After his confession to Sonya, Crime and Punishment's Raskolnikov attempts to explain the reasoning behind his murder. This segment of the novel highlights the fundamental irrationality of Raskolnikov's seemingly logical reasoning. It also describes Raskolnikov's fragmented thinking, his lack of self-awareness and understanding, and Sonya's role in bringing him to face his crime in hopes of achieving an emotional and intellectual honesty that will lay the foundation for his eventual redemption. Say no to plagiarism. . Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Conflicting explanations of the motives for Raskolnikov's murder. His first explanation is that he simply wanted to rob the pawnbroker of his money. He then dismisses this explanation by recalling that he didn't actually need or want the money. He didn't steal out of hunger, and although he wanted to help his mother, he didn't steal for his family. We should also remember that he treats money quite casually, having given money to three more people: a drunken vulnerable girl, Marmeladov, and Katerina Ivanovna. He also didn't even bother to look at the pawn shop bag after stealing it and doesn't even know if there's any money in it. Finally, he knows that this explanation is wrong because it does not adequately account for his current suffering and guilt: "If I had killed them just because I was hungry... now I would be... happy!" (413)Struggling for a more adequate explanation, he offers the needlessly abstract statement: "I have an evil heart" (414). Realizing that he needs to come up with something more substantial and detailed, he concludes that he committed the crime to see if he could be like Napoleon in asserting his will and overstepping conventional boundaries. His next empty explanation is that he stole the money so he could put himself through college without having to depend on the sacrifices of his mother and sister. He eagerly adopts this explanation despite having previously rejected the idea that he committed the murder for money or out of concern for his family. When Sonya wonders whether this explanation is sufficient, Raskolnikov haphazardly gives the additional excuse that, after all, he had only killed a “louse.” He subsequently offers the incoherent explanation that his wickedness and the poverty of his material environment had led him to a homicidal state of mind. After rejecting this line of thinking, Raskolnikov finally decides to characterize the motive for his murder as an attempt to test his extraordinary man theory. He says he wanted to assert his intellectual superiority and his right to rule over common men by daring to kill. For each explanation, Raskolnikov oscillates dramatically between certainty and uncertainty. He confidently says that he killed the pawnbroker to rob her, “of course,” but almost immediately rejects this, saying, “That's not quite right” (413). As for his explanation that he is evil, he tells Sonya, “Take note, it can explain a lot” (414). Then, in the same paragraph, he discards it: “All this is not this” (414). His fluctuations are so extreme that he manages to reject and defend the same hypothesis in one breath: “You can see for yourself that it is not so!… and yet it is the truth” (416). Subsequently, he eagerly clings to Napoleon's explanation, exclaiming: “Why not, after all! …since that's how it happened!” (415). Despite the enormous confidence with which each explanation begins, the “why not, after all” betrays the insecurities that end up undermining each of them. And he goes on to confirm: “That's exactly how it happened” (415). He uses the word “precisely” as if he had precisely defined and concluded the exact reasonsof his murder. Despite his intellectual commitment to precision and carefully formulated exactitude, his thoughts emerge as a series of hopelessly confusing contradictions. He fails to grasp the complexity and irrationality of the motive for his murder, even though it is a motive that he had meticulously and rationally premeditated. Nor can he admit his intellectual limitations in understanding himself. Therefore, Raskolnikov desperately clings to anything that can pass as a coherent and satisfactory explanation. He admits the absurdity of his explanation about Napoleon, calling it "nonsense, almost chatter" (415), only to replace it with the equally dubious explanation that he wanted the pawnshop money to put himself through college. He concludes, “Well, that's all” (416), implying that he had successfully explained everything in his final all-encompassing explanation. Once again, he dismisses it, saying: "All this is not so... There are completely different reasons here, completely, completely different!" (416). Raskolnikov anxiously clings to the next plausible explanation that comes to mind: “He began again… as if an unexpected turn of thought had struck him and awakened him again. 'Better... suppose...'” (417). In outlining his explanation of how spite and madness lead him to murder, he inserts three sentences in parentheses to stabilize and support his shaky new hypothesis. These parenthetical interjections also serve to indicate how fragmented, confusing, and discordant Raskolnikov's thoughts are. Raskolnikov resorts to claiming that he has an adequate explanation, but simply cannot articulate it. He asks, becoming shocked: "What will I tell you?" (414). He cannot organize his chaotic thoughts into words: “Now I have to talk and I don't even know where to begin” (414). Every time he manages to say something, he says in defeat and frustration, "Once again I don't say it right!" (417). Dismisses anything he says as “babble,” inconsistently or repetitively meaningless expressions, or as “nonsense,” words or language that are meaningless or do not convey intelligible ideas. Despite all his efforts to clearly outline the motivations for his murder, Raskolnikov manages only to express discordant and superficial half-notions. His attempts to reflect and articulate an adequate explanation require the exertion of extreme mental effort. The narrator mentions several times that Raskolnikov speaks “thoughtfully.” Raskolnikov also occasionally "stopped and thought," or "kept silent and thought about it for a long time" (415). When offering an explanation, Raskolnikov seems to be "speaking from memory" (416), because he had pre-formulated this explanation through meticulous and scrupulous thought. He simply fails to “tell [Sonya] outright” (415) why he committed the murder because, instead of admitting intellectual defeat, he goes through a long-winded, self-deceptive thought process to devise convincing rationalizations. He often has to “reconsider,” reconsider his explanation again and again by revising it, discarding it, and replacing it. When he is “recovering,” he is actually remembering the fragmented and dualistic parts of his schizophrenic personality, while also remembering all of his equally confusing and incongruent thoughts. After all this mental effort, Raskolnikov admits failure, saying, “Ah, what a stupid thing to say, huh?” (413). Despite all the trust and value he places in his intellectual abilities and rational thinking, a feeling of impotence and uselessness overwhelms him: "In a sort of impotence he dragged himself to the end of his story and bowed his head" (416). Without feeling or passion, through intellect and reason, he “drags” himself to forced explanationsinvented. The mental burden on him also manifests itself physically when Raskolnikov periodically lowers his head, holds it in his hand and eventually develops headaches. The narrator tells us that “a terrible helplessness manifested itself through his agitated state of mind” (417). Passive-abusive relationship between Sonia and Raskolnikov Raskolnikov blames Sonya for all the anguish and frustration he feels in trying to find an explanation. After all, it is she who expects him to understand his crime. He pleads with her: "Stop it, Sonya!" (412) and "Don't torment me, Sonya!" (413). Rather than address the problem, he wishes to ignore it and put it aside. He hastily offers his explanations with overconfidence, concluding "Fine, but enough!" (416). But each time, he realizes that Sonya does not understand or believe his explanation, which once again pushes him into the heartbreaking process of strangling the truth from himself. Sonya sees that Raskolnikov “understands nothing, simply nothing.” !” (418). He believes that being honest with himself will allow him to recognize his sin, which will prepare him for confession. Confession is necessary for suffering, which in turn is necessary for redemption and return to God and society. However, Raskolnikov has difficulty bearing the burden of emotional and intellectual honesty, as well as the suffering it promises to inflict. He reacts harshly to Sonya's references to forced labor in Siberia and "suddenly felt heavy and painful to be loved" (422) by her. As Sonya passively forces him to face his crime, he periodically falls to torment her. Whenever he can't come up with an explanation, he starts complaining about ever coming to her. Sonya meekly accepts the suffering he transmits to her. When Raskolnikov tells Sonya, “You won't understand anything” (414), she declares that she will make every effort to try to understand. Ironically, he himself does not understand what he is saying and what the real reason was why he killed the pawnbroker. He is simply projecting his own confusion, bewilderment and perplexity onto Sonya. He attributes his inability to articulate an explanation to Sonya's inability to understand. He reasons that since she wouldn't understand it anyway, he doesn't have to offer an explanation. Sonya, as the novel's Christ-like figure, willingly accepts Raskolnikov's projection of suffering, shame, and despair. Sonya's prodding finally launches Raskolnikov into voluntary reflection. He admits, “I'm lying, Sonya…I've been lying for a long time” (416), thus opening the possibility that, by recognizing his intellectual dishonesty, he will come to face the true nature of his crime. Once she manages to force the situation, he stops fighting with her and starts fighting with himself. In fact, "he no longer cared whether she understood or not" (418). His dialogue with her almost turns into a monologue. He essentially starts having a conversation with himself, an action that is consistent with his schizophrenia and his internal struggle between dual personalities. Raskolnikov ends up deciding that the extraordinary man theory was the motivation for his murder. He admits that all his other excuses, from wanting money to worrying about his family, are all secondary rationalizations meant to hide the "real" reason behind his crime. He recalls that as he reflected on the murder, “I thought about everything and whispered everything as I lay there in the dark… I discussed everything with myself, down to the last trace, and I know everything, everything! " (418). Despite having already meticulously thought through the motives for his murder, Raskolnikov says that he "would have liked to forget everything" (418), and therefore erased the memory of these decisions. As a result, he must go through the entire process again in his dialogue with Sonya to rediscover the.1992