![]() But then came the pandemic: the students had been sent home, the library was closed (books could still be fetched for faculty, but there was no browsing or schmoozing). ![]() This theory is in connection with Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal.I live in a small college town in central Vermont, where during a normal academic year, the college provides ample opportunities for cultural enrichment: concerts, plays, films, lectures, and so on. One can argue that Dostoyevsky feels that society overthinks many issues and this is why they have no response to many issues. This is what made the reading very frustrating.Īlthough, Dostoyevsky lies constantly throughout the reading, I think there is a bigger message that he is trying to convey to readers. Dostoyevsky admits that he, himself has a hard time believing what he has written: “I swear to you, gentlemen, that I don’t believe one word, not one little word of all that I’ve scribbled” (Dostoyevsky 654). This makes it difficult to understand how the author truly feels he is constantly lying in his writing. For example, in Chapter 1, Dostoyevsky says “I was a nasty official” and later on in the same chapter he says, ” I was lying about myself just now when I said that I was a nasty official” (Dostoyevsky 636). He constantly contradicts himself and would often tell us something about himself, and later on tell us that he was lying. Throughout the reading Dostoyevsky confuses the readers and makes it hard to understand what is true and not true. Great post and I completely agree with you! Dostoyevsky claims that he suffers from being “overly conscious” and calls it a “disease.” This explains why he tends to overthink things and he wouldn’t react to a slap in the face, because his mind would be consumed in trying to justify the slap to the face, that he would not have sought revenge. ![]() Perhaps this skewed personality of his has been successful in keeping him out of trouble and just like the mouse who will retract back into its mouse hole, he will retract back into his underground hideaway. Considering the hyperactive mind of the narrator, however, his reasoning is a bit different because he claims that the only reason he never has this desire to attack the assailant is because his mind goes in circles and he can’t seem to establish a “primary cause”. A person is certainly more intelligent if they have the willpower to step away from a situation rather than demand self-satisfaction through getting revenge. If everyone sets out to impose harm on their attacker, society will likely crumble as a result of our spontaneity and foolish impulses. I do agree with the narrator’s idea about inactivity when placed in this situation as revenge ultimately serves no good purpose. Despite this, he still views action as a sure sign of low intelligence. Ultimately, the both of them will become so consumed by their own doubts and will be left spending their whole lives in humiliation. He feels that his, as well as the mouse’s, level of consciousness is so sophisticated and developed to the point where this is too simple of a plan of action. ![]() However, the author tries to explain this inaction by saying that the mouse was able to realize that there was no primary cause for revenge, since there was no justice in revenge. When a mouse is harmed by an attacker, it is powerless in the sense that anything it does will never amount to the same level of harm. The Underground Man holds himself to high intelligence and explicitly states that he is the opposite of a normal man and classifies himself as a mouse – a wise and hyper-conscious animal. The Underground Man criticizes these “men of action” because they take secondary causes, which in this case is revenge, to be primary ones and create a false notion in their heads that it is enough to justify their actions. Since the normal man immediately renders getting revenge as being the most reasonable response, they will take that course of action. The Underground Man points out a scenario of how a normal person may react when they are slapped in the face. In this section of the reading he often makes comparisons between the normal man and himself – one of which focuses on his opinions about revenge. The narrator of Notes from Underground seems to be a man drowned in his own hyperactive mind and heightened conscious who has reached the point where it has paralyzed his sense of thinking.
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