Crime and Punishment, Part 5, Chapter 4 summary

What happens

1. Raskolnikov visits Sonia and asks whether she could choose between Luzhin’s life and the lives of Katerina Ivanovna’s family.
2. He reveals his guilt indirectly, and Sonia recognizes him as Lizaveta’s murderer before embracing him in grief.
3. He rejects hunger and family need as his main motives, describing instead a desire to test his power to break moral barriers.
4. Sonia urges him to confess publicly and accept suffering, but he refuses and says he intends to resist the police.
5. She offers him her wooden cross, which he postpones accepting, and Lebeziatnikov arrives at the door.

In this chapter

What to notice

Raskolnikov identifies the wish to test his own daring as a motive beyond theft or family need. Sonia challenges the moral right behind this test.

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