Sonya marmeladova characterization of a crime. The image of Sonya Marmeladova in Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment". Composition about Sonya Marmeladova

One of the main characters of the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" is Sonya Marmeladova - a girl forced to work "on a yellow ticket" in order to save her family from starvation. It is to her that the author assigns the most important role in the fate of Raskolnikov.

Sonya's appearance is described in two episodes. The first is the scene of the death of her father, Semyon Zakharych Marmeladov: “Sonya was short, about eighteen years old, thin, but pretty pretty blonde ... She was also in tatters, her outfit was decorated in a street style ... with a bright and shamefully prominent goal. "

Another description of her appearance appears in the scene of Sonechka's acquaintance with Dunya and Pulcheria Alexandrovna: “she was a modest and even poorly dressed girl, very young, almost like a girl ... with a clear, but frightened face. She was wearing a very simple house dress ... ". Both of these portraits are strikingly different from each other, which reflects one of the key features of Sonya's character - a combination of spiritual purity and moral decline.

Sonya's life story is extremely tragic: unable to indifferently watch her family die from hunger and poverty, she voluntarily went to the humiliation and received a "yellow ticket". Sacrifice, boundless compassion and selflessness forced Sonechka to give all the money she earned to her father and stepmother Katerina Ivanovna.

Sonya has many wonderful features of a human character: mercy, sincerity, kindness, understanding, moral purity. She is ready to look for something good, bright in every person, even in those who are not worthy of such an attitude. Sonya knows how to forgive.

She has an endless love for people. This love is so strong that Sonechka is determined to consciously give all of herself for them.

Such faith in people and a special attitude towards them ("This man is a louse!") Is largely associated with Sonya's Christian worldview. Her faith in God and the miracle emanating from him truly has no boundaries. “What would I be without God!” In this regard, she is the opposite of Raskolnikov, who opposes her with his atheism and the theory of "ordinary" and "extraordinary" people. It is faith that helps Sonya to maintain the purity of her soul, to protect herself from the dirt and vice surrounding her; it is not for nothing that almost the only book she has read more than once is the New Testament.

One of the most significant scenes in the novel that influenced Raskolnikov's later life is the episode of joint reading of a passage from the Gospel about the resurrection of Lazarus. “The cigarette end has long been extinguished in a crooked candlestick, dimly illuminating in this beggarly room the murderer and the harlot, who strangely came together reading the eternal book ...”.

Sonechka plays a crucial role in the fate of Raskolnikov, which is to revive his faith in God and return to the Christian path. Only Sonya was able to accept and forgive his crime, did not condemn and was able to induce Raskolnikov to confess to his deed. She went with him all the way from recognition to hard labor, and it was her love that was able to return him to the true path.

Sonya has shown herself to be a determined and active person, able to make difficult decisions and follow them. She convinced Rodion to report on himself: “Get up! Come now, this very minute, stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth that you have desecrated, and then bow to the whole world ... ".

In hard labor, Sonya did everything to alleviate the fate of Raskolnikov. She becomes a well-known and respected person, she is addressed by her first name and patronymic. The convicts fell in love with her for her kind attitude towards them, for her disinterested help - for the fact that Raskolnikov does not yet want or cannot understand. At the end of the novel, he finally realizes his feelings for her, realizes how much she suffered for him. “How can her beliefs now not be mine? Her feelings, her aspirations at least…”. So Sonya's love, her dedication and compassion helped Raskolnikov to begin the process of becoming on the true path.

The author embodied the best human qualities in the image of Sonya. Dostoevsky wrote: "I have only one moral model and ideal - Christ." Sonya became for him a source of his own beliefs, decisions dictated by his conscience.

Thus, thanks to Sonechka, Raskolnikov managed to find a new meaning in life and regain his lost faith.

Roman F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" is dedicated to the history of the maturation and commission of a crime by Rodion Raskolnikov. The remorse of conscience after the murder of the old pawnbroker becomes simply unbearable for the hero. This internal process is carefully written out by the author of the novel. But this work is not only remarkable for the reliability of the psychological state of the protagonist. In the system of images of "Crime and Punishment" there is another character, without whom the novel would have remained a detective story. Sonechka Marmeladova is the core of the work. The daughter of the accidentally met Marmeladov entered the life of Raskolnikov and laid the foundation for his spiritual rebirth.

Sonechka's life is unremarkable. After the death of his mother, his father, out of pity, married a woman who was left a widow with three children. The marriage was unequal and a burden to both. Sonya was a stepdaughter for Ekaterina Ivanovna, so she got it the most. In a moment of emotional anguish, the stepmother sent Sonya to the panel. The whole family was supported by her "earnings". The seventeen-year-old girl had no education, which is why everything turned out so badly. Although the father did not disdain the money thus earned by his daughter, and always asked her for a hangover .... He also suffered from this.

This, as already mentioned, is an ordinary everyday story, characteristic not only for the middle of the 19th century, but also for any time. But what made the author of the novel "Crime and Punishment" focus on Sonechka Marmeladova and generally introduce this image into the plot? First of all, this is the perfect purity of Sonya, which the life that she lives could not kill. Even her appearance testifies to inner purity and greatness.

For the first time, Raskolnikov meets Sonya in the scene of Marmeladov's death, when he sees her in a crowd of people who have fled to a new spectacle. The girl was dressed according to her occupation (a colorful dress bought through a third hand, a straw hat with a bright feather, an obligatory “umbrelka” in her hands in patched and patched gloves), but then Sonya comes to Raskolnikov to thank for saving her father. Now she looks different:

"Sonya was small, about eighteen years old, thin, but rather pretty blonde with wonderful blue eyes." Now she looks like "a girl modest and decent in manner, with a clear, but somewhat frightened face."

The more Raskolnikov communicates with her, the more she reveals herself. Having chosen Sonya Marmeladova for a frank confession, he seems to be trying to test her strength, asking evil, cruel questions: is she afraid of getting sick during her “profession”, what will happen to the children in case of her illness, that Polechka will have the same fate - prostitution. Sonya, as if in a frenzy, answers him: "God will not allow this." And he does not hold a grudge against his stepmother at all, claiming that it is much harder for her. A little later, Rodion notes in her a feature that clearly characterizes her:

“In her face, and in her whole figure, there was, moreover, one special feature: in spite of her eighteen years, she seemed almost still a girl, much younger than her years, almost a child, and this was sometimes even ridiculously manifested in some of her movements. ".

This childishness is associated with purity and high morality!

The characterization of Sonya by her father is also interesting: “She is unrequited, and her voice is so meek ...” This meekness and meekness is a hallmark of the girl. She sacrificed everything for the sake of saving her family, which, in fact, was not even her family. But her kindness, mercy is enough for everyone. After all, she immediately justifies Raskolnikov, saying that he was hungry, unhappy, and committed a crime, being driven to despair.

Sonya lives life not for herself, but for the sake of others. She helps the weak and the needy, and this is her unshakable strength. Raskolnikov says this about her:

"Hey Sonya! What a well, however, they managed to dig! And enjoy! That's because they use it. And got used to it. We cried and got used to it."

Raskolnikov finds her desperate dedication quite incredible. He, as an egoist-individualist, always thinking only about himself, is trying to comprehend her motives. And this faith in people, in goodness, in mercy seems to him insincere. Even in hard labor, when the old, hardened murderers-criminals call the young girl "mother of mercy", he had to lose sight of her in order to understand how important and dear she is to him. Only there he accepts all her views, and they penetrate into his essence.

Sonechka Marmeladova is a wonderful example of humanism and high morality. She lives according to Christian laws. It is no coincidence that the author settles her in the apartment of the tailor Kapernaumov - a direct association with Mary Magdalene, who lived in the city of Capernaum. Her strength is expressed in purity and inner greatness. Rodion Raskolnikov very aptly characterized such people: "They give everything ... they look meekly and quietly."

While serving a term in hard labor, Dostoevsky conceived the novel The Drunk Ones. The difficult life, the corresponding environment, the stories of prisoners - all this prompted the writer to the idea of ​​describing the life of an impoverished ordinary Petersburger and his relatives. Later, already in the wild, he began to write another novel, where he entered the previously conceived characters. The images and characteristics of the members of the Marmeladov family in the novel "Crime and Punishment" occupy a special place among other characters.

This family is a symbolic image that characterizes the life of ordinary ordinary people, a collective one - people living almost on the verge of a final moral downfall, however, despite all the blows of fate, who managed to preserve the purity and nobility of their souls.

Marmalade family

The Marmeladovs occupy almost a central place in the novel, they are very closely connected with the main character. Almost all of them played a very important role in the fate of Raskolnikov.

At the time Rodion met this family, it consisted of:

1. Marmeladov Semyon Zakharovich - the head of the family;
2. Katerina Ivanovna - his wife;
3. Sofya Semyonovna - Marmeladov's daughter (from his first marriage);
4. children of Katerina Ivanovna (from her first marriage): Polenka (10 years old); Kolya (seven years old); Lidochka (six years old, still called Lenechka).

The Marmeladov family is a typical family of philistines who have sunk almost to the very bottom. They don't even live, they exist. Dostoevsky describes them like this: as if they are not even trying to survive, but simply live in hopeless poverty - such a family "has nowhere else to go." It's scary not so much that the children found themselves in such a situation, but that adults seem to have come to terms with their status, do not seek a way out, do not seek to get out of such a difficult existence.

Marmeladov Semyon Zakharovich

Head of the family, with which Dostoevsky introduces the reader at the time of Marmeladov's meeting with Raskolnikov. Then, gradually, the writer reveals the life path of this character.

Marmeladov once served as a titular adviser, but he drank himself, was left without a job and practically without a livelihood. He has a daughter from his first marriage - Sonya. At the time of the meeting between Semyon Zakharovich and Raskolnikov, Marmeladov had been married to a young woman Katerina Ivanovna for four years. She herself had three children from her first marriage.

The reader will learn that Semyon Zakharovich married her not so much out of love, but out of pity and compassion. And they all live in St. Petersburg, where they moved a year and a half ago. At first, Semyon Zakharovich finds a job here, and quite a decent one. However, due to his addiction to drinking, the official very soon loses her. So, through the fault of the head of the family, the whole family is begging, left without a livelihood.

Dostoevsky does not tell - what happened in the fate of this man, what broke once in his soul so that he began to drink, in the end - he drank himself, which doomed the children to begging, brought Katerina Ivanovna to consumption, and his own daughter became a prostitute, so that at least somehow earn and feed three young children, a father and a sick stepmother.

Listening to the drunken outpourings of Marmeladov, however, involuntarily, the reader is imbued with sympathy for this man who has fallen to the very bottom. Despite the fact that he robbed his wife, begged for money from his daughter, knowing how she earns it and why, he is tormented by pangs of conscience, he is disgusted with himself, his soul hurts.

In general, many heroes of "Crime and Punishment", even very unpleasant at the beginning, eventually come to the realization of their sins, to an understanding of the full depth of their fall, some even repent. Morality, faith, inner mental suffering are characteristic of Raskolnikov, Marmeladov, and even Svidrigailov. Who can not stand the pangs of conscience and commits suicide.

Here is Marmeladov: he is weak-willed, cannot cope with himself and stop drinking, but he sensitively and accurately feels the pain and suffering of other people, injustice towards them, he is sincere in his good feelings towards his neighbors and honest to himself and others. Semyon Zakharovich did not harden in his fall - he loves his wife, daughter, children of his second wife.

Yes, he did not achieve much in the service, he married Katerina Ivanovna out of compassion and pity for her and her three children. He remained silent when his wife was beaten, was silent and endured when his own daughter went to the bar to feed his children, stepmother and father. And Marmeladov's reaction was weak-willed:

"And I ... lay drunk, sir."

He can’t even do anything, he just can’t drink alone - he needs support, he needs to confess to someone who will listen to him and console him, who will understand him.

Marmeladov prays for forgiveness - the interlocutor, the daughter whom the saint considers, his wife, her children. In fact, his prayer is addressed to a higher authority - to God. Only the former official asks for forgiveness through his listeners, through his relatives - this is such a frank cry from the depths of the soul that it evokes in the listeners not so much even pity as understanding and sympathy. Semyon Zakharovich is executing himself for his weakness, for his fall, for his inability to stop drinking and start working, for having come to terms with his current fall and not looking for a way out.

Sad result: Marmeladov, being very drunk, dies after falling under a horse. And perhaps this is the only way out for him.

Marmeladov and Raskolnikov

The hero of the novel meets Semyon Zakharovich in a tavern. Marmeladov attracted the attention of a poor student with a contradictory appearance and an even more contradictory look;

“It was as if even enthusiasm shone, - perhaps, there was both sense and intelligence, - but at the same time, madness seemed to flicker.”

Raskolnikov drew attention to the drunken little man, and eventually listened to the confession of Marmeladov, who spoke about himself and his family. Listening to Semyon Zakharovich, Rodion once again understands that his theory is correct. The student himself during this meeting is in some strange state: he decided to kill the old money-lender, driven by the "Napoleonic" theory of superhumans.

At first, the student sees an ordinary drunkard frequenter of taverns. However, listening to Marmeladov's confession, Rodion is curious about his fate, then imbued with sympathy, not only for the interlocutor, but also for his family members. And this is in that feverish state when the student himself is focused only on one thing: "to be or not to be."

Later, fate brings the hero of the novel to Katerina Ivanovna, Sonya. Raskolnikov helps the unfortunate widow with a commemoration. Sonya, with her love, helps Rodion to repent, to understand that not everything is lost, that one can still know both love and happiness.

Katerina Ivanovna

Middle-aged woman, about 30. She has three young children from her first marriage. However, enough suffering and grief, trials have already fallen to her lot. But Katerina Ivanovna did not lose her pride. She is smart and educated. As a young girl, she was carried away by an infantry officer, fell in love with him, ran away from home to get married. However, the husband turned out to be a player, eventually lost, he was judged and soon died.

So Katerina Ivanovna was left alone with three children in her arms. Her relatives refused to help her, she had no income. The widow and children were in complete poverty.

However, the woman did not break down, did not give up, she was able to maintain her inner core, her principles. Dostoevsky characterizes Katerina Ivanovna in the words of Sonya:

she “… seeks justice, she is pure, she believes so much that there should be justice in everything, and demands… And even torture her, but she does not do anything unfair. She herself does not notice how all this is impossible to be fair in people, and gets irritated ... Like a child, like a child!

In an extremely distressed situation, the widow meets Marmeladov, marries him, tirelessly busies around the house, caring for everyone. Such a hard life undermines her health - she falls ill with consumption and on the day of Semyon Zakharovich's funeral she herself dies of tuberculosis.

Orphaned children are sent to an orphanage.

Children of Katerina Ivanovna

The writer's skill was manifested in the highest way in the description of the children of Katerina Ivanovna - so touchingly, in detail, realistically, he describes these eternally hungry children, doomed to live in poverty.

"... The smallest girl, about six years old, was sleeping on the floor, somehow sitting, crouching and burying her head in the sofa. The boy, a year older than her, was trembling all over in the corner and crying. He had probably just been nailed. The older girl , about nine years old, tall and thin as a match, in one thin shirt, torn everywhere, and in a shabby Dradedam burnous coat thrown over her bare shoulders, probably sewn to her two years ago, because it now did not reach even to her knees, stood in the corner near the little brother, clasping his neck with her long hand, dried up like a match, she ... followed her mother with her big, big dark eyes, which seemed even larger on her emaciated and frightened face ... "

It touches to the core. Who knows - it's possible that they end up in an orphanage, a better way out than to stay on the street and beg.

Sonya Marmeladova

The native daughter of Semyon Zakharovich, 18 years old. When her father married Katerina Ivanovna, she was only fourteen. Sonya has a significant role in the novel - the girl had a huge influence on the main character, became Raskolnikov's salvation and love.

Characteristic

Sonya did not receive a decent education, but she is smart and honest. Her sincerity and responsiveness became an example for Rodion and awakened in him conscience, repentance, and then love and faith. The girl suffered a lot in her short life, she suffered from her stepmother, but she did not harbor evil, she was not offended. Despite the lack of education, Sonya is not stupid at all, she reads, she is smart. In all the trials that fell to her lot during such a short life so far, she managed not to lose herself, retained the inner purity of her soul, her own dignity.

The girl was capable of complete self-sacrifice for the good of others; she is endowed with the gift to feel someone else's suffering as her own. And then she thinks least of all about herself, but only about how and how she can help someone who is very ill, who suffers and needs even more than herself.

Sonya and her family

Fate seemed to test the girl for strength: at first she began to work as a seamstress to help her father, stepmother and her children. Although at that time it was accepted that the family should be supported by a man, the head of the family, however, Marmeladov turned out to be absolutely incapable of this. The stepmother was sick, her children were very small. The seamstress's income was insufficient.

And the girl, driven by pity, compassion and a desire to help, goes to the panel, receives a “yellow ticket”, becomes a “harlot”. She suffers greatly from the realization of her external such a fall. But Sonya never reproached her drunken father or her sick stepmother, who knew very well who the girl was now working for, but they themselves were unable to help her. Sonya gives her earnings to her father and stepmother, knowing full well that the father will drink this money away, but the stepmother will be able to somehow feed her little children.

meant a lot to a girl

"the thought of sin and they, those ... poor orphans and this pathetic half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna with her consumption, with her head banging against the wall."

This kept Sonya from wanting to commit suicide because of such a shameful and dishonorable occupation, which she was forced to engage in. The girl managed to preserve her inner moral purity, to preserve her soul. But not every person is able to save himself, to remain a man, going through all the trials in life.

Sonya Love

It is no coincidence that the writer pays such close attention to Sonya Marmeladova - in the fate of the protagonist, the girl became his salvation, and not so much physical as moral, moral, spiritual. Having become a fallen woman, in order to be able to save at least the children of her stepmother, Sonya saved Raskolnikov from a spiritual fall, which is even worse than a physical fall.

Sonechka, sincerely and blindly believing in God with all her heart, without reasoning or philosophizing, turned out to be the only one capable of awakening in Rodion humanity, if not faith, but conscience, repentance for what he had done. She simply saves the soul of a poor student who has lost his way in philosophical discussions about the superman.

The novel clearly shows the opposition of Sonya's humility to Raskolnikov's rebelliousness. And it was not Porfiry Petrovich, but it was this poor girl who was able to direct the student on the true path, helped to realize the fallacy of his theory and the severity of the crime committed. She suggested a way out - repentance. It was her who obeyed Raskolnikov, confessing to the murder.

After the trial of Rodion, the girl followed him to hard labor, where she began working as a milliner. For her kind heart, for her ability to sympathize with other people, everyone loved her, especially the prisoners.

The spiritual revival of Raskolnikov became possible only thanks to the selfless love of the poor girl. Patiently, with hope and faith, Sonechka takes care of Rodion, who is sick not so much physically, but spiritually and mentally. And she manages to awaken in him the awareness of good and evil, to awaken humanity. Raskolnikov, if he had not yet accepted Sonya's faith with his mind, accepted her beliefs with his heart, believed her, in the end he fell in love with the girl.

In conclusion, it should be noted that the writer in the novel reflected not so much the social problems of society as more psychological, moral, spiritual. The whole horror of the tragedy of the Marmeladov family is in the typicality of their destinies. Sonya became a bright ray here, who managed to preserve a person in herself, dignity, honesty and decency, purity of soul, despite all the trials that fell to her. And today, all the problems shown in the novel have not lost their relevance.

If Rodion Raskolnikov is the bearer of a protesting principle, the creator of a theory that justifies crime and the domination of a “strong personality”, then the opposite pole to him, the opposite pole of F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, is Sonya Marmeladova, the daughter of a poor official, “humiliated and insulted” in a bourgeois society.

Sonya is a kind of limit to meekness and suffering. In the name of saving her stepmother's children from starvation and her drunken father, who has sunk to the point of losing his human form, she goes out into the street and becomes a prostitute. This is a painful humiliation, the apotheosis of suffering and self-sacrifice. The meek, religiously exalted Sonya sacrifices everything that is especially dear to her, goes to the gravest sufferings in the name of the happiness of her neighbors. Sonya professes moral precepts, which, from the point of view of Dostoevsky, are closest to the people - the precepts of humility, forgiveness, sacrificial love. She does not judge Raskolnikov for his sin, but painfully sympathizes with him and calls on him to "suffer", to atone for his guilt before God and before people.

Sonechka Marmeladova is destined to share the depth of Raskolnikov's mental anguish, it is to her that the hero decides to tell his terrible, painful secret. In the person of Sonya, Raskolnikov meets a man who awakens in himself and whom he still pursues as a weak and helpless “trembling creature”: “He suddenly raised his head and looked intently at her; but he met her restless and painfully solicitous gaze on him; there was love; his hatred vanished like a ghost. "Nature" requires the hero to share with Sonya the suffering from his crime, and not the manifestation that causes it. Sonechka's Christian-compassionate love calls Raskolnikov to this version of recognition.

Contrasting Raskolnikov's individualistic self-rule and rebelliousness with Sonya's humility and Christian forgiveness, Dostoevsky in his novel leaves the victory not for the strong and intelligent Raskolnikov, but for the meek sufferer Sonya, seeing in her the highest truth. Raskolnikov is unable to endure the torment of conscience, the violation of the moral law: "crime" leads him to "punishment", which he suffers not from judicial punishment, but from the consciousness of his guilt, violation of the ethical basis for the existence of society. In Christian humility, Sonya Raskolnikov sees the way to salvation and atonement for this guilt.

Only Sonechka Marmeladova can judge Raskolnikov in conscience, and her trial is profoundly different from that of Porfiry Petrovich. This is a court of love, compassion and human sensitivity - that higher light that keeps humanity even in the darkness of being humiliated and offended people. Dostoevsky’s great idea is connected with the image of Sonya that the world will be saved by fraternal unity between people in the name of Christ and that the basis of this unity must be sought not in the society of the “powerful of this world”, but in the depths of people’s Russia.

The fate of Sonya completely refutes the short-sighted view of Raskolnikov the theorist on the surrounding life. In front of him is by no means a “trembling creature” and far from a humble victim of circumstances, which is why the “dirt of a miserable situation” does not stick to Sonechka. In conditions that, it would seem, completely exclude goodness and humanity, the heroine finds a light and a way out worthy of the moral being of a person and has nothing to do with Raskolnikov's individualistic rebellion. The hero is deeply mistaken, trying to identify his crime with Sonechka's ascetic self-denial: "You also crossed, you ruined your life."

There is a qualitative difference between striving for goodness through allowing evil towards others and voluntary, natural self-sacrifice in the name of compassionate love for one's neighbors. “After all, it’s more fair,” exclaims Raskolnikov, “it would be a thousand times more fair and reasonable and it would be right with your head in the water and do it all at once!” - "And what will happen to them?" - Sonya asked weakly, looking at him with pain, but at the same time, as if not at all surprised at his proposal ... And only then did he fully understand what these poor, little orphans and this pitiful, half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna meant to her ... " Sonya's selflessness is far from humility, she has a socially active character and is aimed at saving the perishing, and in the Christian faith of the heroine, it is not the ritual side that is in the foreground, but practical, effective care for others. In the person of Sonya, Dostoevsky depicts a popular, democratic version of the religious worldview, taking the Christian aphorism to heart: "Faith without deed is dead." In popular religiosity, Dostoevsky finds a fruitful seed for his idea of ​​Christian socialism.

The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment” is a socio-psychological one. In it, the author raises important social issues that worried people of that time. The originality of this novel by Dostoevsky lies in the fact that it shows psychology ...

F. M. Dostoevsky is the greatest Russian writer, an unsurpassed realist artist, an anatomist of the human soul, a passionate champion of the ideas of humanism and justice. His novels are distinguished by their keen interest in the intellectual life of the characters, the disclosure of the complex ...

“What am I guilty of before them? .. They themselves harass millions of people, and even revere them for virtue” - with these words you can start a lesson about Raskolnikov’s “twins”. Raskolnikov's theory, proving whether "he is a trembling creature" or has the right, suggested ...

One of the ideas of F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" is the idea that in everyone, even in the most downtrodden person, disgraced and criminal, you can find high and honest feelings. These feelings, which can be found in almost every character in F.M.'s novel....

From the lips of Marmeladov in the “drinking room” in the scene of their acquaintance: “In the meantime, my daughter also grew up, from her first marriage, and what she, my daughter, only endured from her stepmother, growing up, I keep silent about that. For although Katerina Ivanovna is full of generous feelings, the lady is hot and irritated, and will break off ... Yes, sir! Well, there is nothing to remember about that! Education, as you can imagine, Sonya did not receive. I tried with her, four years ago, to go through geography and world history; but as I myself was not strong in this knowledge, and there were no decent manuals for this, for what books were available ... hm! They stopped at Cyrus the Persian. Then, having already reached a mature age, she read several books of a romantic content, and recently, through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, one book - Lewis's "Physiology", if you please know, sir? - she read it with great interest and even told us fragmentarily aloud: that's all her enlightenment. Now I will turn to you, my dear sir, on my own behalf with a private question: how much can, in your opinion, a poor but honest girl earn by honest labor? Fifteen kopecks a day, sir, will not earn, if she is honest and not has special talents, and even then he worked tirelessly! And even then the State Councilor Klopstock, Ivan Ivanovich, deigned to hear? - not only has he not given money for sewing half a dozen Dutch shirts yet, but even with resentment drove her away, stamping his feet and calling indecently, under the guise of a shirt collar sewn out of measure and on a jamb. And here the children are hungry ... And here Katerina Ivanovna, wringing her hands, walks around the room, and red spots appear on her cheeks - which always happens in this illness: “You live, they say, you, parasite, eat with us and you drink and use the heat, "and what do you drink and eat here, when the kids don't see the crust for three days! I was lying then ... well, so what! I was lying drunk, and I heard my Sonya say (she is unanswerable, and her voice is so meek ... fair-haired, her face is always pale, thin), says: “Well, Katerina Ivanovna, can I really go to such a thing? " And Darya Frantsevna, a woman of malicious intent and known to the police many times, visited three times through the hostess. "Well," replies Katerina Ivanovna, in a chuckle, "why save? Eco treasure!"<...>And I see, at about six o'clock, Sonya got up, put on a handkerchief, put on a burnous coat and left the apartment, and at nine o'clock she came back. She came, and straight to Katerina Ivanovna, and on the table in front of her silently laid out thirty rubles. She didn’t utter a word at the same time, at least she looked, but took only our big green dreaded kerchief (we have such a common kerchief, dreaded dam), covered her head and face with it completely and lay down on the bed, facing the wall, only her shoulders and the whole body shudder... And I, just as before, lay in the same shape, sir... And then, young man, I saw how then Katerina Ivanovna, also without saying a word, went up to Sonya's bed and all evening she stood on her knees at her feet, kissed her legs, did not want to get up, and then both fell asleep together, embracing ... both ... both ... yes, sir ... and I ... lay drunk - With.<...>since then, my daughter, Sofya Semyonovna, was forced to get a yellow ticket, and on this occasion she could not stay with us.<...>And Sonechka comes to us now more at dusk, and Katerina Ivanovna relieves, and delivers all possible means. He lives in the apartment of the tailor Kapernaumov, he rents an apartment from them ... "
The portrait of Sonya (as well as the portraits of other main characters of the novel - Raskolnikov and) is given several times. At first, Sonya appears (in the scene of Marmeladov’s death) in her “professional” appearance - a street prostitute: “A girl made her way out of the crowd, inaudibly and timidly, and her sudden appearance in this room was strange, among poverty, rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags; her outfit was cheap, but decorated in a street style, according to the taste and rules that had developed in her own special world, with a bright and shamefully prominent goal. Sonya stopped in the entryway at the very threshold, but did not cross the threshold and looked as if she were lost, not realizing anything, it seemed, forgetting about her secondhand, silk, indecent here, colored dress with a long and ridiculous tail, and an immense crinoline that blocked the whole door, and about light-colored shoes, and about an ombrelka, an unnecessary night, but which she took with her, and about a funny straw hat with a bright fiery feather. From under this hat, worn on a boyish side, peeped out a thin, pale and frightened little face with an open mouth and eyes motionless with horror. Sonya was small, eighteen years old, thin, but rather pretty blonde, with wonderful blue eyes. She gazed at the bed, at the priest; she, too, was suffocating from a quick walk ... "
Then Sonya appears, so to speak, in her true form in Raskolnikov's room just at the moment when he has his mother, sister: “Raskolnikov did not recognize her at first sight.<...>Now she was a modestly and even poorly dressed girl, still very young, almost like a girl, with a modest and decent manner, with a clear, but, as it were, somewhat frightened face. She was wearing a very simple house dress, on her head was an old hat of the same style; only in the hands was, in yesterday's way, an umbrella. Seeing an unexpectedly full room of people, she was not only embarrassed, but completely lost, shy, like a small child, and even made a movement to go back ... "
And finally, another portrait of Sonya in front of the reading scene and, practically, again through Raskolnikov’s eyes: “With a new, strange, almost painful feeling, he peered into this pale, thin and irregular angular face, into these meek blue eyes that could sparkle with such fire, such a harsh energetic feeling, into this small body, still trembling with indignation and anger, and all this seemed to him more and more strange, almost impossible. "Holy fool! holy fool!" he kept saying to himself...
Raskolnikov and Sonya were brought together by fate not by chance: he, as it were, committed suicide, having crossed the gospel commandment “do not kill”, she ruined herself in the same way, transgressing the commandment “do not commit adultery”. However, the difference is that Sonya sacrificed herself for the sake of others, to save loved ones, while Rodion still had the “idea of ​​Napoleonism”, a test-overcoming of himself, in the first place. Faith in God never left Sonya. Much for Raskolnikov’s repentance, for his “turning in confession” meant his confession to Sonya in his crime, and then the scene of joint reading with Sonya of the gospel parable of the resurrection of Lazarus is one of the key ones in the novel: “The cigarette stub has long been extinguished in a crooked candlestick, dimly illuminating in this beggarly room, a murderer and a harlot, strangely come together while reading an eternal book ... "
Already in Siberia, having arrived there after Raskolnikov, Sonya, with her selfless love, meekness, and caress, thaws his heart, revives Raskolnikov to life: “How it happened, he himself did not know, but suddenly something seemed to pick him up and, as it were, thrown at her feet. He cried and hugged her knees. At first she was terribly frightened, and her whole face went dead. She jumped up from her seat and, trembling, looked at him. But at once, at that very moment, she understood everything. Infinite happiness shone in her eyes; she understood, and for her there was no longer any doubt that he loved, infinitely loved her, and that this moment had finally come ...<...>Tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but in these sick and pale faces already shone the dawn of a renewed future, a full resurrection into a new life. They were resurrected by love, the heart of one contained endless sources of life for the heart of the other. They set out to wait and be patient. They still had seven years left; until then, so much unbearable torment and so much endless happiness! But he was resurrected, and he knew it, he felt it completely with his whole renewed being, and she - she, after all, lived only his life! .. ”
The "forerunner" of Sonya Marmeladova was