There's a scene early on after Raskolnikov commits the murder where in his delirium he starts to remember his father and being a child. A bunch of men are drinking, one's insanely drunk and starts rambling that they'll go somewhere and his horse will take them all. The thing is she's an old mare. Like REALLY old, it's implied she's past 20 years old. So anyways the owner said she'll take them, and he starts whipping her furiously and excessively to force her to move the cart, but she's to old and the cart has to many people. So in a fit of rage and drunken stupor, he invites people to start beating her. They cut her eyes, hit her with a crowbar until she dies.
I think this scene had really bad impact on raskalnikov as he saw some strong people beating & killing a horse which is weaker than them and this really caused him believing in 'extraordinary people' theory that he explains to the detective porfery. Now if you think this external environmental thing that he had no control over and it eventually with series of other external things like no friends and having the only friend ruzukhin whom he treated like shit most of the time, these all things become the building blocks of his believes that lead to the murder of the pawn broker woman, i don't understand whether all this had to have happened with him like it was written or it's just his believes that made him do it and felt guilty after doing that.
There is another thing that reminds me of this scene and the hard nut to crack for religion that is 'animal suffering' i mean why did god even create that horse to be beaten like that and die and he must have known already that this is how he would die and if god isn't feeling pity on the horse surely he would place raskalnikov there to feel the sadness instead of him. This creates two perspectives of god according to me, either he is so cruel and stone hearted that he cannot feel pity on whatever he does to humans/animals he is mercilessly cruel or the other perspective is that he is too weak to feel the guilt but can be cruel at the same time like he has the power to get the horse killed and he does so cuz he is cruel and he created humans to have pity on those whome he get killed cuz he is too afraid to feel guilty for them directly.
by KK–2001