Crime and Punishment

An axe, an old pawnbroker, and a student who has talked himself into believing certain men are permitted to step over the line when enough good comes of it. The killing arrives early, because the question was never whether Raskolnikov gets caught. It is what the theory does to the man who held it. Then Porfiry Petrovich starts visiting. The magistrate knows, more or less says so, and never once makes an accusation, and those conversations are why people go back to the book a second time. Sonya pulls from the opposite side, keeping her family fed by sex work and reading him the raising of Lazarus. The stairwells, the heat and the smell of the city are doing real work here, not decorating the margins.