Notes from the Underground is a novel written by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In this E-book, Dostoyevsky showed his ideas through the words of his fictional character named the Underground Man. The first sense the reader gets from the novel is confusion. We are presented a nameless man who is sick, spiteful and unattractive who hates society. The Underground Man strikes the readers as a person with a lot of detestation and resent towards intellectual people of his era. This was amusing because at the same time, he does not reject reason. From investigating the text, it is apparent that the Underground Man values reason, but he also sees it as incomplete and an irony of the power of free will. The underground man is a spiteful …show more content…
He goes after her and Liza disappears. The Underground Man is a real asshole who loves to over think stuff. He had the opportunity of coming into touch with love, but being unable to escape from his own ego, he let Liza go. I believe the Underground Man does not suffer physically but instead suffers mentally and emotionally. The underground man feels alienated by his peers and isolated from society that he feels no person can never accept him. Since, in his view, he can never be accepted he retreats to an underground world of self- isolation. He believes that neither he nor society has the ability to change. Since he does not accept the possibility that he may change he will remain forever in the “underground” world he believes he is in. I believe that Dostoyevsky's character is mentally ill of some sort. He complains of a detachment to life and alienation from other people. He is suffering, but is unwilling to give Valdez 3 up and is also helpless in terms of feeling better. He says,” Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent
He did not choose to have this way of life, but is forced by his
While he was separated from society, the threat of
Frequently, the public debate over the those problems which occur in poverty-ridden urban environments is presented as if the inhabitants were copies of Dostoevsky's underground man who differed mainly in that they frequently had less education and more pigment in their skin. That is to say, although there are valid comparisons that can be drawn between the Underground Man and the inhabitants of west Baltimore who are so vividly depicted in The Corner, there are also important differences that make any claim of strict equality between a Russian intellectual from the nineteenth century and a 20th-century tout or slinger an absurd caricature. Moreover, the intent of portraying inner-city residents as Underground Men and Women is, frequently, to blame these people for all of their own problems, something t...
bitter old man who is unwilling to talk about the things that made him the way he is.
... until he does complete his quest of individuation, he shall never be nor feel whole.
It is a given that our culture will vary differently than of one that dwells in the tunnel. In prehistoric time, the underground was seen as a place of safety, much like it is seen today for the mole people. Throughout literature, the underground man, as Toth explains, is extreme, withdrawn and isolated. He is self exiled from human society and only maintains as much contacted as needed to survive. He believes in nothing and is often filled with rage and anguish (177). Many of the tunnel dwellers share many of the same practices and use of material objects key to their survival like eating rodents, using loose electrical wires for electricity, finding water through leaky pipes and cardboard and garbage for building a home. They all share the same knowledge and ideas of how live in the tunnels. They evolve by the changes in their environment and learn how to change to better protect themselves from predators like outsiders or from the dangers of trains. They have norms like we do but what they considered to be a norm, is what we may see as a folkway. Some may even develop their own language so others in their group can understand them. The nature of this counterculture and its formation shows that our society has the ability to create various countercultures that can either show how we excel or fail as a society. However it does show that if we were to
First, Dostoevsky gives the reader the character, Raskolnokov. He is the main character, whom Fyodor uses to show two sides of people their admirable side and their disgusting side. He loves Raskolnokov, which is why Fyodor uses Raskolnokov’s point of view throughout the whole novel. Personally, Fyodor dislikes some of his qualities but understands that all people are plagued with some bad traits, and that Raskolnokv is trying to make emends for some of his wrong doings, i.e. the murder of the pawnbroker and her sister. He knows that what he did was wrong and is willing to suffer for his crime, and he does throughout the whole book with his constant depression. Dostoesky believes in punishment for your crimes, this is why he shows Raskolnokov suffering through most of the novel, to show his great love for penance. Dostoevsky likes the kind giving nature of people; this is why he portrays the main character as a kind, gentle, and giving, person. Often, Raskolnokov thinks only of others benefits such as when he helped Katerina by giving her all his money for Marmelodov, as well as his caring about what happens to his sister with her marriage to Luzhin. Raskolnokov hates Luzhin’s arrogant and pompous attitude, which reflects Dostoevsky’s animosity of the same qualities in people in the real world.
but he eventually realizes that he is in an environment where he can open up.
The community he belongs to is a community where everything is based on sameness and avoiding painful situations. This avoidance comes at the cost of freedom, individual differences and extreme environmental controls. There is no color, no weather changes and no hills in this world. To pr...
conformant to society that he cannot figure out what to do with himself. In all of the
insight to a male figure who shows signs of withdrawal from society and from a healthy state of
think he will escape his fate , when there isn’t and actual chance to survive.
following his religon. As he gets older he endures much pressure to follow the exact teachings of
To put it briefly, the Underground Man is the sole reason that he himself cannot be free despite is overwhelming desire. His obsessive behavior will not permit him to lead a normal life and he will forever be a prisoner of his own mind. The only reason that any other people have a hand in this imprisonment is because the Underground Man allows them to. Even when writing his “Notes” the Underground Man cannot help but to become consumed with scribbling down every little bit that he can, to the point that his “notes” must be cut short by an outside source.
apart, a lonely and isolated figure, out of touch with his own age and without