 In his depiction of Petersburg, Dostoevsky accentuates the squalor and human wretchedness that pass before Raskolnikov's eyes.He uses Raskolnikov's encounter with Marmeladov to contrast the heartlessness of Raskolnikov's convictions with a Christian approach to poverty and wretchedness.Dostoevsky believes that the moral "freedom" propounded by Raskolnikov is a dreadful freedom "that is contained by no values, because it is before values".