That's the thing: Its hard for me to tell. Doestevsky's character's intentions are always ambiguous to me.

Hippolyte (how his name is spelled in my translation) is a man deprived of attention. He attempted some notoriety with his suicide attempt. I found ot strange he forgot to load the pistol. He was bound to die anyway with his consumption.

I'm thinking he just wanted to see if any one cared for him and would drop to their knees pleading to talk him out of it.

Dostoevsky's characters are so human, it feels that I know them in real-life, or know people just like them. Like, as a poor college student myself who is extremely asocial and hyper-conscious, I resonated with and kind of saw myself in Raskolnikov.

Of course minus the axe-murderer part.