Notes From Underground by Fydor Dostoyevsky

This is one of the best books I’ve read to date. Its about a man and his failure to connect with the world around him. The novel is split up into two parts. Chronologically the first part happened after the second part so is essentially the underground man reflecting on his past, by a theoretical means. The first part of the book is a philosophy on life and people, and the second part is the manifestation of what he was talking about in the first part.

The underground man is an interesting character because throughout the novel he liberally depreciates himself and celebrates his own misery. He says that he is doomed to be miserable because of his intelligence, because he has the capacity to critically observe the world, and yet because of this very fact he says that he can never be an insect. This reminds me of a quote from Nietzsche ‘even a man who despises himself respects himself as one who despises’. But overall, this over critical approach to living hinders the underground man so that he is quite passive throughout the novel, despite his words, which I suppose could be considered an action of sorts. And it’s because of this passivity that he fails at connecting with others, isolating himself with his thoughts. Now it could be argued that his refusal to act is an expression of his utilizing his freedoms. He acts in a way that is not accepted by society, which is why he is so isolated, but by isolating himself, he is demonstrating that he has the capacity to exercise free thought and action, to not blindly follow the status quo. His outcast status is the ultimate freedom, and yet he’s so miserable, which would tie into the intelligence bit. and all of this would leave him going in circles in his thoughts, making them all sound paradoxical because if he does or doesn’t he’s screwed kind of thing, so he’s passive.

But it’s good. I liked the theory a bit more than the story manifesting the theory, partially because it gets rid of the trappings and gets right down to the concepts, so less digging on my part, though the digging can be fun I’ll admit. I’m in something of a dystopian phase right now and revel in all like material, so this book came to me at a great time. I recommend it to everyone. Its a great read and gives you something to think about.