“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” is Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov’s passing reflection on the human capacity to accommodate hardship. Spoken inwardly as he walks away after leaving money for a destitute family, the line sounds like a verdict on people’s endurance; the thought that follows unsettles that verdict, making the expression a moment of moral ambivalence rather than a settled maxim.

Wording and Immediate Context

Raskolnikov has put the coppers he received in exchange for his rouble on the family’s window as he leaves. On the stairs, he considers going back for the money, but decides that he cannot retrieve it now and would not have taken it back in any case. The gift is therefore both a practical act of aid and the occasion for a conflict that continues after he has left.

Walking along the street, he reflects on the family’s dependence on the money and imagines that its prospects may change again by the next day. He also thinks of Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova’s need for pomatum, linking the cost of appearances to the family’s precarious circumstances. His thoughts mix concern, resentment about having given away money he wants himself, and mockery of the household’s situation.

Irony and Reversal

The phrase’s blunt generalization—“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”—turns adaptation into an accusation. In the scene just left behind, hardship is visible in the family’s distress; Raskolnikov’s remark suggests that what people endure can become familiar, without becoming less painful or more just. Its condemnation falls on human nature broadly, not only on the family he has visited.

But Raskolnikov does not leave the thought unchallenged. Almost immediately, he wonders whether he is wrong to call mankind scoundrels and whether the barriers he imagines are merely artificial terrors. The swift move from denunciation to doubt makes the line unstable: it expresses his harsh judgment, while its immediate reconsideration exposes his uncertainty about that judgment.

Narrative Significance

The expression joins material hardship to Raskolnikov’s changing thoughts about human nature. His donation does not end his private argument; instead, the act of giving prompts him to scrutinize the people who endure deprivation and himself for judging them. The passage therefore gives the saying a double edge: it recognizes the persistence of suffering while questioning the contempt with which that persistence is explained.