Dostoevsky's Revolutionary Her

A detailed Summary of Dostoevsky's Revolutionary Her

The fictional author of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground claims that he has all the traits of the anti-hero. He torments others out of spite; he is weak, petty, and spineless. His intelligence and self-proclaimed disease of hyperconsciousness have made him nihilistic; he is unable to believe in himself and has reasoned himself into inaction. Peterson states that nihilism is one logical evil consequence of heightened self-consciousness. This character had done what Buddha wanted to when he first faced the tragic awareness of mortality, and could no longer enjoy life's pleasures, that is to withdraw himself from the world, suffer and do nothing. This character has retired to his underground, where he avoids reality and fantasizes about a life, all the while unable to do anything productive for himself. He describes himself as a hyperconscious mouse that has reasoned past his motivations and can no longer believe in his own actions. Embittered by inaction, the mouse then creates around itself "a fatal brew, a stinking mess of doubts and unsettled questions. Then filled with half despair, half belief, he consciously buried himself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in hyperconsciou

Our hero also notices that man is a creative force, destined to strive towards a goal, but who often leads himself astray, toward destruction and chaos. In asking why does man love destruction and chaos, he speculates that maybe man is just instinctively afraid of attaining his goal. Perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining. Perhaps the author has implicitly captured man's need to identify with the process of exploring, attaining, and adapting. "Man likes attaining', he states, ' but does not quite like to have attained.' Here the author has captured what Goethe was getting at in his novel Faust, that man is forever striving, forever erring, and will never be completely satisfied. The future always looks more ideal, and the present remains eternally unbearable. Because we are designed to explore, we can never reach our ever-receding goals. We are forever unsettled, unhappy, unsatisfied, terrified, hopeful and awake. To stop striving, to feel satisfied in our achievement, that would be to stop identifying with the exploratory hero.

He is also incredulous of the totalitarian Utopia that would ensue. He understands that even if you give man Utopia, man will inevitably do something nasty to stir things up. He recognizes that man sometimes loves destruction and chaos; perhaps he is conscious that in order for man to thrive, he needs these forces in dynamic interplay, in balance. The sheer boredom of Utopia would cause man to stir up trouble. The author realized this as a child when he would cut capers and suffer the consequences just to avoid twiddling his thumbs. Looking back at history, our hero notices that in the course of the development of reason, man has become no less bloodthirsty. He points out that 'the most subtlest slaughterers have almost always been the most civilized gentlemen. Our author also doubts that man can reach the Utopia where reason governs peacefully, because man will consciously act against his own advantage, just to remember that he can, to remind himself that he is a man and not ' a piano key'. Because man has an advantage that is more valued than reason, and this is independent choice. He needs to preserve his most preci

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Approximate Word count = 1499
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels