Raskolnikov

Before I delved into the actual story, I read the Translator’s Note on page xx, and saw what the name Raskolnikov meant: in a nutshell, the root-word means “split,” and the name itself means “reason, mind, intelligence,” and “to fawn or flatter in an eager, fidgety, tail-wagging manner,” so I anticipated to see two contrasting sides of him. However, when I started reading, Raskolnikov’s mentality didn’t seem too peculiar right away, so I was very curious about what would finally push him over the edge into the morals and mind-set of a killer. He seemed to have a normal temper and personality (aside from him being very tense and anxious when around people, and usually avoiding contact altogether). Once Raskolnikov began talking to Marmeladov in the bar (or vice versa), he seemed fine. But soon after the encounter with Marmeladov’s spouse, he was overcome with an unsettlingly caustic attitude walking home and reached a bizarre epiphany (at the very end of II in Part 1): After saying “Man gets accustomed to everything, the scoundrel!” followed by, “But if that’s a lie…if man in fact is not a scoundrel—in general, that is, the whole human race—then the rest is all mere prejudice, instilled fear, and there are no barriers, and that’s just how it should be!…” I wasn’t completely sure what to make of it, what are your opinions of it? I read a little farther and saw that prejudice could possibly become a reoccurring theme in the story.
posted by Devon V.