A review by sidharthvardhan
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

5.0

"I swear to you gentleman, that to be overly conscious is a disease , a real, thorough sickness.

Ninteenth century world probably didn't much know about relaxation techniques like meditation or yoga. Like all other FD's major characters, the narrator here could have found the use of such technique. His problem is that he is too conscious, thinks too much of what goes around him (the opposite of absent-mindedness). What do you and I think when one finds an apple lying around:

"oh! here is an apple. It looks good. I may eat it if I get hungry."

Now, what will the narrator of these notes will think:

"Oh! here is an apple. It is red in color. It was probably grown somewhere in some farm. It looks good. I may eat it ... but what if it is bad? what if it is poisioned? what if somebody is trying to kill me? But may be I'm overreacting. May be it is not poisonous .... but why is it staring at me, I swear it is staring at me, I should throw this out" *throws it out*

This overthinking atitude is quite good when he is writing ancedotes - in fact those ancedotes in the begining are incredible. The book has THE best begining I have ever come across. In one place in first few chapters, for exmaple, he tells you why Huxley's Brave New World or a utopia based on rationalism (Zamyatin's We) won't satisfy people:

As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for well-being either.

Still the problem comes with the social contact. The apple example was an exaggeration to extent that apple was not a human being. First half is full of author's beautiful ramblings but it is when goes out in society we see his real problem. He thinks too much while around people, keeps collecting bad thoughts while forgetting good ones.

Man only lives to count his troubles, he doesn't calculate his happiness.

This thus makes him paranoid believing that all the world is watching and judging him.

"I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody."

Thus he is quick to get excited and to be willing to take meaningless fights.

Spoiler

Even if he is not pranoid like in the climax, the anticipation of being in society for a long time is enough to make him go mad.

Thus he ends up living alone in the underground. His frustration in not being able to part of society makes him spiteful.

I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last--into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that.

The circle ends with him all alone once again which proves that loneliness is self-reproducing.

FD felt a need to point out through an author's note in the begining of the book that though this person is all imagination there do exist such persons in real life. This is how ahead of his times he was - I don't think anybody else could have noticed, leave alone graph so brilliantly, such a personality type. Incredible.