The Guilt Proves to be Too Much for Raskolnikov

The first part was focused more on the actual crime, but now that it has been committed the second part seems to be more dedicated to his punishment, hence the title Crime and Punishment. I got the answer to the question I proposed in my last blog post and the answer was yes, he is obviously feeling remorse. I use the term obviously because his whole emotional and physical state has changed; he is paranoid, frantic, and growing weak, all because of the guilt he is feeling. In the beginning of Chapter 1 of Part 2, he is frantically searching his clothes to ensure there is no blood and then finding the pawned items. This demonstrates how he is becoming paranoid, which leads him to worry because he almost forgot to hide the pawned items. This paranoia is considered by Raskolnikov to be a the beginning of his punishment, which is interesting because h believes that he will punished through emotional torment and stress rather than physically being punished. He also later when he is called to the police station he faints, and I believe this happens because he is nervous that the police suspect him and also he has a very heavy guilty conscience weighing on him. This causes him to once again have this internal struggle with himself on whether to rid himself of his overbearing guilt by confessing but as a result lose his freedom, or say nothing at all and remain a free man with a guilty conscience. Also at the police station we get a sense that Raskolnikov is now feeling isolated from society. This isolation was not something that is new since before he had this air of haughtiness and he isolated himself from society because he simply thought he was better than everyone else, but now he comes to the realization that he has completely isolated himself saying “…that it was no longer possible for him to address these people in the police station, not only with heartfelt effusion, as he had just done, but in any way at all…” (188)