Crime and Punishment

Raskolnikov wanders the city in a feverish state, his mind circling around the terrible decision he's been contemplating. He realizes with growing horror that he's already mentally committed to murdering the pawnbroker - he catches himself thinking about what he'll do 'the day after It.' Exhausted, he drinks vodka and falls asleep in a park, where he experiences one of literature's most powerful dreams. He's a child again, watching drunken peasants beat a horse to death. The owner, Mikolka, insists the horse can pull an impossible load, then kills it in rage when it can't. Young Raskolnikov weeps and throws himself at the dead mare, kissing her bleeding head. He wakes up gasping, horrified by the dream's obvious message. 'Can it be that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open?' He feels his humanity recoiling against the plan. For a moment, he experiences genuine relief - 'Freedom, freedom!' He renounces his 'accursed dream,' feeling as though a terrible burden has lifted. He crosses a bridge feeling peaceful, believing he's escaped the obsession that's been consuming him. But then fate intervenes in a way he'll later see as supernatural. Walking through the Hay Market (a route he had no reason to take), he accidentally overhears Lizaveta talking to street vendors. They're asking her to come tomorrow at seven o'clock - which means the old pawnbroker will be home alone. The realization hits him like a thunderbolt. He returns to his room 'like a man condemned to death,' feeling that his freedom of choice has been stripped away. Everything is now 'suddenly and irrevocably decided.' The chapter brilliantly captures how we can rationalize away our own agency, telling ourselves that circumstances or fate are forcing our hand. Raskolnikov's conscience made one last stand through the dream, but he allows 'coincidence' to override his moral revulsion.