final post

I think reading Notes from the Underground was worth it.  The book poses many ideas that I find interesting because I have never read them before in a book.  Taking all of the scary and dark inner thoughts and putting them into a book helps people to realize that these thoughts and feelings, although scary, occur in everyone.  Every page of this novel introduces a deep discussion topic, and really breaks down the human mind and all of its emotions.  Though at times the book was difficult to understand, our discussions in class definitely helped me to get a better grasp of what Dostoyevsky was writing about.  Without them, I would have skipped over a few of his important arguments that were central to the second part of the book.  Through the discussions, I felt that we were able to put Dostoyevsky's ideas into understandable analogies, and it’s crazy to think that a guy from the 1800’s was able to come up with all of these theories, whether it is the wall to being afraid of our deep inner conscious.  

To compare this book with another, I found it to be extremely different.  Most stories are written for entertainment purposes, so they are generally straightforward and relatively easy to understand, so that even the simplest minds can find something to laugh at.  This book was not tailored as a one size fits all, and leaves even smart people confused at times.  This book was written in two halves.  One half presenting ideas, and in the second, applying those ideas into a deep narrative.  I haven’t read a book quite like this one.  Atlas Shrugged was the closest, due to the fact it was presenting ideas (about capitalism and its importance for a well balanced society) through the narrative, not first stating her beliefs in capitalism and then diving into a fictionalized scenario.  

The main idea that I took away from this book was the belief in being open-minded.  It seems that he hammers the idea into your head that stupid people only accept one thing, because it is more comforting to do so.  The smarter people aren’t so quick to deny and refute others claims, but suffer because they realize the fact they are living in world with an infinite amount of questions, and only so few answers.  Being open minded may be painful, but it will put you on a much higher level intellectually because you can see past the walls that society has put in place to centralize everyone.