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Notes from the Underground — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Starting question

Book thesis

Dostoevsky presents the Underground Man as an anti-hero whose hyper-consciousness, spite, vanity, and hunger for freedom turn against both rational utopianism and human intimacy. > I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. > I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.
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Author frames a type

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The author note says this figure is imaginary, but socially necessary: a representative of a recent generation produced by modern conditions. > Such persons as the writer of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist in our society.

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Spite turned inward

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The Underground Man refuses treatment not to hurt doctors but to injure himself from spite. His rebellion is self-sabotage. > No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. > I am only injuring myself and no one else.

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Excess consciousness

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His central diagnosis is that too much consciousness paralyzes action and turns even degradation into a perverse pleasure. > To be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness. > The direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia.

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The mouse underground

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Unlike the direct man of action, the conscious mouse cannot simply revenge itself; it broods, imagines, remembers, and buries itself alive in resentment. > In its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite.

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Pro / Supporting Point

Against rational interest

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