Raskolnikov really loves people. Raskolnikov really hates people. Raskolnikov has a love/hate relationship with people. Dude's confused. That's the obvious statement of the last two centuries, thou...

No, Sonia's last name has nothing to do with the delicious citrus jam that you spread on English muffins. She's not lucky enough to have a name that means "marmalade."Girl has—to put it mildly—...

Svidrigaïlov is, arguably, the biggest bad guy in the book. How bad? Well, he makes Raskolnikov look like a saint. That's bad. When literature's most famous axe murderer looks pure and shiny compa...

Dounia is strong and steady, young and beautiful, intelligent and educated. But, because this is a novel by Fyodor "Everyone in the World Is Horribly Flawed" Dostoevsky, she ain't perfect. Dounia i...

Razumihin is charming, sweet, loving, and forgiving. Responsible for much of the comic relief in the novel (yes, there's comic relief in C & P) he's a real people person...and just the guy you...

Porfiry is the attorney investigating the murders of Alyona and Lizaveta...but he's also a bit of a mystery. We don't really know him outside of his professional capacity. He's related to Razumihin...

Luzhin is a 10 out of 10 on the villain scale. We're even going to go ahead and say that he's worse than Svidrigaïlov—at least Svidrigaïlov has some hint of goodness through small acts of love...

Katerina lives in the past. But, hey, we would, too, if we were married to Marmeladov.As far as we can tell, she was born in a fairly prosperous and "respectable" family, with a degree of privilege...

Pulcheria is Raskolnikov and Dounia's mom. She loves her baby (oh dang: do you think she calls him her Little Raskol?) and would do anything for him. Even, according to him, push her daughter into...

Is Marfa a victim? Or a victimizer? Or both? Dang you, Dostoevsky, for making things so complex.To be fair, it's hard to say because we never meet her. We know that she paid Svidrigaïlov's debt to...

Ilya has the second-to-last word in the novel, pre-epilogue. "Drink some water," he says. We know this isn't the most exciting line (although hydration is always a good idea, y'all), but they occur...

When we first hear about Andrey Semyonovitch, we think he's a bad guy. Marmeladov tells Raskolnikov that he beat Katerina because she wouldn't have sex with him in order to pay him back for the mon...