Fyodor Dostoevsky's Arguments Against Conformity

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Dostoevsky’s beliefs and philosophies are reflections of the Russian philosophies from his era. He incorporates many of his own opinions and beliefs into his work in Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky’s insight affects the novel as he integrates his views into his characters.

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The novel ‘Notes From the Underground’, written by philosopher Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is a narration of ideology and life experience written by a male character who calls himself the underground man. The underground man’s ideology is a personalized application of Kierkegaard’s existentialist theory to his life. It is my belief that the underground creates this ideology after learning of his imminent death from liver disease in order to prove to himself that his life was successful and

Dostoevsky uses the Underground Man to portray the effects of communism. The Underground Man is a genius, but he fully embraces the atheistic and hopeless ideas that are presented by Marxism. Dostoevsky uses the Underground Man’s embracement of these ideas to show that the only way a thinking person can embrace communism is if he is a nihilist. He also illustrates the effects of embracing communism by the Underground Man’s insanity. Throughout the book, the Underground Man becomes increasingly more and more out of his

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To further the understanding of the reader, the author takes us back into the Underground Man’s past to show how there was no singular cause of his present isolation rather he has been this way for many years. During the beginning of the realism period of writing, Notes from Underground was considered to be first of its kind. Dostoevsky used his own experiences and the political situation that occurred during that time to bring out the very real character like the Underground Man.

Notes from the underground, is a book about a man who is both physically and mentally confused, unhappy, and lonely. He is a retired government worker who lives in St. Petersburg whose life is consumed with criticizing everything. If the reader is not careful, this book can cause perplexity, because as you read the story you start to contemplate how someone can behave and think as negative as the “unknown man.” Appolon is a worker who resides in the unknown man’s house whom he does not like, but refuses to fire. The narrator’s actions and attitude towards his servant, Appolon, are similar to the story of the man who thinks of himself as a mouse because the unknown man believes human lives like a mouse has no meaning, when challenged or in despair retreat is the best option, and both species routine are the same even if it is not beneficial to either.

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He calls this place “The Realm of the Forms.” The forms in this ‘world’ are ideas that are universal meaning they are independent of the mind thinking it. They are “perfect” conceptual objects. These views of reality are shown in his work called “The Allegory of the Cave” and these views also pose as a metaphor for today’s uneducated.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel, Notes from the Underground Man, uses the idea of a modern dystopia by depicting a story that revolves around a distressed older man. Throughout the novel, the main character has a narcissistic belief that he is better than everyone else because of his acute sense of consciousness. His awareness however, also causes him to believe not only are people ignorant to the world around him but that they are also against him. In contrast, critics believe that the main character, the underground man, actually suffers from psychological disorders that causes him to reason this way. Psychological disorders are defined as a wide range of conditions that can affect mood, behavior and thinking, and based on his conduct in the novel, the underground man presents himself as an individual who is subjected to obsessive compulsive behavior, social repression and paranoia.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground (1864/2008) comes across as a diary penned by a self-described “spiteful” and “unattractive” anonymous narrator (p. 7). The narrator’s own self-loathing characterized by self-alienation is so obvious, that he is often referred to by critics as the Underground Man (Frank 1961, p. 1). Yet this Underground Man is the central character of Dostoyevsky’s novel and represents a subversion of the typical courageous hero. In this regard, the Underground man is an anti-hero, since as a protagonist he not only challenges the typical literary version of a hero, but also challenges conventional thinking (Brombert 1999, p. 1).

In this paper, I plan to explain Dostoevsky’s criticism of Western Individualism. Dostoevsky’s first criticism resides in the idea to “love life more than the meaning of it, “which is presented by the character Alyosha (Dostoevsky 3). Allowing this character to discuss this topic, along with the commentary of Ivan, demonstrates their mindset to solely focus on their own lives, opposed to caring for others. This leads to them living for the now, and not focusing on how their decisions will affect their future or others. Dostoevsky disapproves of this notion because living by this mentality encourages the guidance of logic, which is dangerous because it could tell you to kill yourself. From Dostoevsky’s Eastern Orthodox background, he believes that the only way from living from this situation is to deny it. By denying this way of living, the focus toward life will not be directed toward yourself, but toward the way you can impact the environment around you. Ivan clearly does not believe in these values, due to his intentions to commit suicide at the age of thirty. As said before, living by the idea to “love life more than the meaning of it” leads to death, and Ivan indulges in this to the fullest (Dostoevsky 3).

“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.” –The Grand Inquisitor” “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” - Father Zosima. These two quotes voice the polarized philosophies that impregnate the book, The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan, the second of the three sons, and Zosima, the old monk, are huge commentators on the question, “Is the burden of free will to much for a human to bear?”