Summer

Summer is established at the novel’s opening as more than a date on the calendar: its heat and airlessness press upon Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov as he leaves his cramped garret, and its long evening light is set against the darkness of a poor household’s staircase. The season links the city’s physical discomfort to the strained atmosphere of the scenes that follow.

The Opening Evening in Saint Petersburg

The action begins on an exceptionally hot evening early in July. Raskolnikov comes out of a garret beneath the roof of a five-storied house and walks slowly toward K. bridge. The room is scarcely more than a cupboard, and his departure is marked by his having avoided the landlady, whose kitchen lies on the route out of the building. Summer thus frames an already constricted existence before the young man reaches the street.

Outside, heat combines with airlessness, bustle, plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust. The familiar summer stench of Saint Petersburg, the nearby pothouses, and the drunken men repeatedly encountered on a working day further trouble Raskolnikov’s nerves. The scene makes the season tangible through accumulated irritations rather than scenic beauty: the city’s heat and congestion act upon a young man already overwrought, and disgust briefly shows on his face.

Evening Light and Interior Darkness

Summer also shapes the timing of Raskolnikov’s arrival at the Marmeladov household. At nearly eleven o’clock, the narrative notes that Saint Petersburg has no real night in summer, yet the staircase grows progressively darker as he and Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov climb to the fourth storey. Seasonal lingering light does not dispel the darkness of the building’s interior.

At the top, a candle-end reveals a poor, disordered room, crowded with rags and children’s garments and furnished with only two chairs, a hole-ridden sofa, and an old kitchen table. The contrast between the summer evening outside and the dim room within makes darkness a condition of the household’s setting, not simply a feature of the hour. In these opening scenes, Summer supplies both the oppressive atmosphere of the street and the lingering twilight against which the family’s poverty is disclosed.