Night of Fyodor Pavlovich’s murder

Night of Fyodor Pavlovich’s murder is the night when Dmitri’s attempt to reach his father’s house ends in violence against Grigory and a flight toward Mokroe. Its significance rests on a sharp divide between what Dmitri believes he has done and what the reader knows: he leaves fearing that he has killed Grigory, while the actual murder of Fyodor Pavlovich was committed by Smerdyakov. The sequence turns suspicion into pursuit and carries Dmitri away from the house toward the events that will bring him under arrest.

Background and Immediate Stakes

Dmitri reaches a point of mounting agitation in the garden, where his repulsion becomes, in his own words afterward, unendurable. He pulls the brass pestle from his pocket. At that moment, Grigory wakes from his sickbed. Earlier that evening, he had undergone the treatment Smerdyakov had described to Ivan, a detail that places Grigory’s sudden return to activity alongside the murder plot’s concealed preparations.

Grigory sees that his master’s window is open and wonders why it should be open when it is not summer. As he looks into the garden, he glimpses a rapidly moving figure in the dark, some forty paces away. The open window and the shadowy movement give him reason to pursue the figure, though what he sees is incomplete: he follows the person toward the fence and recognizes him only when he catches hold of his leg as he climbs over.

At the Garden Fence

Grigory cries out, identifying Dmitri as a parricide, then falls. Dmitri jumps back into the garden and bends over him. The brass pestle is in his hands, but he throws it away almost mechanically; it lands conspicuously on the path, two paces from Grigory, rather than disappearing into the grass. The object’s placement becomes a concrete trace of the encounter, linking Dmitri to the violence even as the scene leaves him uncertain about its result.

Dmitri pulls himself together long enough to realize that, if Grigory’s skull has been broken, he cannot now learn what happened at the house. He then gives up trying to resolve the question. He says aloud that if he has killed the old man, then he has killed him, and leaves Grigory lying where he fell. This response does not establish Grigory’s death; it records Dmitri’s fear and his decision to flee without confirming the outcome.

Flight and Misunderstanding

Dmitri vaults over the fence into the lane and runs. He holds a blood-soaked handkerchief crushed in his right fist and thrusts it into the back pocket of his coat as he goes. The rapid concealment of the handkerchief and his hurried departure make the night’s events look like flight from a killing, while his own words show that he is acting under uncertainty rather than with knowledge of Grigory’s condition.

That uncertainty belongs to the wider tragedy of the night. Dmitri’s actions, the pestle, and the bloodied handkerchief furnish grounds for suspicion, but they do not make him the murderer of his father. Smerdyakov’s murder of Fyodor Pavlovich remains the concealed truth behind the accusation that will attach itself to Dmitri. The difference between visible evidence and actual responsibility drives the case toward a miscarriage of justice.

Departure Toward Mokroe

After the events in the garden, Dmitri speeds along the road to Mokroe with Andrey’s three horses. The journey is a little more than twenty versts, and the horses gallop at a pace that could cover the distance in an hour and a quarter. The motion revives Dmitri as he leaves the scene behind. The night thus shifts from the enclosed garden, where Grigory’s recognition and fall fix suspicion on Dmitri, to the road, where Dmitri’s urgent departure carries the plot toward Mokroe and his eventual arrest.