Dostoyevsky and Emerson would have been Friends?

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' Is it so bad to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." --"Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

How would the narrator of our text feel about this Emerson quote?

or Is our narrator misunderstood--and thus, is he great?

or ....

See you tomorrow.

A Message from Underground

“The hero, or rather anti-hero as Dostoyevsky calls him, of the text is a man turned in upon himself, a man of heightened awareness and self-consciousness, who sensitivity to slights drives him alternately to retreat into his corner, his underground, and to revenge himself for his humiliations by humiliating others.” How is our nameless narrator humiliating others and how is this a ‘heroic’ act? Can a man chastised by his generation and country be a hero? Is our narrator an example of Thoreau’s thought, “to be great is to be misunderstood?”

The narrator deconstructs his society by breaking its inhabitants into two types of people—men of action vs. men of thought. From his isolation, musings about his liver, and introspective thoughts, it is clear that he is a thinking man; thus, why would he say, “I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.” How is thinking a disease? And is our narrator suffering from this illness? Do all artists, rebels, misfits suffer this disease and is this the reason why they take “up the pen?”