The Underground Man Essay

Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a psychologically charged novel in which the primary element that plagues the protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, is not a person but rather an idea; his own idea. Raskolnikov has an unhealthy obsession with rendering himself into what he perceives as the ideal, supreme human being, an übermensch. Raskolnikov forms for himself a theory in which he will live purely according to his own will and transcend the social norms and moralities that dominate society. Raskolnikov suggests that acts commonly regarded as immoral are to be reserved for a certain rank of “extraordinary” men. Raskolnikov’s faith

On the morning of September 11, 2001 millions of people were in shock the moment they received news that the World Trade Center was hit. The images from this horrific day flooded the media’s television screens and newspaper articles. Perhaps the most gruesome images shown were those of people jumping out of the building as they were collapsing. Tom Junod, a writer for the Esquire magazine, illustrates his perspective of this shocking incident through pictures, media coverage, and depicting people’s reactions in his article The Falling Man. Tom Junod’s article should be read by anyone who believes they have felt all there is to feel from the 9/11 attack. He will prove otherwise that there is indeed still much emotion to

One word that has come to represent the mid-18th century Enlightenment movement is “Reason”. The French philosophes believed that reason could provide critical, informed, scientific solutions to social issues and problems, and essentially improve the human condition. Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is one of the most famous anti-Enlightenment novels for its rejection of these very notions. Through this novel he showed what he believed were gaps in the idea that the mind could be freed from ignorance through the application of reason, and the rejection of the idea that humankind could achieve a utopian existence as a result.

The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells, is composed of many small themes that combined to form two major themes in the novel. Some of the minor themes are acting before thinking and denial of unexplainable events. It is based on the two major themes of science experiments gone wrong and the ignorance of society.

separate him from the common protesting man of his time. He had gone against the odds of

In Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the Underground Man proposes a radically different conception of free action from that of Kant. While Kant thinks that an agent is not acting freely unless he acts for some reason, the Underground Man seems to take the opposite stance: the only way to be truly autonomous is to reject this notion of freedom, and to affirm one's right to act for no reason. I will argue that the Underground Man's notion of freedom builds on Kant's, in that it requires self-consciousness in decision-making. But he breaks from Kant when he makes the claim that acting for a reason is not enough, and only provides an illusion of freedom. When faced with the two options of

Underground railroads were a network of secret routes and safe houses used during the 19th century slaves from African descent that were in the United States, and wanted escape to the free states and Canada. The safe houses located on these routes were run by abolitionists and people that were sympathetic towards slaves. The Underground Railroad reached its height during the 1850s and 1860s. It’s difficult to determine how many people actually traveled the routes and made it to freedom, but it is estimated that somewhere around 100,000 slaves journeyed along these paths. It is unfortunate however, that not many people of this 100,000 made it to freedom. There were just around 5,000 recorded cases of runaway slaves, and only about 1,000 a year made it to safety during the peak of this time. The lives of many slaves were horrendous during the early America’s, so many of them sought refuge in the Underground Railroad where they dealt with even dirtier, more dangerous conditions. However, this helped thousands of slaves successfully reach freedom and helped create one of the biggest slave movements of the 1800s.

By first bringing to light the misconceptions he saw many of his students poses, Godbeer can is able refute these points and show us the true reasoning behind their actions. Furthermore, he creates a far more realistic and relatable picture of seventeenth century New England. This primes the reader to become sympathetic towards the struggles that they faced and how the New Englanders coped with understanding certain phenomena. This picture is further reinforced with the detailed example of Katherine Branch. By demonstrating the near scientific scrutiny and skepticism that many New Englanders had, Godbeer shows that these were not irrational people in the very least. When thinking of the past, as Godbeer shows, many people attempt to understand their actions by applying a modern understanding of the world. However, in the majority of cases the environmental, social and cultural contexts were far more different. This naturally percolates over into how these people perceived their reality. By contrasting past occurrences with modern situations Godbeer enables the reader to understand how similar we are to the individuals of the past. Finally, he shows that skepticism and legal scrutiny are near immutable traits withing human society whether they are large or

tragic hero”. he is neither good nor evil, but rather a man whose concept of

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.

    The quest for power is an endless one for humanity.  Countless tales of greed, strife, and triumph stem from this common ambition.  Similarly, men universally seek freedom, a privilege entitling an individual to make independent decisions and express personal opinion.  Exploration of the connection between these two abstract concepts remains a topic of interest, especially in the works of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground.  Two distinct definitions of "power" exist: one deals with societally defined power, generally represented by wealth, leadership, and authority over the lives of others.  The other defines a

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.

From declaring he wanted to become a Napoleon to wishing for financial independence to murdering for his own sake, he rattles off various motives, showing his obsessive rationalization (394-397). By presenting his conflicting intentions, Dostoevsky exhibits the chaos within Raskolnikov’s mind.

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).

Firstly, the book presents the underground man as an enlightened individual based on his ability to shrink away from societal norms. His self ostracization from his community allows him to overanalyze his every thought and actions. This enables him to form his opinion about free will. During his time, an emphasis is placed upon science and reason. As a symbol of this progress within society, the crystal palace was then given meaning of the ideal utopia. A place where civilization and mankind can accomplish anything once it has found all the laws of nature that influence human behaviour. The underground man argues, “What sort of will of one’s own can there be if it comes to tables and arithmetic, and the only thing going is two times two is