A Mysterious and Confusing Man

In this weeks reading we finally witness the murder of Alyona which in my opinion was inevitable, but something that has been a little ambigious and mysterious throughout the novel are his motives for murdering her. Now that I come to think of it, there is very little we know about the Raskolnikov. For example, how did he end up in such a state of poverty? Why did he quit school? I am dying to know the answers to these questions, because personally I am struggling to get a feel of Raskolnikov which would help me understand him better. One moment he seems entirely conceited and self absorbed, but then in the following paragraphs he begins to reveal a compassionate side to him, and though it is brief and he goes back to being self absorbed, that moment still happened and leads me to doubt my previous analysis's of him. He is constantly battling with his emotions and his rational thoughts and throughout the novel flip flops between one and the other. In Chapter 5 for example, he has this gruesome dream about a mare that was beaten and murdered in front of him and he is horrified at the thought of killing Alyona, but his rational thoughts tell him he has every right to murder her. Moments after he finds out that Alyona will be alone tomorrow at around 7 p.m., and that repulsion he had only moments before disappears and now he is determined to perform the crime more than ever since he finds this coincidence to be sign when more likely it is just an excuse he is coming up to put the blame on something other than himself. In the end, this dream was foreshadowing the death of Alyona, who like the horse, was murdered gruesomely with an axe, but with Raskolnikov being a character who flip flops between emotions and rationality, it is possible in next weeks reading he will feel remorse for the murder and punish himself in some way or another for the crime he has committed.