Here It Is, Here It Is At Last, the Encounter With Reality. . . All Is Lost Now!

As I mentioned in my review of The Bell Jar, I greatly appreciate an author that can write an interesting and convincing first-person narrative. To date, I have scarcely read one more engaging that Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground. What impressed me most about this short novel was Dostoevsky's ability to completely change my opinion of his main character half-way through. For those who know me well, this may come as a surprise.

I began the story highly irritated by the Underground Man. His constant contradictions make him a remarkably unreliable narrator. While this is part of the point of his character, it annoyed me nonetheless. In the second half of the story, when the mask of his insincerity begins to fall apart, I suddenly found myself completely sympathetic to him. His narrative truly is tragic and his character's evolution highlights Dostoevsky's mastery as a writer. Coming in at less than 200 pages, there's really no excuse for you not to read it! I give it an A.

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"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Through Error You Come To the Truth

For a while now, Criminal Minds has been one of my favorite shows on television. I find watching profilers asses the mental conditions of various sadistic criminals absolutely fascinating. In essence, Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment is such an examination. My senior classmates and I had a difficult time keeping all the Russian names straight, but other than that I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. Like the ever changing mental anguish of Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter, Raskolnikov's true punishment comes from himself rather than the law. His relationships with the outside world become schizophrenic after he commits his intended murders and Raskolnikov is forced to alienate himself as a result. Being alone with one's sins can be a horrible experience and only makes Raskolnikov's self scrutiny worse. It's a wonderful study of the power of the human mind and is worth sorting out the Russian names to read. I give it a solid B+.

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"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." (Fyodor Dostoevsky)