Henry Avila's Reviews > Notes from Underground

This the alleged hero hates the world and himself even more, they seem indifferent though, an unknown anti-hero no I take that back the term should be a stupid man who does everything to sabotage his life a masochist maybe ? As examples : the only woman silly enough to love him, Liza a prostitute needing a friend and savior, pours her emotional feelings seeking love but rejected... Can you imagine, the loathsome creature... his childhood a loose word which is quite inaccurate, the orphan's sufferings , loneliness a better one, the "friends" from old school days he annoys greatly they despise him to the fullest degree at a strained dinner party, drunk and out of control doing all to cause anger . His servant Apollon, an older gentleman with a mutual society of high emotions both intensely feel pain and uneasiness when together an absurd concept still, the poverty stricken man with a lackey, the narrator deliberately took a lower paying government job...acts insane in rages, his self -hate causing the inevitable downfall , punishment for the simple reason he doesn't deserve to be happy, his early years with no parents brings so many agonies to mind. An unbelievably strange human however, likes to hurt his soul for some perceived transgression committed in the distant past. Russian literature is full of the dark sufferings yet there can be nothing besides it on earth as good; The emotional ever changing but always negative in results like the cynical bureaucrat living in filth the apartment so small the poor are amazed, the man's pathetic notes are really memoirs of a life not well spent or worth living. Dostoyevsky novella a mixture of the bizarre and the weird can a person exist alone in this wide Earth turning his back to people wanting no love he says yet on the contrary needs it desperately we almost feel sorry for the almost man , the sad narrative of the human spirit going bad and very wrong. Some readers if not a majority will ask what is this? Others reading between the lines thinking there must be something there or else a hidden meaning the great writer is trying to convey the simple notion ...people are not individuals but a tribe. They thrive in a group as history shows, civilization began because of this, together everything is possible even contentment. A case of what if he had chosen another path things would've been a lot brighter ...