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A review by erickibler4
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4.0
Another entertainingly exasperating character from Dostoevsky. The unnamed narrator, in the first part, imparts his nihilistic philosophy to the “reader”, but then he reveals he doesn’t intend for his manuscript to be read at all. He’s writing it merely to crystallize his own thoughts. He argues in favor of free will, going against the growing orthodoxy of his time, which indicates that all human behavior is governed by circumstances and can be predicted. In opposition to this, he lives in a way contrary to society, and against his own “profit”, for the mere pleasure of being a person who decides for himself. In this way, he argues, he still profits even through suffering, for the reason that he preserves his own independence.
In the second part, he flashes back to an earlier time, when he invited himself to a dinner party attended by several old classmates (who all despise him) for the purpose of showing his contempt toward them for thinking they’re better than him. He humiliates himself and ends up at a brothel where he meets a young prostitute and speaks to her about escaping the life she’s gotten herself into, and says he can visit her at his apartment. When she does so, he behaves rudely toward her (as we now come to expect of him).
The thing about his contrariness is that sometimes his thoughts are contrary even to his contrariness. He vacillates back and forth and is always dissatisfied with any tone or action he takes. A chaotic individual.
Dostoevsky wrote this before Crime and Punishment, but you can see Raskolnikov foreshadowed in this unnamed narrator. He manages to get to the heart of the psychological complexity of most people, who, unlike the characters in books by his contemporaries, aren’t “all one thing”, but are constantly jumping between extremes in their minds, if not so dramatically in their behavior.
In the second part, he flashes back to an earlier time, when he invited himself to a dinner party attended by several old classmates (who all despise him) for the purpose of showing his contempt toward them for thinking they’re better than him. He humiliates himself and ends up at a brothel where he meets a young prostitute and speaks to her about escaping the life she’s gotten herself into, and says he can visit her at his apartment. When she does so, he behaves rudely toward her (as we now come to expect of him).
The thing about his contrariness is that sometimes his thoughts are contrary even to his contrariness. He vacillates back and forth and is always dissatisfied with any tone or action he takes. A chaotic individual.
Dostoevsky wrote this before Crime and Punishment, but you can see Raskolnikov foreshadowed in this unnamed narrator. He manages to get to the heart of the psychological complexity of most people, who, unlike the characters in books by his contemporaries, aren’t “all one thing”, but are constantly jumping between extremes in their minds, if not so dramatically in their behavior.