Crime and Punishment Chapter 4 Summary

Summary

In Rodion Raskolnikov’s room Zossimov, the physician, visits and inspects him while Razumikhin chatters and fusses about Rodya’s condition and plans to take him out the next day. Zossimov evaluates Raskolnikov’s pulse and prescribes rest and mild food; Razumikhin tries to keep the mood light and invites Zossimov to a house-warming. Nastasya Petrovna stands by the door and unexpectedly blurts out that Lizaveta Ivanovna has been murdered, which stirs Raskolnikov.

The conversation turns to the police investigation of the murders of Alyona Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta. Razumikhin relates the case in detail: a journeyman painter, Nikolay Dementyev, is arrested after Dushkin the dram-shop keeper brings in a jewel-case containing ear-rings; Nikolay’s behavior, a failed suicide attempt, and contradictory testimony make him the chief suspect. Razumikhin and Zossimov argue over whether the painter’s confused explanations and the circumstantial evidence prove his guilt. Razumikhin defends the painter, stressing witness accounts of Nikolay and another painter (Dmitri) play-fighting and laughing in the street soon after the murders—behavior that seems incompatible with committing a brutal double murder moments earlier. He suggests a third person must have been in the flat and dropped the ear-rings, while Zossimov sees the physical evidence and the confession as weighty. The chapter closes with the arrival of a new, unnamed visitor who interrupts their debate.

Key events

1. Zossimov examines Raskolnikov and prescribes rest and careful diet.
2. Razumikhin discusses taking Raskolnikov out and invites Zossimov to a party.
3. Nastasya Petrovna announces that Lizaveta Ivanovna was murdered.
4. Razumikhin recounts the police case blaming the journeyman painter Nikolay Dementyev.
5. Dushkin’s story about finding the jewel-case and Nikolay’s flight and attempted hanging is told.
6. Razumikhin argues witness testimony that Nikolay and Dmitri were playing in the street undermines the painter’s guilt.
7. A stranger enters as the debate about guilt and evidence heightens.

Analysis

This chapter shifts the novel’s focus from Raskolnikov’s interior illness to the public, social world of Petersburg — specifically the legal and moral investigation into the pawnbroker’s murder. The scene functions to contrast two modes of judgment: medical/empirical (Zossimov), which privileges observable facts, and Razumikhin’s psychological and moral reading, which emphasizes character and plausibility. That debate echoes larger novel themes: the tension between abstract reasoning and lived human reality, and the instability of evidence when human behavior is unpredictable. The description of witnesses who see the two painters ‘‘like children’’ laughing after the murders offers striking irony and foreshadows questions about appearances versus culpability. Raskolnikov’s sudden, visceral reaction when the ear-rings are described—staring at a flower on the papered wall, feeling limbs like dead weights—suggests his psyche is profoundly affected by talk of the crime; the narration keeps his inner disturbance ambiguous rather than explicit. Dostoevsky uses dialogue-heavy, almost forensic exposition to map social networks around crime (drunkards, pawnbrokers, porters), establishing a procedural texture that will return later. The chapter’s narrative technique — a confined sickroom conversation that widens into a community-wide legal drama — scaffolds the novel’s intertwining of private conscience and public accusation.

Important quotes

“He felt his arms and legs as lifeless as though they had been cut off.”

NarratorDescribes Raskolnikov’s physical and emotional reaction when Lizaveta’s name and the ear-rings are mentioned.

“‘We have facts,’ they say. But facts are not everything—at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!”

Dmitri Prokofych RazumikhinRazumikhin argues that psychological interpretation matters as much as physical facts in solving the murder.

“They were sworn at on all sides while they ‘like children’ (the very words of the witnesses) were falling over one another, squealing, fighting and laughing with the funniest faces...”

NarratorRazumikhin recounts witness testimony that Nikolay and Dmitri were play-fighting after the murders, used to challenge the painter’s guilt.

Characters in Chapter 4

• Dmitri Prokofych Razumikhin
• Nastasya Petrovna
• Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov
• Zossimov
• Alyona Ivanovna
• Lizaveta Ivanovna
• Dushkin
• Nikolay Dementyev
• Koch
• Pestryakov
• Porfiry Petrovich
• Kryukov
• Afanasy Pavlovitch
• porter
• porter’s wife
• woman in the porter’s lodge
• Kolomensky men