I hope that everyone had a good first day back after the long weekend. I know I am struggling to get readjusted by am excited for class tomorrow. Again, another reminder that you only need to post one blog response this week.
For tomorrow--
Read and react to the reading due for tomorrow--what did you find interesting, how did you react to it on a personal/visceral level, what symbols or images is Dostoevsky repeating in order to establish a specific theme?
This is an open ended question, so be bold...be creative. See you tomorrow.
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I thought this part of the reading started off differently, even though at first I was confused as to where the narrator was. It was just a lot different from what one would expect in this book, or at least I wouldn’t expect him to wake up next to a prostitute.
In the reading we see a more “nurturing” if you can call it that, maybe nurturing potential, previously unmentioned in the book. The narrator makes a lot of family centered statements, about children, and women. It’s clear that he pities Liza, and he says many times that he’s sorry for the life that she lives, which I found ironic since he lives a pretty sad life himself. He tells Liza, “Wake up while there’s still time. And there is time. You are still young, you are pretty, you could fall in love and get married and be happy.” A lot of his points put emphasis on Liza’s physical appearance, and I get the sense that he values that a lot, because we’ve seen him insult people based on their looks in previous sections, and this also relates to my other thoughts about him mentioning love a lot in this reading.
I couldn’t help but think about when the narrator says, “And when there is love, you can live even without happiness. Life is good even in sorrow; it is good to live in the world, however you live.” This seems to be a more optimistic view of life, when the narrator seems to me at least, to have extreme pessimistic views. He also mentions how there is no love involved in the contact he and Liza had, and that it’s ugly. The narrator takes a traditional opinion about love and then family, saying that no matter how bad family is, they’re not your enemies or strangers. He blames his lack of feeling on growing up without a family, so it’s easy to see that he harbors some resentment about this, and possibly wants to make up for a lack of family in the past with a family in the future. He asks why a love between a husband and wife would have to come to an end. Despite the appearance that the narrator would be incapable of love by the way he acts, it seems to be something he really values, and probably wants in his own life.
He says that the whole of happiness is when a man, woman, and child are together, like in his creepy rendition of a woman breastfeeding her child and then the father playing with the child. That, as distorted as it looks, is his image of true happiness, this uncomfortable picture of the family.
The narrator’s views of women were defiantly revealed in this reading, and needless to say, I did not like these views at all. He starts off by telling Liza that she is a slave, and that men and women are different because men are not slaves. He mentions how Liza is a slave from the start because of all the debts she owes, from her prostitution, but he is making a huge generalization about women being prostitutes and therefore, being slaves, but maybe he didn’t mean it that way and I read it wrong. Basically, a lot of the things said by the narrator about women/girls creeped me out. He is engrained with a need to protect girls and women, and says that he would love his daughter more than his son, and wouldn’t want her to get married. He admits that he would be jealous of this love his daughter would have for another man, and yes it comes across as creepy initially, but I’m trying to understand this instinct to protect a daughter as if she were a fragile doll. I cannot see though, how such thoughts could resonate within a person like him, because I wouldn’t really want him to be the father of any child
He says that “love is every young girl’s treasure!” and gets mad at Liza for giving away her body as well as her love so easily and so un-purely. He says that it’s the highest crime to give away everything so no man needs to earn love, because why would he strive for love when he can have everything else? I think out of any love he regards a girl’s love the highest, because that is the purest form of love that someone should have to earn, and clearly he thinks it’s not something they just give away. This to me, is a very distorted view of love especially the female role with love.
On a completely different note, I was disappointed with the note that the narrator wrote to Simonov. He was so impressed with how clever he thought he was being, and praised himself on how he took the blame for everything; but he took the blame by lying. He made an excuse for his actions by lying about him being drunk, but just dismissed it as something that got him out of the trouble he was in. It just annoyed me because the narrator holds people to such higher standards that I know he would be so angry with someone for a lie like the one he created in what appears to be a heartfelt note. If I didn’t expect him to tell the truth, then I guess I would expect that he would give his lying more of a thought, instead of turning into a man of action and just doing something impulsively and not analyzing it or agonizing over it whatsoever.
At the end of the reading we see the narrator haunted by the fear of Liza showing up to his house, and his regret for the way he treated her. He said he should have treated her terribly, and even abused her to drive her away. This to me is a signal that while he in his mind wants the love he talks about, he clearly isn’t ready for it, because it’s much easier for him to deal with people despising him and him despising others. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Liza thing plays out, especially considering the dream about her and how she eventually showed up at his house, at the time he dreamt she would.
I think the images of family, happiness, and love, especially purity with it, all seem like they could develop into a larger theme; but it’s so late in the book for a major theme to be introduced, so these things might not even be played out at all.
I’ve mentioned a lot of things that we haven’t seen from the narrator before, so I think these sections were a lot about contrasts, or contradictions. He a pessimist now optimistic, he’s a man of thought who for a moment became a man of action, he is a lonely bitter man, showing a tender desire for a family/children. Even with these contradictions, I think this reading gave the narrator more dimensions.
In this passage of Notes from the Underground, we were introduced to a softer, more sentimental side of our narrator. I believe most people have this side in them, though some choose to embrace it more than others. However, our narrator isn’t comfortable embracing this, and he puts on a façade in order to control his emotions. Since opening up can leave someone vulnerable, the narrator uses little tricks to control the conversations he has with Liza. During their second meeting at his house, he admits “I mumbled weakly, knowing very well that I could easily have done without water…I had to play a part to save appearances” (186). Looking back on their first meeting, I can’t help but think he was using this same tactic when “was being ridiculous with this moralizing stuff” (163). He admits to “making an indirect approach as though embarking on something else, just to distract her” (163), as if he sees the entire conversation as a game he has to win. But what really resonated with me was the subject matter of Dostoyevsky’s “moralizing stuff,” because the narrator reveals his thoughts on love and family, two things he desperately needs.
I think it’s safe to say that children are some of the most impressionable people out there, so our experiences in childhood provide insight into who we are today. Our narrator too explains that his roots are the reason for his current sick, underground state: “I grew up without a family, and that’s why I’m like this…you know, without feelings” (163). I believe that we cannot love others unless we are loved ourselves. Parents, or whomever happens to fill that parent role, are the ones who teach us by love simply by loving us unconditionally, and our narrator agrees with this: “However bad things may be within a family, I still say that a father and mother are part of you, not your enemies or just strangers. Be it only once a year, they’ll still show you their love” (163). That little bit of love could have changed this underground man’s life dramatically; it may have been what kept him above ground. His inability to love and form relationships with others is why “[his] schoolmates took an immediate dislike to [him]” (138), and his early descent into isolationism is another hint to his current state. I think our narrator has become so accustomed to feeling hatred that he won’t let himself get close to others, because he believe hate overpowers love; if he hates someone, he has more power over them than if he loved them. This is why his signals with Liza are so crossed; he lets emotion overcome him, but he laces his behavior with cruelty. So he does have that sentimental side to him, but his cruel and confused (because the two kind of work together) side heavily outweighs it.
Trust me, there are paragraphs in there...it just looks very blocky in this thin, column set-up
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