Crime and Punishment is a novel of damnation and redemption, and was written in 1866 by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It features Raskolnikov , a young man struck by extreme poverty in Russia. After many months of turmoil, mental and physical, he had begun to grow a hatred for the local pawn shop lady, and one night after drinking, drunkenly murdered both her and her sister in their home, With stolen goods, guilt, an axe, and extreme terror. What follows after is his perilous and harrowing journey to appear in a world full of people watching, and his paranoia is eventually his undoing. This quote features the bank teller, someone suspicious of Raskolnikov and his fainting spell after hearing about the murder becoming a public case. Zosimov (the bank teller) had coincidentally become good friends with Razumikhin, Raskolinkov’s good friend and who was taking care of him, and been invited over to visit against Raskolnikov’s knowledge. It also talks about Raskolnikov’s upset over his linen getting changed, because he worried inside that traces of blood from the murder would be found on it.
‘ I’ve been to your place twice today, brother . . . You see? He’s woken up!’
‘I see, I see; well, so what are we feeling like now, eh?’ Zosimov said as he turned to Raskolnikov, peering at him fixedly and coming to sit at his feet on the sofa, where he immediately sprawled into a lounging position, as far as was possible.
‘Oh, he’s in a constant fit of spleen,’ Razumikhin went on, ‘We changed his linen just now, and he practically burst into tears.’
This shows Razumikhin, Raskolnikov’s good friend fretting over his “sick” friend, and Zosimov’s comfortability and leisure, unknowingly causing Raskolnikov’s heart rate to spike and give him a panic attack. This is important to the rest of the novel because it it the start of Raskolnikov’s spiral into anxiety and paranoia, and how he descends from sane to mad.
That’s it.