In this passage from the novel Crime and Punishment, the author depicts a nervous and paranoid Raskolnikov and his friend Razumikhin, falling into a trap set by Porfiry to reveal Raskolnikov’s guilt of his murders.  Porfiry is trying to use his wit to confuse Raskolnikov and make him slip up so that he can accuse him of the killings.

            Raskolnikov is very disgruntled when he realizes that Razumikhin knows that he has committed the two murders.  “‘He knows!’ flashed in Raskolnikov like lightning.”  If Raskolnikov wasn’t nervous about the murders, then he wouldn’t be so quick to assume that his friend knows about it.  But since he does react so quickly on his assumption, it can be inferred that he is becoming paranoid and is close to breaking and telling someone what he did.  He becomes even more paranoid when Polfiry begins questioning him about why he hadn’t gotten his things sooner and on when his mother is coming.  He begins to suspect that Polfiry also knows about the murders (which is most likely true), and is trying to get him to reveal his secret to him.  Raskolnikov becomes so flustered that he contradicts himself, “Not pale at all…on the contrary, I’m quite well!”  He had previously told Polfiry that he had been feeling ill lately, and by contradicting himself, Polfiry is sure to know that he is lying about something that he doesn’t want to be found out.

Polfiry knows that something is not right about Raskolnikov so he tries to uncover what that something is.  He becomes more and more convinced by Raskolnikov’s responses to his questions that he did indeed commit the murders.  He has paid especially close attention to the fact that Raskolnikov hadn’t gone to claim his items.  “In fact, you are the only one who has not been so good as to pay us a visit.”  The oddity that Raskolnikov is the only one not to get his items is a call for alarm that something isn’t right with him.  Any sane person would have reclaimed their belongings right away once they had gotten news of the pawn broker’s death.  The fact that he didn’t get his items leads Polfiry to believe that Raskolnikov might have had a hand in the murders.  To figure out if his theory is correct, Polfiry tries to lay a trap to get Raskolnikov to try to get him to confess to it.  In essence it works to the point where Raskolnikov becomes nervous and paranoid to the point where he won’t be able to tolerate many further references to the murders without admitting to them.  However, he does not admit to the murders right there and then.

In this scene, Razumikhin plays the part of the friend who has just realized that his best friend has committed two murders, and tries to make sure that no one else finds out about them.  When Polfiry says that he was waiting for Raskolnikov to reclaim his items, Razumikhin cries out, “Wha-a-at?  Waiting?  So you knew he had pawned things there?”  The fact that he says a drawn out “wha-a-at” instead of a normal “what” demonstrates that Razumikhin might think that Polfiry already knows about the murders and was waiting for Raskolnikov to come in so that he could confront him about them.  This last sentenced uttered by Polifory caught him completely off guard and before he can think of how to respond to him so as not to implicate Raskolnikov, he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind which only furthers Polfiry’s suspicion of Raskolnikov in the killings.

This scene does nothing to help Raskolnikov in his plight over committing the two murders.  The wit of Polfiry and the idiocy of his friend Razumikhin are all that is needed to turn Raskolnikov into a paranoid wreck and make him suspicious of everyone.  Likewise, this scene has also confirmed the suspicions that Polfiry has of Raskolnikov and these suspicions will play a tremendous part to further the plot of this novel.  It will eventually lead to the downfall of Raskolnikov.