleasant in this handsome and, considering the man’s age, extremely youthful face.

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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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