Suicide, Anyone?

Towards the end of Crime and Punishment, Svid visits Sonya and gives her a 3,000 ruble bond. He then visits his fiancée's family and gives them 15,000 rubles, which is about $519 according to today's exchange rate. Svid then goes to a hotel where he has a dream that he finds a five-year-old girl in the corner of the hotel. He then has a dream that rain is flooding St. Petersburg. Just before dawn, Svid awakes and goes outside with Dunya's revolver - which he took after she shot and wounded him with it. Svid tells the soldier that is keeping watch to tell anyone that asks, that he has gone to America. Then Svid puts the gun to his head and kills himself. But why? Was it because he was tired of trying to convince himself that his wife loved him even though she didn't? Or was it because of the dreams he had of the little girl and the flood? Or was he just trying to take the "easy" way out?

I really think that Svid was trying to take the easy way out. He was obviously planning on ending his life when he started giving his money away, so I do not think the dreams had a drastic effect on his decision to kill himself. They may have prompted him to do it sooner, but his death was not a direct result of the dreams. And he may have been tired of trying to convince himself that his wife loved him, but I do not think that he would kill himself over that. I mean, he must know that there are plenty of other women out there that could love him. The fact that neither his wife nor his sex buddies loved him could have been a low blow to his ego, and I think they are contributing factors to his suicide, but I do not think they are the main reason. Which brings me to why I think he was trying to take the easy way out. Svid sees that Dunya will never love him and that he is only causing her pain. He kills himself to remove Dunya's source of pain, which is compassionate on his part, but it is the easy way of handling this problem. There are a number of solutions to this problem, all of which would require time and patience; therefore, he took the easy way out because all he had to do was pull the trigger and everything was over. Suicide is never the best solution to anything, even if it does make your problems disappear, because it just creates more problems for everyone else.