Comparing Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground

Essay
The narrators in, Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, represent the harsh realities of the world that the public is either too afraid or too unwilling to hear. It seems as though both narrators themselves have characteristics that make them appear mad. Their rants are about either the barbaric nature and declination of society or the cannibalistic nature of the government. Whatever the case may be, they appear mad because the society in which they live in is mad. This alters their perspective, rendering themselves equally mad as their respective societies. The two narrators are simply a product of their environment; the former, destroys society through barbarism and ignorance while the latter describes
This makes it seem he has gone crazy because the UGM over analyzes the faults of himself to an extent, such as labeling himself as a sick and spiteful man,, but it is more of a critique on how society has made him that way. He believes consciousness shackles society by not allowing the people to grasp the big picture because we are too worried about ourselves, what people think of us. In overthinking these aspects, we remain ignorant of what is actually happening in the world. He then goes on to ridicule how science and reason enable us to better understand ourselves, but through this increased understanding, mankind has decreased the ability to form spontaneous feelings, which in itself is maddening because feelings have been and always will be spontaneous. In addition, the UGM is unable to feel empathy because his perception of love is the supreme power over another human. This results in an egotistical nature and a massive superiority complex. This together makes him mad because he is unable to learn how to be social, which is the foundation of not only sanity but humanity as
Throughout the entries, the narrator mentions the people around him eating one another in villages and on the streets, even being able to listen to the affair between two dogs. When taken literally, he appears mad, but these depictions are a representation of the society in which he lives. They depict an individual's perspective of the exploitation of the people by the government. Cannibalism becomes a vector in which to describe characteristics of the ruling elite; at the time was feudalism that took advantage of the lower class by building relations through land holdings and exchanging that land for goods and services. This exemplifies cannibalism because in order for the lower class to obtain something, such as money or food, they had to trade a piece of themselves in the form of labor. The mad man (MM) is suspicious of all the people around him, including his brother, which represents society and his family conforming to feudalism, which was the political faction at the time. The people around him are suspicious of the MM because he himself does not want to join the party out of fear of losing his