# Crime and Punishment — Character guide

> Key figures in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

- [Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/rodion_romanovich_raskolnikov.md): Raskolnikov haunts the Hay Market in shabby clothes, too proud to work, too poor to eat, feverishly rehearsing a theory that divides humanity into ordinary and extraordinary. His contempt for the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanov
- [Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/sofya_semyonovna_marmeladova.md): Sonia lives in a corner room with a yellowed paper and a candle, supporting the Marmeladov family through a trade she endures in silence and shame. When her father is trampled in the street and Katerina Ivanovna collapse
- [Dmitri Prokofych Razumikhin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/dmitri_prokofych_razumikhin.md): Razumihin is poor but buoyant, translating German articles for kopecks and throwing parties on credit, the kind of man who makes friends in a tavern and keeps them through typhus. He nurses Raskolnikov through delirium, 
- [Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/avdotya_romanovna_raskolnikova.md): Dounia arrives in Petersburg prepared to marry the pompous Luzhin not for love but for her brother's future, a sacrifice she makes with open eyes and clenched teeth. She is no passive martyr: she reads people quickly, re
- [Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/arkady_ivanovich_svidrigailov.md): Svidrigailov drifts into Petersburg with money, leisure, and a story about his wife's death that no one quite believes, and immediately begins circling Dounia. He is courteous, generous, and utterly unnerving — he speaks
- [Porfiry Petrovich](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/porfiry_petrovich.md): Porfiry Petrovich receives Raskolnikov in a cluttered office, jokes about government quarters, and lets his visitor talk himself into corners while never quite making an accusation. He has read Raskolnikov's article on e
- [Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/pyotr_petrovich_luzhin.md): Luzhin has clawed his way up from insignificance and now measures his worth by the money he has amassed, brooding in solitude over his own reflection. He offers marriage to Dounia as though it were a heroic rescue, genui
- [Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/pulcheria_alexandrovna_raskolnikova.md): Pulcheria Alexandrovna has pinched and saved for years, staking everything on Rodion's brilliance and on Dounia's advantageous marriage to Luzhin. She grows more timid the longer she keeps silent, loving her children so 
- [Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/katerina_ivanovna_marmeladova.md): Katerina Ivanovna was raised among officers and fine manners, and she cannot forgive the world for reducing her to a squalid Petersburg room with three small children. Her fury at any slight, especially Luzhin's insinuat
- [Lizaveta Ivanovna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/lizaveta_ivanovna.md): The pawnbroker's meek, simple-minded, and kind-hearted half-sister, who becomes an unintended victim of Raskolnikov's crime.
- [Zossimov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/zossimov.md): A young, self-assured doctor who attends to Raskolnikov during his illness. He is a friend of Razumikhin.
- [Andrey Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/andrey_semyonovich_lebezyatnikov.md): A naive and fervent follower of nihilist and utopian socialist ideas. He lives in the same building as Luzhin and Sonia.
- [Alexander Grigorievich Zamyotov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/alexander_grigorievich_zamyotov.md): A clerk at the police station who is suspicious of Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov engages him in a provocative conversation about the murder.
- [Nastasya](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/nastasya.md): The kind-hearted and talkative servant of Raskolnikov's landlady, who helps care for him during his illness.
- [Amalia Ivanovna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/amalia_ivanovna.md): The German landlady of the Marmeladovs, with whom Katerina Ivanovna frequently quarrels.
- [Marfa Petrovna Svidrigailova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters/marfa_petrovna_svidrigailova.md): Svidrigailov's deceased wife, whose wealth he controlled. Her ghost is said to haunt him, and her treatment of Dounia is a subject of scandal.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/crime_and_punishment/characters