A DEFENSE OF INDIVIDUALISM Based On

Foydor Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s Novel: Notes From The UNderground Essay, Research Paper

Fyodor Dostoevsky & # 8217 ; s novel, NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, has held many labels, such as being a instance history of nuerosis or a specimen of modern calamity. The most popular label it has obtained nevertheless, is being the writer & # 8217 ; s defence of individuality.

The novel is writen as a public presentation, portion three, portion memoir, by a unidentified personage who claims to be composing for hiomself but systematically maipulates the reader & # 8211 ; of whom he is morbidly cognizant & # 8211 ; to the point where at that place seems to be no opinion the reader can do which has non already been made by the author himself.

The belowground adult male is represenative as a merchandise of individaul pathology or a biographical accident. He is “ one of the characters of our recent yesteryear, ” portion of a coevals that is populating out its yearss among us. Internal eveidence makes it clear that his coevals is of the 1840s. He shows the destiny of the stray petit larceny clerk and Dostoevkian dreamer twenty old ages after, appraising his otiose life in the new religious clime of the 1860s and at the same clip happening justification for his ain grotesque being in the simplistic positions of the human nature now current.

IN the first portion of the novel, the belowground adult male describes himself and his positions, and efforts, as it were, to clear up the grounds why he appeared and is bound in our thick. The reference of his ego and his positions raise thequestion of how the two are related. Are we to understand his positions as the merchandise of his otiose life or independently? There are besides the same positions that are bound in the paradox. He dismisses the “ Torahs of nature ” and willfully denies that twice two is four. The common sense even today with his positions & # 8211 ; but it underlies most of the art we think of as “ modern ” :

“ And why are you so frimly,

so solemnly convinced that

merely the normal and the

positive & # 8211 ; in short, merely

well-being & # 8211 ; is to adult male & # 8217 ; s

advantage? & # 8230 ; Afterall, adult male

may be fond of merely good

being. And adult male is sometimes

highly fond

of enduring

excessively. And here there is no

demand to confer with universe

history ; inquire yourself, if

you & # 8217 ; re a adult male and have lived

at all. As for my personal

sentiment, it & # 8217 ; s even somehow

indecent to love merely good

being. ”

Now don & # 8217 ; t confound this thought with sufering. Here he is merely touching on a pursuit in which pleasance is of no usage & # 8211 ; it is the quest for self-government and self-affirmation.

Underground, the adult male seeks truth, puting “ genuineness ” above goodness or felicity as he reopens the inquiry of what it means to be human. This is what he seeks the reply to in unsafe and abhorrent parts.

Paradox is used as contradiction in the belowground adult male & # 8217 ; s “ confession ” , fired by passion with generalisations that seem apt, every bit good as, hyperbolic. He cravs isolation, yet thirsts for human contact. He rejects that “ Torahs of nature, ” yet explains his inactiveness has their inevitable merchandise. He seeks the reader & # 8217 ; s understanding, yet he does wholly he can to prevent it. He suffers and proclaims pleasance in it.

“ Reason histories for twenty-second of human idea, ” he declares. Now, take for illustration, his often-cited statements about freedom and individualism. He makes an outstanding instance against societal utopias as denying “ the most of import thing & # 8211 ; our personality, our individualism. ” And how is the latter expressed? As self-generated desire, even impulse: ” One & # 8217 ; s ain free, untrammeles desires, one & # 8217 ; s own caprice & # 8217 ; no affair how extravagent, one & # 8217 ; s ain illusion, be it wrought up at times to the point of lunacy & # 8211 ; all of this is exactly the most advantageous of advantages which is omitted, which fits into no categorization, and which is invariably strike harding all the systems and theories to hell. ”

He speaks of wnting to populate “ in order to saticfy my whole capacity for life, and non merely my concluding capacity entirely. ” And he seculates that endeavoring may be more of import to adult male than accomplishing, the journey more of import than reaching at the end. Yet, how has he lived? For what has he striven?