My Take - Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Which is better, a cheap happiness or lofty suffering? Tell me then, which is better?”

The characteristic trait of Dostoyevsky novels is that they portray the ‘real man of Russian majority’ and lay bare his ugly and tragic existence. Notes from Underground is a brilliant novel as it not only brings forth the absurd and tragic life of the tormented protagonist but also takes the reader inside his brain to experience first-hand the turmoil within. The novel is divided into two parts. In the first section the protagonist expounds his absurd, contorted, paradoxical ideas, while in the second section he writes about one of the most harrowed experiences of his life in a confessional mode.

Dostoyevsky effortlessly gets within the skin of his unnamed protagonist and lets him speak for himself. The protagonist who feels isolated from the ‘normal’ society lashes out at the absurdity and hypocrisy of the accepted social conventions. Though he expresses his ideas in a muddled and incoherent fashion and more often than not makes a fool of himself, yet his ideas pose serious challenge to the self-assurance of the ‘normal’ society. Dostoyevsky empowers the tormented, absurd, isolated man whom the society shuns and despises to tell his own story. This novel is followed by Crime and Punishment and one can see the reflections of the torment and isolation of the underground man in Raskolnikov.

Life shows no mercy for some, She overwhelms and torments them while the society ridicules them. Dostoyevsky in his novels gives space to such despised dregs of society and thereby endows them the opportunity of being understood, at least for once. The underground man is indeed an unfeeling, despicable creature, yet the reader does not hate him rather s/he is saddened by his torment. It is very easy to empathise or perhaps feel sorry for the wronged, innocent and ‘fallen’ characters but it takes immense skill on the part of an author to elicit empathy from the readers for a character like the underground man. And this is where the greatness of Dostoyevsky lies.

I will end my review with one of my favourite lines from the novel:

“After all, perhaps prosperity isn’t the only thing that pleases mankind, perhaps he is just as attracted to suffering. Perhaps suffering is just as good for him as prosperity. Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering – that is a fact.”

My rating - 5 ⭐