‘That’s it, that’s it,’ he repeated to himself.

‘He does everything,’ she whispered quickly, looking down again.”

The conflict is the same throughout most of Dostoevsky’s works. It fascinates him to put side by side the angelic opposite the unholy, the good opposite the loathsome, faith opposite unbelief, the mystical opposite the rational. Usually there is somewhere a hint of a divine and miraculous world that flashes light very dimly towards his characters, a light that never quite reaches most of them, that never becomes a bright flash into their soul that might save them. Sonya is clearly an angel despite her profession and Raskolnikov is clearly a devil supported by the unrelenting power of the mind. They meet in a dark room lit only by a candle. Sonya’s soul is bright with love. Raskolnikov’s soul is a dark abyss and his mind a solid bridge above it.

Then a miracle takes place. Raskolnikov understands with his mind, objectively, that a secret divine presence is within Sonia. He accepts with his mind that God is alive within her protecting her even though he is unable or unwilling to jump across the gap between his mind and his soul, influenced by Sonya, to repent and to be saved. He asks himself, “What held her up – surely not depravity? All that infamy had obviously only touched her mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her heart; he saw that.” He noticed a book on the top of a chest of drawers as he paced up and down the room. He picks it up and sees that it is a copy of the New Testament. She reveals that Lizaveta, the murdered young woman, brought it to her. He asks her to read the story of Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead. She hardly dares to read it to him because she says he does not believe but he insists and she reads. “Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonya could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all that was her own. He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches.” He sees with the eyes of his mind inside Sonya’s soul. He sees miraculously without feeling anything miraculous that a miracle is the source of her life, a hidden source.

She reads the whole story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. In the night, in the dark room lit just by a candle, the murderer watches a saintly young girl reading “distinctly and forcibly as though she were making a public confession of faith”. When she finishes her long reading, the two are silent in the dark room for five minutes. They have known one another since Marmeladov spoke of his daughter to Raskolnikov in the tavern saying passionately that her salvation is certain because she “has loved much” and they have been joined mysteriously since Sonya entered his room suddenly and angelically to invite him to attend her father’s burial and her stepmother’s reception, joined perhaps also when Sonya sent to him her stepsister Polenka with her childish love, and now joined forever because Raskolnikov has uncovered her secret strength, the divine love that lives in her soul, joined forever because now he has seen her faith as she read to him the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from death. But joined as they are they are also separated! It is a kind of miracle in reverse that Dostoevsky has invented. They are joined miraculously but at the same time they are adversaries. Raskolnikov will not move an inch from his imprisonment in his mind and believe. The truth is that he is so locked in the embrace of his mind that he is powerless to move to the other part of his being, the place where in Sonya’s being she lives truly. But Sonya will not move an inch either. She accepts him as the partner of her life forever but never does she accept his condition of unbelief. A silent war goes on between the soul of one and the mind of the other.

Breaking the five minute silence, Raskolnikov confesses to her that he has broken completely with his family. “‘I have only you now,’ he added. ‘Let us go together.…I’ve come to you, we are both accursed, let us go our way together!’”

“‘Go where?’ she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back.” “‘How do I know? I only know it’s the same road, I know that and nothing more. It’s the same goal!’”

They go on talking feverishly back and forth, joined and separated, talking words that come from different centers of being. Sonya has read to him from the New Testament, read as a public confession the words of belief that Martha said to Jesus, words that she read as though they were her own and words that she read as though if Raskolnikov could say them as his own, his heart might open to love and he might believe. She said before him with religious feeling, “Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God which should come into the world.”

But Raskolnikov will not say such words as his own. She asks him after talking much what is to be done.

“What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don’t understand? You’ll understand later…Freedom and power, and above all, power. Over all trembling creation and the antheap!…That’s the goal, remember that! That’s my farewell message.”

He is soon off away into the night after admitting to Sonya that he knows who murdered her friend Lizaveta and that if he comes back the next day, he will tell her who it is. But not for a moment does the idea enter her head that the murderer could be Raskolnikov. She is as extremely good in her thoughts as he is extremely bad in his.

He visits Sonya again at her room with the intention of confessing to her that he is the murderer of Lizaveta, her friend. But he is unable to confess the truth at once and instead tortures her with questions about who is worthy to live and who to die.

“‘You better say straight out what you want!’ Sonya cried in distress. ‘You are leading up to something again…Can you have come simply to torture me?’”

But he is still unable to speak the truth. He is in a kind of delirium. He leads up to the confession but does not confess. Finally he makes her guess the truth. She is shocked but abandoning him is as far from her mind as the awful truth is now solidly established in her mind.

“‘There is no one – no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!’ she cried in a frenzy…” She begins weeping.

“A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it at once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyes and hung on his eyelashes.

‘Then you won’t leave me, Sonya?’ he said, looking at her almost with hope.

‘No, no, never, nowhere!’ cried Sonya. ’I will follow you, I will follow you everywhere…’”

But for a few moments she can not believe he did it and asks him how it could have happened. He in turn has moments when he regrets letting her know the truth. She asks him to explain why he did it and he struggles to give her answers. She has touched his heart and brought tears to his eyes but he still is far from true redemption which is only possible if she can influence him to follow the feelings of his heart and discover the love that exists in his soul.

He goes into a long ramble to explain why he did it. “‘And you don’t suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a wise man and that was just my destruction…I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone!…It wasn’t to help my mother I did the murder…I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right…’