Comparing Alyosha And The Underground Man
Just like Christ, Alyosha has also been mostly silent through the duration of Ivan’s poem. And at the very end, unable to respond to Ivan’s criticisms of God, he kisses his brother Ivan on the lips, to which Ivan cries “Literary theft!” (263). However, like Christ’s kiss, this kiss also says it all despite its enigma. This kiss represents love, forgiveness, and the blossoming of a shared humanity between the brothers so deep, so innate, and so craved by all humans that it cannot be expressed with words but only through actions representing unconditional love and compassion for another’s struggles. The kiss tells Ivan that Alyosha recognizes his struggles with religion. The kiss affirms the mystery of faith, the unsatisfactory explanation that
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The Underground Man, as an orphan, has never had a stable loving relationship and that affects his future relationships because he has never experienced the essential human love and so is never able to fully trust anyone with his heart, for fear that it may be damaged. His few acquaintances do not help him, instead mocking him for his strange ways rather than attempting to understand the pain he has endured, which causes him in turn to not show compassion to the suffering of others, particularly Liza, a young prostitute who he narrates her death to. Essentially, through this lack of compassion that exists between the characters of Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky illustrates that what is high and lofty is really compassion, for it was compassion that God showed humans when sacrificing his only son, compassion that Christ preached, and compassion that is so central to faith. Only through selflessly understanding the suffering of others, Dostoevsky argues, can love sprout from the bonds between men, and only then can humans fill the darkness of evil with love, for while we know not why God can not grant everyone a happy existence, we can understand the need for each human to assume certain god-like qualities and bless others with kindness and compassion, with our divine power to love artistically, despite our own pain, to find the profound beauty in loving despite
The Underground Man, as an orphan, has never had a stable loving relationship and that affects his future relationships because he has never experienced the essential human love and so is never able to fully trust anyone with his heart, for fear that it may be damaged. His few acquaintances do not help him, instead mocking him for his strange ways rather than attempting to understand the pain he has endured, which causes him in turn to not show compassion to the suffering of others, particularly Liza, a young prostitute who he narrates her death to. Essentially, through this lack of compassion that exists between the characters of Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky illustrates that what is high and lofty is really compassion, for it was compassion that God showed humans when sacrificing his only son, compassion that Christ preached, and compassion that is so central to faith. Only through selflessly understanding the suffering of others, Dostoevsky argues, can love sprout from the bonds between men, and only then can humans fill the darkness of evil with love, for while we know not why God can not grant everyone a happy existence, we can understand the need for each human to assume certain god-like qualities and bless others with kindness and compassion, with our divine power to love artistically, despite our own pain, to find the profound beauty in loving despite