Irrational Underground Man
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document in english
literature
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published 05/10/2007
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Summary“I am a sick man” are the opening words to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from Underground. For the narrator, the Underground Man is both figuratively and literally sick – his liver hurts but he will not receive treatment from doctors. Indeed, only a ‘sick man’ would choose to let his liver rot. Yet there is a strange philosophy embedded within the Underground Man’s words: through irrationality, spitefulness and arbitrariness he will pronounce his existence. His purpose for existence is his freewill.
Table of Contents
- After these words, the Underground Man goes into a sometimes funny and ironic and other times serious and sardonic tirade about how and why he has been living in the Underground for forty years.
- There are numerous ways of interpreting Notes from Underground.
- It is difficult to tell whether the Underground Man is joking or being serious.
- If the Underground Man were to choose against his best interest, one would think that it would affect him unpleasantly.
- As we have seen the Underground Man's entire purpose of existence is his right to choose.
- The Underground Man then alludes to Napoleon I and Napoleon III who led numerous battles, as well as, at the present time in the novella, the Civil War in the United States and the conflict between Prussia and Denmark.
- There are certain metaphors the Underground Man uses to describe Determinism.
- As we have seen the Underground Man's entire purpose of existence is his right to choose.
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