Crime and Punishment

Raskolnikov pawns his father's watch with the moneylender Alyona Ivanovna while secretly studying her flat and her keys, clearly scouting something he hasn't yet admitted to himself. Afterward he meets the ruined clerk Marmeladov in a tavern, hears the full wretched story of his family's poverty and his daughter Sonia's sacrifice, and walks him home to a chaotic scene with his dying wife and starving children — leaving Raskolnikov more entangled in the desperation around him and no closer to resolving the "plan" he keeps denying.

Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother revealing his sister Dounia's ordeal with Svidrigailov and her sudden engagement to the ambitious, self-interested Luzhin, meant partly to secure Rodya's future; he rages privately, convinced Dounia is sacrificing herself for him, and resolves to stop the marriage despite having no means to do so. Wandering afterward, he impulsively helps a drunk, endangered young girl, then cynically withdraws his help, revealing the same cold logic he condemns in Luzhin, before the chapter closes on his drift toward his estranged friend Razumihin and the ominous return of an unnamed, maturing private idea.

Raskolnikov wanders in a feverish daze, dreams of witnessing a horse beaten to death in his childhood, and wakes swearing he could never commit murder — but minutes later overhears that the pawnbroker's sister will be away the next evening, leaving the old woman alone. He spends the next day mechanically preparing a hidden noose for an axe and a fake pledge, improvises when his plan nearly fails, and ends the chapter standing at the pawnbroker's door, having just rung the bell, as someone unfastens the latch inside.