India population

World Literature
Daniela Abrunhosa
“Notes from the Underground”

In my opinion Dostoevsky intend us to view the narrator as sick, as an unbalanced man, as a psychotic man, and a man who doesn’t know what love is. I think that at the end of the book he is in love with Liza, but the problem is that he can’t recognize it, because he doesn’t understand. I think he doesn’t know how to “work” with his feelings, and this isn’t just with Liza but with everybody else. When someone tries to help him he can’t accept it, and forces himself to hate that person... He knows he is sick, but still don’t want help, which is stupid. The differences between, showing depravity and endorsing it, is that… Depravity means, someone who is malicious, someone who just thinks about revenges, someone who is selfish and doesn’t care about the others, someone who doesn’t have true and pure feelings, someone who is always lying. Endorsing depravity means exactly the opposite of depravity, it means someone who, does good things, someone that doesn’t hold grudges, someone that put the others before herself, someone who has true and pure feelings, someone who always says the truth. What I think Dostoevsky is doing in “Notes from the Underground” is showing depravity on the character. This is an example that I took from the book: “(I’ve continually considered myself more intelligent than everyone else around me, and sometimes, would you believe it, have even been embarrassed about it…” I think this can show how convinced he was, and being convinced is one of the things that show when someone is depraved… Sometime in the book he wants to take revenge of Zvekov, giving him a slap on the face. Everything in the book, about this sick, malicious and unattractive man, whose name is unknown, shows depravity, shows that this guy was crazy, and didn’t have any friends, and the most of them was because he “pushed” them away from him, he didn’t let people like him (which is so stupid…).

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