Juan Pino post 1

            Notes from the Underground, has perhaps the strangest beginning to any book I have ever read. Thus far, the narrator has essentially rambled on about subjects concerning consciousness. In this rambling of his, the narrator has often contradicted himself, stating one thing only to follow up with a sentence that says the exact opposite thing. Furthermore, in this initial section of the book, I have come to learn that the narrator is in fact quite selfish and narcissistic while at the same the man continuously rags on himself. The one thing I have gathered from this is that the narrator, while claiming that too much consciousness is an illness, he does in fact value it. He calls himself “more clever than most,” and that due to his intelligence he is ill.  Another statement that the narrator made was that only fools and worthless fellows live long. The narrator does acknowledge that his actions are terrible. In my eyes he is a worthless fellow, but in his own eyes he is neither a fool nor a worthless fellow, and so I do believe that because of this the narrator is either wrong about who grows old or wrong about his level of intelligence.