I’ve been reading this brilliant book by Dostoyevsky and I’m chuckling through it. (If you’re interested, here is my book review on YouTube)
We don’t know who the character is but the irony is that if Holden Caulfield (from JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye) had grown up, he would be the character in this book.
I wondered if Salinger had read this Notes from the Underground book and thought, 🤔 “What would this guy have been like as a kid who went around wearing a checkered lumberjack shirt and fur lined hat with ear flaps?”
Everything that Dostoyevsky’s character does and says and how he thinks everyone and everything other than himself is stupid, is exactly like Holden Caulfield.
I pondered on this for a moment and relished the idea that I had stumbled upon a realisation that no one else had!
Could it be that I had an original and unique thought? A theory that no one else in the whole wide world had come up with?
I started to become quite excited by this idea.
So I searched online and I found this blog post by Lucid Blogging where another has come to the same conclusion in 2014 and then again in 2021.
Alas. I wasn’t the only one. So no, not an original thought. Sigh. (The irony is not lost on me that I’m acting exactly like these characters. 🤣)
But! But I reasoned with myself. A ha! What does the annoying ChatGPT pesky AI bot have to say?! Surely this wouldn’t have been picked up by that robot blight on modern society?
Well here’s what it came back with.
Both “Notes from the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger feature protagonists who are deeply disillusioned with society and struggling to find their place in it. The narrator of “Notes from the Underground” is a bitter, isolated man who rails against the superficiality and conformity of the society around him, while Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye,” is a teenage boy who has been expelled from multiple schools and is similarly disaffected and disconnected from the world around him. Both characters also express a desire for authenticity and a distrust of phoniness, which is a recurring theme in both novels.
“The Catcher in the Rye” and “Notes from the Underground” share several similarities in terms of themes and character development:
- Alienation and Disillusionment: Both novels feature protagonists who are deeply alienated from society and struggling to find their place in it. The narrator of “Notes from the Underground” is a bitter, isolated man who rails against the superficiality and conformity of the society around him, while Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye,” is a teenage boy who has been expelled from multiple schools and is similarly disaffected and disconnected from the world around him.
- Search for authenticity: Both characters express a desire for authenticity and a distrust of phoniness, which is a recurring theme in both novels. They both reject the idea of leading a conformist life and express a desire for something more genuine and meaningful.
- Criticism of societal norms: Both novels are critical of the societal norms and values of their respective time periods, and both authors use their protagonists as a means to explore and critique these issues.
- Internal conflict: Both novels also explore the internal conflicts of the protagonists, as they struggle with their own thoughts, feelings and desires.
- Stream of consciousness narrative: Both books use a stream of consciousness narrative style, which gives an insight into the mind of the protagonist and allows the readers to understand their thoughts and feelings.
It is important to note that these similarities do not mean that one author copied the other, but rather that both authors were exploring similar themes and ideas in their respective works
Bah. Ok. I shrugged my shoulders.
I now can’t UNSEE this Russian character in Notes from the Underground as no one other than Holden Caulfield. 🤣
I am Holden Caulfield. I am that unknown narrator in Underground.
I am disillusioned now.
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