Character guide

Crime and Punishment characters

Name: Crime and Punishment
Author: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Who's who in Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: meet the 15 main characters, see how they connect, and open a detailed profile for each.

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15 illustrated profiles

Meet the cast

Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov

Also known as Raskolnikov, Rodya, Rodka, Rodion Romanovitch

A destitute former law student in Petersburg who murders an old pawnbroker to test his theory that extraordinary men may transgress moral law, then is consumed by guilt and dread.

As drawn: A young man, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim and well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair and a refined face; at the story's outset gaunt and haggard, dressed in rags so tattered a respectable man would be ashamed to be seen in them.

Bonds:DmitriClose friends AvdotyaSiblings PulcheriaMother-son ZossimovDoctor and patient

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Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov

Also known as Sonia, Sonetchka, Sofya Semyonovna

Marmeladov's meek, devout daughter, driven onto the streets with a yellow ticket to support her destitute family, who becomes Raskolnikov's redeemer and follows him to Siberia.

As drawn: A small, thin girl, very young and almost childlike, with a gentle soft little voice, fair hair, and a pale, thin little face; modest and refined in manner, poorly and plainly dressed with a shabby old-fashioned hat and a parasol.

Bonds:KaterinaStepfamily AvdotyaFirst meeting AndreyBook lender DmitriNew acquaintances

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Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikov

Also known as Dounia, Dounetchka, Avdotya Romanovna

Raskolnikov's proud, strong-willed sister, who nearly sacrifices herself in marriage to the calculating Luzhin to help her brother and resists Svidrigailov's obsession.

As drawn: Remarkably good-looking and really beautiful; tall, strikingly well-proportioned, strong and self-reliant in every gesture yet graceful, with dark brown hair a little lighter than her brother's and a face resembling his.

Bonds:DmitriNew acquaintances RodionSiblings PulcheriaMother-daughter PyotrEngaged couple

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Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov

Also known as Pulcheria Alexandrovna

Raskolnikov's devoted, anxious mother, whose long letter and arrival in Petersburg deepen his torment, and who slowly succumbs to grief over her son.

As drawn: A woman of forty-three whose face still retained clear traces of her former beauty and who looked much younger than her age, with serene, warm, sincere features.

Bonds:AvdotyaMother-daughter DmitriGrateful acquaintances RodionMother-son PyotrProspective in-laws

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Dmitri Prokofitch Razumihin

Also known as Razumihin, Dmitri Prokofitch, Vrazumihin

Raskolnikov's loyal, warm-hearted university comrade, poor but resourceful, who nurses him through his illness, defends the family, and falls in love with Dounia.

As drawn: Of striking appearance: tall and thin, black-haired and always badly shaved; an exceptionally good-humoured, candid youth, robust and boisterous, careless of his shabby dress.

Bonds:AvdotyaNew acquaintances RodionClose friends PulcheriaGrateful acquaintances ZossimovFriends

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Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov

Also known as Marmeladov, Semyon Zaharovitch

A ruined, drink-sodden titular counsellor and Sonia's father, who pours out his self-lacerating confession to Raskolnikov in a tavern and later dies run over by a carriage.

As drawn: A man over fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height and stoutly built; his face bloated from continual drinking, of a yellow, even greenish tinge, with swollen eyelids from which keen little reddish eyes gleamed like chinks; wearing an old, hopelessly ragged black dress coat.

Bonds:KaterinaMarried couple SofyaFather and daughter

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Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov

Also known as Katerina Ivanovna

Marmeladov's consumptive, proud second wife and Sonia's stepmother, an officer's educated daughter reduced to squalor, who unravels into feverish madness after her husband's death.

As drawn: A terribly wasted, consumptive woman of about thirty, tall and slim with once-fine chestnut hair, parched lips, and hectic flush spots on her cheeks; her feverishly glittering eyes fixed in a harsh, immovable stare.

Bonds:SofyaStepfamily AndreyHousemates RodionFamily friends SemyonMarried couple

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Alyona Ivanovna

Also known as Alyona Ivanovna

The mean, wealthy old pawnbroker whom Raskolnikov murders with an axe, the object of his theory that killing a worthless louse could serve a greater good.

As drawn: A diminutive, withered-up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose; her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair thickly smeared with oil and left uncovered, and a thin long neck like a hen's leg.

Bonds:LizavetaSisters

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Lizaveta Ivanovna

Also known as Lizaveta

Alyona's downtrodden, gentle half-sister, a peddler enslaved by the pawnbroker, who walks in on the murder scene and is killed by Raskolnikov as well.

As drawn: A single woman of about thirty-five, tall, clumsy, timid and submissive to the point of seeming almost idiotic; perpetually cowed and fearful.

Bonds:AlyonaSisters KaterinaSeller and customer

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Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov

Also known as Svidrigaïlov, Arkady Ivanovitch

The depraved, enigmatic landowner in whose house Dounia was a governess, who pursues her obsessively, is haunted by his dead wife, and ends in suicide.

As drawn: A well-preserved man of about fifty with a strange, mask-like face, white and red with bright red lips, a flaxen beard and still-thick flaxen hair, and eyes somehow too blue with a heavy, fixed expression; handsome yet unpleasant, looking young for his age, smartly dressed in light summer clothes with a huge jewelled ring.

Bonds:RodionNew acquaintances PyotrIn-law connection DmitriBrief encounter SofyaFinancial benefactor

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Porfiry Petrovitch

Also known as Porfiry Petrovitch, Porfiry

The shrewd examining magistrate and head of the Investigation Department who, without hard proof, psychologically corners Raskolnikov and coaxes him toward confession.

As drawn: A man of about five and thirty, short and stout even to corpulence, clean-shaven with hair cut short over a large round head prominent at the back; his soft, round, rather snub-nosed face of a sickly dark-yellow colour, with a vigorous, ironical expression.

Bonds:DmitriDistant relatives

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Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin

Also known as Luzhin, Pyotr Petrovitch

A self-made, vain court councillor engaged to Dounia, who means to keep her grateful and dependent, and who spitefully frames Sonia after being rejected.

As drawn: A gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly appearance with a cautious and sour countenance; forty-five, of fairly prepossessing looks, fashionably and immaculately dressed, morbidly self-admiring.

Bonds:AvdotyaEngaged couple DmitriHeated adversaries PulcheriaProspective in-laws AndreyHousemates

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Zossimov

Also known as Zossimov

The complacent young doctor and friend of Razumihin who attends the feverish Raskolnikov and takes a clinical interest in his mental state.

As drawn: A tall, fat man of twenty-seven with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair; wearing spectacles and a big gold ring, dressed in a fashionable loose light-grey coat with irreproachable linen and a massive watch-chain.

Bonds:DmitriFriends RodionDoctor and patient

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Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov

Also known as Lebeziatnikov, Andrey Semyonovitch

Luzhin's young progressive roommate, a muddled proponent of radical utilitarian ideas, whose honesty exposes Luzhin's plot to frame Sonia.

As drawn: An anaemic, scrofulous little man of small stature, with strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he is very proud; a clerk who almost always has something wrong with his ailing eyes.

Bonds:KaterinaHousemates SofyaBook lender PyotrHousemates

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Nastasya

Also known as Nastasya

The cook and only servant at Raskolnikov's lodging house, good-natured and gossipy, who brings him food and tends him during his delirium.

As drawn: A country cook and maidservant, homely and slovenly, given to lounging about; warm-hearted and talkative in a rough peasant way.

Bonds:DmitriNew acquaintances RodionHousehold acquaintances AvdotyaInformant and listener PulcheriaInformant and listener

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How the cast of Crime and Punishment connects

Drawn from who shares scenes with whom in the original text. Each bond is labeled from the pair's first scene together, so the map stays spoiler-light.

A drawn page from the comic edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A drawn page from the comic edition of Romeo and Juliet

A drawn page from the comic edition of Pride and Prejudice

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The story these characters live in

Crime and Punishment is a psychological novel set amid the heat, poverty, bustle, and squalor of nineteenth-century Petersburg. Its central figure, Raskolnikov, is an impoverished former student living in a cramped garret, isolated from others and prey to exhaustion, anxiety, and feverish self-questioning. As he moves through crowded streets toward a troubling personal errand, ordinary details, a debt to his landlady, a conspicuous hat, a flight of stairs, take on extraordinary weight. The book combines the pressure of a detective and mystery story with an intense examination of crime, conscience, fear, and the mind’s attempts to justify its actions.

Dostoyevsky writes with close psychological focus, shifting between vivid urban observation, inward monologue, nervous hesitation, and sharply drawn encounters. The prose has the urgency and density of a nineteenth-century Russian novel, while its attention to poverty, social isolation, moral responsibility, and spiritual unease gives the narrative a grave, volatile atmosphere. It will appeal to readers who enjoy character-driven mysteries, psychological fiction, richly evoked city settings, and stories more interested in the workings of a troubled mind than in crime as a puzzle alone.