Did Raskolnikov Repent?

Raskolnikov does realize his sin and in a sense repent, in that he has changed the attitude of his heart and his life's direction so that his sin will no longer haunt him in the future (though the consequences of it will remain with him for a long while).

First of all, as he goes from Sonya's presence to confess to the police, he says of himself, "I am a beggarly, worthless scoundrel, I am a miserable wretch!" (504).

However, he seems to say this more in reference to his behavior toward Sonya, and not to his murder, but it is a step in becoming sensitive to sin and wrongdoing.

Furthermore, when he arrives at the crossroads of the street, he recalls Sonya's instruction to, "Go to the cross-roads; bow down before the people, and kiss the ground, because you are guilty before them, and say aloud to all the world, 'I am a murderer!'" (505).

As a result, Raskolnikov, "so crushed" by his burden, "softened on the instant and the tears gushed out. He fell to the ground where he stood...He knelt in the middle of the square, bowed to the ground, and kissed its filth with pleasure and joy" (505).

If Raskolnikov did not believe himself to be, to some extent, guilty, he would feel no need to demonstrate such an act of humility and, in a sense, penance. Furthermore, if he did not believe himself to be guilty, the act would not have brought about any satisfaction, but rather something akin to disgust.

However, later in the prison in Siberia, Raskolnikov once again relapses into denial of his guilt saying that he had failed, "This was the sole sense in which he acknowledged his crime, that he had not succeeded and that he had confessed" (521).

Nevertheless, "he already felt in his heart that there was something profoundly false in himself and his beliefs. He did not understand that that feeling might have been the herald of...his coming resurrection, of a future new outlook on life" (521).

Whether or not the readers receive an actual confession from Raskolnikov, stating that he acknowledges his sin, the author tells the audience that this is what eventually happens.

Finally, Raskolnikov, ill in the Siberian hospital, dreams a dream of men who are infected with a consuming certainty of their own rightness and rigid belief in his own perception of truth (523-524). This dream has great implications for Raskolnikov, and he deliberates for quite some time over his dream. I believe that at this point in time, he finally recognizes that he was wrong, just as the people in his dream were wrong.

However, his repentance was not completed; he had recognized his wrongdoing, but his life had not come to the point of change. This occurs when he and Sonya reunite after their illnesses, and Raskolnikov "cast[s himself] at her feet. He clasp[s] her knees and [weeps]...But at once, in that instant, she [understands]" (526).

This is the moment when we can know that Raskolnikov has experienced a change of heart and that the direction of his life has changed and that he has repented and turned from his nagging sin.

Therefore, Raskolnikov, although at first unwilling to admit to his moral guilt (as opposed to his legal guilt), gradually acknowledges his own sin and repents of it, a necessary step in the process of redemption.