Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, has held many labels, such as being a case history of nuerosis or a specimen of modern tragedy. The most popular label it has obtained however, is being the author's defense of individualism.
The novel is written
as a performance, part triad, part memoir, by a nameless personage who claims to be writing for hiomself but consistently maipulates the reader--of whom he is morbidly aware-- to the point where there seems to be no judgement the reader can make which has not already been made by the writer himself.
The underground man is represenative as a product of individaul pathology or a biographical accident. He is "one of the characters of our recent past," part of a generation that is living out its days among us. Internal eveidence makes it clear that his generation is of the 1840s. He shows the fate of the isolated petty clerk and Dostoevkian dreamer twenty years after, surveying his wasted life in the new......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 802
Approximate Pages: 4 (260 words per double-spaced page) |