The Role of the Dream of the Dying Horse in Understanding Raskolnikov’s Psyche
Among several dreams that appear in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s dream about the dying horse seems of great importance; it serves a crucial role in our understanding of Raskolnikov’s psyche and – possibly – of the motive behind his murder. Towards the beginning of the book, Raskolnikov wanders about the streets back home, uncontrollably falling into reveries. He begins to feel a strong inclination to sleep: and so, he “[stops] in complete exhaustion, [leaves] the road, [goes] into the bushes, [collapses] on the grass, and in a moment [falls] asleep” (53). As he descends into a deep sleep – oblivious to all that lies beyond the periphery of his serenity – he enters into an uncanny dream – into another realm of being – that seems more real than reality itself. The dream is more “graphic, vivid, and… lifelike” (54) than his waking life; what has readily been repressed in his waking hours – the unconscious – is now undone and released in his sleep – unraveling into a strange dream in which a horse is whipped to death by its sadistic owner. The strange dream – which precedes the act of murder – serves as a precursor that provides insights into our understanding of Raskolnikov’s psyche and possibly his motive for committing the murder.
Dostoevsky portrays the scene – in the dream – through the eyes of seven-years-old Raskolnikov. The young Raskolnikov, holding onto his father’s hands, walks down the road into the town – where there seems to be some sort of festivity. The passage – mirroring the way father and son navigate through the crowd – winds through the descriptions of the drunken crowd – until it comes upon the “big cart [with] a small, skinny, grayish peasant nag … harnessed [to it]” (55). The eyes of young Raskolnikov rest fixated on the sight of the mare – on the strangeness of its sight. Perhaps, he instinctively senses that something– something strange – is about to happen. Soon enough, Mikolka, the owner of the mare, shouts from the cart for more people to get in and with sadistic rage, starts whipping the mare – with the crowd quickly bursting into laughter. The “little mare starts pulling with all her might, but she can scarcely manage a slow walk, much less a gallop; she just shuffles her feet, grunts, and cowers under the lashes of the whips showering on her like hail” (56). With much of everyone else reveling perversely at this sight – enveloped in the atmosphere of drunkenness – it is just the little mare and little Raskolnikov who are writhing with great pain.
The very first words that Raskolnikov utters at the terror of the situation are: “Papa, papa… papa, what are they doing? Papa, they’re beating the poor horse” (56). Raskolnikov, in utter confusion, instinctively calls onto his papa – over whose shoulder, literally and figuratively he witnesses society and what to him seem its idiosyncrasies. The young Raskolnikov turns to his papa, who he hopes will help him make sense of the bewildering sight lying in front of them – and possibly, restore the peaceful order that has already shattered into pieces – that are re-turning to hurt himself – with the quick blows of whipping. Crying out with much agony, the little Raskolnikov hopes – though the hollowness of the hope seems to echo each time he calls out, “papa” – that the stronger, more sensible, more mature version of his own self – his papa – will reconcile the disparities between what he sees and feels; what he feels and what others seem to feel; what he feels and what he ought to feel; and what happens in the world and what he once imagined happens in the world. The muddled cry of a little boy echoes into space as an innocent question, mixed with a tint of guilt in making the accusation: papa, with all of what is happening, “what are [you] doing?” (56).
But what come back from his father, in response to his desperate pleas, are the following words: “‘Come along, come along! … They’re drunk, they’re playing pranks, the fools – come along, don’t look!” (56). It’s as if the father responds each time – hence thrice – to Raskolnikov calling him “papa”, with the demand to come along and away with him from the scene. The father, who serves as a – primary – gateway into the society for little Raskolnikov, demands that Raskolnikov turns his eyes away from it. Or more precisely, he wishes that Raskolnikov not look at the margins of the society, where lies things that are beyond the father’s capacity for reconciliation – of those disparities in our society that produce much anxiety. The father, hence, probably trying to explain to his seven years old child a reality that is as harmless as it can be put – before the truth has to be spilled – but to prolong that moment as much as he can – discounts the mass as being “drunk”, “playing pranks”, and being “fools”. His rhetoric shows his desire to rationalize, reduce, and excuse the behaviors of these men – that they are under the effect of an inebriating substance that debilitates their rational mind, hence acting without a sense of complete agency – that they are playing naughty pranks, and hence temporarily behaving in deviance from their usual conduct – that they are fools, with weaker faculty for rational thought, and hence oblivious to what they are really doing. With these justifications, the father seems ultimately trying to push away those things that they witness from their view – to the very margins of sight, thought, and society, past what one chooses is necessary in navigating this world one resides in. In this process, he chooses to exclude from his view not just the victims but also the victimizers – or as for that matter, the victimized and victimizing parts of our souls – as anomalies that lie beyond faculties of rationality – beyond what is necessary for Raskolnikov to understand.
But Raskolnikov in defiance to his father “tears himself from his father’s hand and, beside himself, runs to the horse” (56). Again, “a woman takes him by the hand and tries to lead him away…[but] he breaks free and runs back to the horse” (57). Furthermore, he yet again, despite all forces that should hold him back – parental, societal elements or the ultimate death of the mare – he “tears through the crowd to the gray horse, throws his arms around her dead, bleeding muzzle, and kisses it, kisses her eyes and mouth” (58). Rather than turning his eyes from the sight of great suffering – unjustly imposed upon the mare – Raskolnikov chooses to tear himself apart from and through the crowd if that is the only way in which he can arrive at the mare. Such behavior of a seven-years-old boy – who is yet too young to have been acting out of a sense of morality – seems to have been a natural response – akin to a visceral or animal instinct – in reaction to the event. In fact, Dostoevsky chooses to characterize the victim as a mare, rather than a human being; the choice may indicate if not emphasize that Raskolnikov’s siding with the victim – empathy with its suffering – was prompted by emotion more so than reason, by virtue that is visceral more so than moral.
Nevertheless, the nobility of young Raskolnikov’s act merely concludes with nihility. Raskolnikov, arriving too late, cries out with his arms around the dead mare. In retributive spirit, he “jumps up and in a frenzy flies at Mikolka, [the torturer,] with his little fists” (58); but “[a]t this moment his father, who has been chasing after him all the while, finally seizes him and carries him out of the crowd” (59). Raskolnikov fearlessly tears through the crowd only to arrive at the dead mare – for whom he has come a little too late – and yet to confront the torturer who stands so high and above – possibly, beyond his reach. His “frenzy flies” and “little fists” only serve to highlight his helplessness – literally his incapacity to provide any help in the given situation – in the face of the torturer who stands so high and beyond his reach. Even before his little fists quite stretch out, little Raskolnikov is snatched away by his father who pulls him away out of the crowd. If there initially has been any sense of noble courage in his actions – though reckless – though larger than what a seven-years-old may behold – all of it merely disappears with what is portrayed to be a pitiful exit – only to leave behind a trail of cries that fade into reverberating woe.
Waking up from the dream, the young Raskolnikov has now turned into an adult. In fact the dream was so real, and the transition into reality so dreamlike, it’s almost as if young Raskolnikov has woken up to discover himself as now turned into an adult. In fact, Dostoevsky portrays the move from dream to reality as following:
“He throws his arms around his father, but there is such strain, such strain in his chest. He tries to take a breath, to cry out, and wakes up.
He woke up panting, all in sweat, his hair damp with sweat, and started up in terror.
‘Thank God it was only a dream!’ he said, leaning back against a tree and drawing a deep breath. ‘But what’s wrong? Am I coming down with a fever? Such a hideous dream!’
His whole body was as if broken; his soul was dark and troubled” (59).
The dream – with its forceful intensity – evidently overflows into reality. The young Raskolnikov “take[s] a breath, to cry out, and wakes up” into the grown-up Raskolnikov who in reality wakes up – yet, again. Raskolnikov, in reality, feels his whole body broken, his soul dark and troubled, as if he had undergone in his sleep the experience of his dreams – with his body and soul as those of young Raskolnikov would have undergone. The dream – like a whirlpool – swirls up from what lingers in the vortex – the unconscious – onto the surface. That of which has remained deep under in the unconscious rises up into consciousness, into waking life, to take over Raskolnikov’s body and soul. After a moment, Raskolnikov exclaims, “‘God! … but can it be, can it be that I will really take an axe and hit her on the head and smash her skull, slip in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal, and tremble, and hide, all covered with blood… with the axe… Lord, can it be?’” (59). Why is it that Raskolnikov suddenly bursts into an outlandish question – the source of which is inexplicable, unless we attribute its source to the dream? In fact, the dream unleashes a thought that emerges and re-emerges in Raskolnikov’s consciousness as an emotion, an effect, an inquiry that torments his body and soul – that takes the form of an idea of committing the murder.
May it be that Alyona Ivanova, the old crone who Raskolnikov desires to kill is in anyway parallel to Mikolka, the torturer in the dream? Raskolnikov, while eavesdropping on a conversation, affirms his conviction of murdering Alyona Ivanova, justifying that he will “[k]ill her and take her money, so that afterwards with its help [he] can devote [him]self to the service of all mankind and the common cause” (65). He reasons that by killing the old crone, who does evil to the society, the victims – the mares – would be saved – that “thousands of good deeds [will] make up for one tiny little crime” (65). Raskolnikov, or the seven-years old Raskolnikov in the dream, wishes to take vengeance on the torturer – let it be, Mikolka, or Ivanova – to save the mare(s) from suffering injustice. Unlike the father who has let him down by turning away from the scene, the grown-up Raskolnikov will confront the situation: he will put an end to the cries of young Raskolnikov that return in his dream to haunt him, overflowing into his waking consciousness. And hence, Raskolnikov, waking up from his terrifying dream, comes upon to consider the notion of striking down the axe on the woman who infiltrates injustice in society, supposedly in defense of the victims of the society. Indeed, that is how he rationalizes his murder; yet, he realizes throughout the book that he may have willed the opposite of what he willed. And in his final revelatory dream, he finally comes to understand that by punishing the torturer, he himself had reinforced the mechanism of torture by becoming the more powerful torturer – that no unjust means can be vindicated for the ends of achieving greater justice. Or else, he witnesses in the final dream, a war of chaos will erupt with “[p]eople [killing] each other in some sort of meaningless spite” (547) and “they [will] not know whom or how to judge, [will] not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good (547). And ultimately, no one would be saved, and everyone will perish. In place of the rhetoric of condemnation is the notion of love suggested as an alternative. Raskolnikov and Sonya are “resurrected by love, the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other” (549).
The dream of the dying horse serves a crucial role in our understanding of Raskolnikov’s psyche. A dream that seems more real than reality itself reveals much more in brevity than what we might possibly learn while Raskolnikov in the small nook of his apartment – with its resemblance to his claustrophobic mind – thinks of for days. It serves as a central hub that connects to the web of other events – including the final dream – unifying the book with a stream of unconsciousness that flows throughout it. The strange dream hence serves great importance in Crime and Punishment providing insights into our understanding of Raskolnikov’s psyche and his motive for committing the murder.
EduContents 