The protagonist in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is Rodion Romaych Raskolnikov, a poor former student living in a one room apartment in Petersburg. He is jobless and broke, unable to pay the rent for his apartment and on the verge of being kicked out by his landlady, Praskovya Pavlovna. To obtain money, Raskolnikov pawns some items to an old women, Alyona Ivanovna, a women he finds to be repulsive "at the first glance, though he knew nothing special about her." (Dostoevsky, 61). Later on during the day of Raskolnikov's first meeting with the woman, he happens to hear a university student in a bar state that he could "kill that damned old woman and make off with her money...without the faintest conscience-prick." (Dostoevsky, 63). Raskolnikov learns from the student that Ivanovna is rich, dying, and planning to bury all of her money in a monastery. This is an outrage to the college student as he feels that "A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman's money...hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution ...and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity." (Dostoevsky, 63) This chance encounter with the university student changes Raskolnikov's life forever. He begins to see a moral side of murdering the pawnbroker, and the idea of killing her becomes "a simple fantasy to amuse [himself]...a plaything." (Dostoevsky, 20).
             The "plaything" haunts Raskolnikov. It begins to become an obsession. Though he constantly denies he has any intention of commiting murder, he often takes walks to the pawnbrokers house, counting steps and timing the distance up the stairs to her flat. One evening, while on a walk, Raskolnikov hears Lizaveta Ivanovna, half-sister of the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna, talking...