When Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, its setting, Saint Petersburg, was the capital of Russia and the country’s administrative and cultural center. However, the city presented in the novel is not one of lavish households and important buildings. Instead, Dostoevsky focuses on its dark, filthy underbelly, filled with petty criminals, prostitutes, and alcoholics caught in cycles of degradation and reflecting the filthy morality of the world.

Raskolnikov navigates the city without thinking. He takes long, aimless walks, because his poverty prevents him from being anywhere comfortable—those places tend to cost money. The chaotic, cluttered streets he sees echo the chaotic, cluttered thoughts that plague his mind. Raskolnikov—a young, intelligent student from the provinces—is driven close to insanity by his miserable city life. Saint Petersburg becomes a physical representation of his suffering.

Raskolnikov’s Saint Petersburg is filled with prejudice, inequality, and poverty. Confused, anxious figures stumble through the streets unable to make sense of their environment. Saint Petersburg is never the right temperature, never smells right, has constant deafening and terrifying noises, and generally seems inhospitable to human life—so much so that one of the few passers-by Raskolnikov notices during his perambulations is a woman trying to commit suicide.