Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Underground Man

I. Soeren Kierkegaard, a famous theologian of the 19th Century, wrote Fear and Trembling in 1843 in response to Hegelianism. Kierkegaard takes on the pseudonymous role of Jonannes de Silentio and speaks on modern peoples' attitudes toward doubt and faith. He believes humans are creatures entrenched in reason and doubt but not in the same sense as Descartes, a French mathematician, scientist and philosopher. Descartes doubted everything he had ever learned; his way of thinking is called hyperbolic or Cartesian doubt. According to his philosophy, within the world of ideas there is clearance sale; everybody has a shop

The battle between society and man, the social creature, would be a definition of social alienation. As a result of the wounds casted upon a man from society, that man begins to alienate himself and retreat. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in “Notes from Underground,” shows us the Underground Man who, after expecting the world to work like it does in literature, finds himself being isolated for the last twenty years of his life. Ralph Ellison, in “Invisible Man,” shows us an Invisible Man who, in the beginning has social hopes and aspirations, eventually becomes completely alienated on. While Dostoyevsky and Ellison show us somebody alienated from society in different eras and environment, they differ on why one becomes alienated.

He also is a dynamic person. He changes from believing that the people in the

This pushes him to an extreme emotional limit because it represents that his entire life had been a lie and his former noble existence was all false. His desperate attempt to free himself from the world and from knowledge expresses a universal idea that humans are still unknowing and insignificant when compared to the greater spectrum of life. This relates to the theme because it shows that even though the search and curiosity of knowledge is natural, transgressing the limits can be dangerous because sometimes knowledge can be too much of a burden for humankind to handle, however inevitable, necessary, and inescapable it may be.

Sacrificed the truth, beauty and the right to think, happiness and comfort is just indulgent, it is the discomfort brought by the misery, responsibility and the bonding give us the weight of life. The world is full of people who try hard to gain happiness, and we all have at least one time the idea of living in a perfect world, a world without pain, without misery, without getting old and without cancers. We always ignored the importance and the beauty of uncomfortableness, just as a quote in this book said, “Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand”. After read this book, I started to be more objective at those bad things I used to hate, to understand the significance of art and to be grateful to this imperfect world we are

For examples he desires of father's love since his father abandoned them when he was born because of this he felt the need of love. He states: " I remember I used to be like that little boy, holding tightly on to anybody who showed me even the tiniest bit of love. I haven't been like that in a long time"(99). Also when he says "I'm happy for the first time in my life"(65). Zits also carried on his interior a desire of revenge. In which he states: "I feel the anger building inside of me. I feel the need for revenge"(76). He also mentioned "Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle"(77). This psychological patter made him feel without identity. He states: "You are not real"(35). He also said "There aren't any half-breed pale beige green-eyed Indians

feeling of being isolated where he lived in a world where everyone was like him.

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright is full of symbols. The story is that of a man who after being accused of a murder starts living in underground sewers, in an attempt to escape the law. There are several themes in the story, however, underground life is a powerful major theme in it that has several meanings and implications in the context of the story. Underground can be seen as a potent symbol meaning an escape from the social institution and its bondage, as a relief from inequality and racial divisions, as solitude and self-discovery and many more similar things. Underground is also the stage for the most of the drama that takes place as a part of the story. However, underground also appears as a symbol of repulsion and revolt. Overall, the writer has used the symbol of underground to expose the corruption and chaos in the society in a brilliant manner.

Would you want to be thrown out of a window? In the novel, Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky talks about a scene where the underground man wanted to be thrown out of a tavern window after seeing another man get tossed out of it. The social control theory does a good job at explaining the underground man’s need to fit in with society. Do you want to be constantly in debt that you never have money and are a burden to your friends? The strain theory explains really well the scene in the book where the underground man does not get invited to the going away party and does not have the money to pay for it. Both of the theories had interesting histories and more than one theorist has had some input on both.

, and one of the things that he abhors was the way in which progressive thinkers of his era worship reason. This was amusing because at the same time, he does not entirely reject reason. From analyzing the text, it is apparent that the Underground Man values reason, but he also sees it as incomplete and an underestimation of the power of free will.

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.

So it is the HOW which is important to Kierkegaard, not the WHAT. The strongest example of his reasons for this comes in his

To better illustrate and understand the perspective of our present age as to that of Kierkegaard’s, we must first examine what Kierkegaard meant by these four phenomena which he claimed plagued his society in 1840’s Copenhagen. We will start by

Upon establishing his character as a writer, Kierkegaard divulges into what he calls his “Thought Project” as is found in part one of “Philosophical Fragments. In this section he starts by contemplating if indeed truth can be learned, and bases a lot of his understanding and philosophical thought on the influences of socratic idealizations. Based upon this thought process, it is established “that all learning and seeking are but recollecting. Thus the ignorant person merely needs to be reminded...” (A.6-7 IV 180). Kierkegaard then further expounds upon the processes of learning in order to establish a foundation for his “Thought Process” pertaining to the teacher and the follower.

To be truly human we must experience the anxiety of freedom and in this we are able to live authentically. To live in freedom necessitates that we are living with anxiety and to be truly human means being free. But it can also be a very negative thing, the weight of the responsibility of freedom is the most big burden one can bear and it has the potential to drive us as human into the emptiness of respire. It is so clear from Kierkegaard’s analysis that when we are at the very bottom of the negative accepts of anxiety that we must find rest in God. When we are weary from bearing the weight of freedom, when we are terrified of living before an eternal Changeless one then may we find rest in God. It is here also that we might see the absolute human blessing of