“What are you to do?” She cried… “Go at once, stand at the cross-roads, bow down… and say to all the men aloud ‘I am a murderer’. Then God will send you life again”. Sonia’s character, especially towards the end of the novel, acts as an opposing force to what Raskolnikov wants to do and what the reader would expect him to do. Instead of simply agreeing with what he believes, like some “friends” would do, Sonia demonstrates her “true friendship” by opposing Raskolnikov’s thoughts in favor of a more rational and, in her eyes, moral option. Her willingness to risk their relationship to do what is right makes her the perfect example of plate 20 in Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, stating that only “Opposition is True Friendship”. Like Sonia did, Blake means to say that only the friend that would risk the friendship to point your life in the right direction can be considered a “True Friend”.
A symbolic poem for the feminist movement, Diving Into The Wreck conveys the struggles of women across the world as each part in the narrator’s journey, very similarly to the journey of Porfiry as he attempts to convict Raskolnikov of the murder. The way the narrator recognizes the ladder as an escape route that is always there is very similar to the way Porfiry uses the fact that he never actually accuses Raskolnikov of the murder as a way of not fully committing to the consequences of a wrong accusement. Like the narrator never needs to use it, Porfiry realizes that Raskolnikov is in fact the murderer, but still cannot or will not bring him to trial with the lack of evidence he has.
When she finishes her dive, she reflects that she carries a book of myths in which our names do not appear. This reflects that fact that Porfiry does not actually have to investigate the myth of the murder, because it did not involve him in any way. However, because he decides to continue with the investigation, he enters himself in the book of myths, which is what the narrator is really trying to do by exploring the wreck (past history of women).
“[Raskolnikov] was positively going now for a “rehearsal” of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more violent”. Part one of the novel sees Raskolnikov slowly try to explain his trifles, and eventually to narrate his actions. This very closely relates to the plot of Cask of Amontillado, where Montresor also tries to explain why he had to kill Fortunato, but also to give a first person perspective on the murder and his thought process as he did it.
Even the way that the authors use the steps of the narrator to demonstrate their decent into insanity, where Raskolnikov walks to the house and Montresor walks with Fortunato through the tunnel, are very similar, as Montresor also remarks as they go that the do not have much further the entire way down. In part two, the guilt from Raskolnikov’s actions really begins to build upon him. He begins to have dreams of the murder, where he acts out his actions again and again, always seeming to get more “ill” as he goes. This slow but evident decline to guilt reminds me of the way Soto in The Pie portrays himself as at first enjoying himself as the rush of the pie and excitement hits him, but when his mother calls for him, he feels “sticky with guilt”.
