Dostoyevsky's "Notes From The Underground"



After a relatively rough Christmas break, I immediately connected to the insecurities of the main character in Note From the Underground. I loved the anecdote about the narrator and the soldier, and was tickled by the idea that we shape our own world in our minds.

 

The perspective of the main character is exaggerated yet easy to identify with.  Each of us  have within us these niggling doubts which consume him.  But these natural doubts that we struggle with  act as a self-fulfilling prophecy for the narrator as the world that he perceives becomes reality as he alienates the people he interacts with.

 

As we go along, however, this perspective becomes less and less reliable.  The anecdote about the soldier signals to the reader that the narrator's view is limited.  We recognise that the war that he wages exists only in his own mind, and the soldier does not even know that he exists.  The narcissistic delivery of the narrative does not allow us to trust the narrator's perspective.  This sheds doubt on the story he tells of Liza; was she really as caring and empathetic as he details?  I think that she's meant to be, but Dostoyevsky's initial description of the narrator was too effective for me - I wonder if this anecdote was more fantasy than intended.

 

Works Cited:

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes From The Underground. Public Domain: Amazon. Kindle e-book.