Coincidence
With his strong Christian sentiments Dostoevsky believed thoroughly
in human free will and taking responsibility for one’s deeds. So how do we
square that with the overriding importance of coincidence in Part One of C and P? In carrying out his plan to
commit murder, Raskolnikov does everything wrong, sets himself up to fail or be
caught all along the line—and, miraculously succeeds. In fact, he has committed
the perfect crime, and there is little or no chance that he will ever be
charged. Then he proceeds to do lots of things to guarantee that he’ll be
caught.
If you consider all the coincidences that operate in
Raskolnikov’s favor in Part One, it is hard to remain unconvinced that some
sort of supernatural power is (1) guiding him along like a blind man toward the
crime, and (2) helping him escape afterwards. Sonya would say that this is the
devil at work, but there are hints in the novel that it may be the Lord God.
Let’s trace all the most significant situations in which
chance operates in Part One (p. 46-74 of the Norton Critical Edition C and P). We begin with the famous mare
dream and Raskolnikov’s reaction to having had a dream in which he himself
plays the role of a little boy watching peasants beat a horse to death. “I won’t
do it, I won’t do it! [kill the old lady as he has planned] Lord, show me the
way, that I may renounce this accursed fantasy of mine!” Next, he makes for
home, but instead of going home by his usual route, he is led to cross
Haymarket Square.
“Why, he used to ask himself later, did such an important
and fateful encounter take place in the Haymarket (through which he had no
reason to go) just at this time, just when his mood and circumstances were
exactly those in which the meeting could have so fateful and decisive an
influence on his destiny? It was almost
as if fate had laid an ambush for him (52; my italics).
What this refers to
is the way he overhears the pawnbroker’s sister Lizaveta’s conversation in the
Haymarket. From this conversation he learns that Lizaveta will not be at home
the next day at 7:00 p.m., and “the old woman would be at home alone” (53).
“In later years he was always inclined to see something
strange and mysterious in all the happenings of that time, as if special coincidences
and influences were at work” (54).
Next coincidence: he stops off at a miserable little tavern
and overhears his own theory of murder propagated by a student who uses as an
example precisely the same old woman whom Raskolnikov has been planning to
kill. In mouthing the same utilitarian principles that motivate Raskolnikov’s
behavior—“you could murder the old lady, steal from her, and use the money to
do good and benefit humanity”—the student demonstrates how unoriginal
Raskolnikov’s ideas are; those notions are so much blowing in the wind of the
day that two people speaking casually in a bar can give voice to them.
At this point, Dostoevsky, who goes out of his way to help
the reader see the main idea, adds another amazed afterthought on the part of
the hero: “This always seemed to him a strange coincidence. This casual
public-house conversation had an extraordinary influence on the subsequent development
of the matter, as if there were indeed
something fateful and foreordained about it” (57; my italics).
From this point on everything that Raskolnikov does is
flawed, but Fate (or the devil, or God) so helps things along that everything
works out fine. While dreaming a dream about an Egyptian oasis, he nearly
sleeps through the interval when he plans to commit the crime, but then a clock
strikes just in time and wakes him up (58). Now he is in a total daze, sick and
feverish, and his reactions are “almost completely mechanical, as though someone had taken his hand and
pulled him along irresistibly, blindly, with supernatural strength” (60; my
italics)
The servant girl Nastasya ends up being in the kitchen, so
that he cannot pick up the axe he needs, but almost miraculously he comes upon
an axe in the porter’s room: “It was not my planning, but the devil that
accomplished that! he thought” (62).
Just as Raskolnikov turns into the gateway at the old pawnbroker’s
building, “as if by design” a load of hay turns as well and screens him. Nobody
sees him enter the courtyard. After he commits the murder he loses his head and
does everything absolutely wrong. He even leaves the door open behind him,
noticing this only after he has committed his second murder, of Lizaveta, who
walks in at the wrong time.
A man arrives and knocks at the door, now locked. Soon
another arrives. Raskolnikov has no way to get past these men and escape down
the staircase, but, luckily, the man who is to remain at the door while the
other goes for help decides to leave as well. As Raskolnikov descends the stairs
he hears both of them returning. He has nowhere to hide; they are bound to see
him, remember him. But, again luckily, two painters have temporarily left the
apartment where they are working, and Raskolnikov ducks in there and conceals
himself.
He escapes. Nobody sees him anywhere. He puts the axe back
in its place. No one sees him; no problem. The perfect crime. If he is caught
now, Raskolnikov has only himself to blame. So then he spends the rest of the
novel getting himself caught, because, wallowing in contrition, he wants to get caught. Or at least one
side of his split personality wants to be caught.
So was it really the devil helping him out continuously and
guiding him inevitably toward the crime? And protecting him after the crime?
Was it predestination? But Dostoevsky does not believe in predestination. For
the rest of the novel Sonya’s God, or Jesus Christ seems to be guiding
Raskolnikov though expiation of he crime and toward redemption.
Much is made of the spiritual benefits of suffering, not
only in C and P, but also in much that
Dostoevsky has written. There are implications that Raskolnikov may have a
great future ahead of him, and that perhaps he has to suffer his way through to
spiritual enlightenment before that future can be realized. The rather strange
police inspector, Porfiry Petrovich, who sometimes acts almost as much as a
father confessor to Raskolnikov as an investigator trying to solve a crime,
suggests as much late in the novel.
Before the journey of suffering can begin, before the
sufferer can work his way through to salvation, he must commit a horrible act. Following
this logic—which is certainly hinted at in the narrative—the murder must be committed.
So is it the Lord God setting up all the coincidences that lead Raskolnikov through
the murder and escape? If so, the Lord God certainly works in mysterious ways.
In fact, you could almost see the Lord as a kind of believer in the principles
of Utilitarianism here. “Let’s kill off one old woman for the greater usefulness
and good of our hero.”
A different and better way of looking at this issue is to
assume that the god of the fiction here, Fyodor Dostoevsky himself, sets things
up so as to make his narrative move along the way he wishes. Raskolnikov must
commit the crime and must get away with it. If not, where would the book go as
a whole, and how could the rest of it be written?
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