Notes From The Underground

Dostoevsky's book is short, a weird hybrid of philosophy and tragedy, though the sadness is from the story of a man who never made a single human connection in his life. The man writes his notes but is so cut off from the world he doesn't even tell us his name. He has one chance at life, it seems, when Liza the whole comes to visit, but he just throws a fit and she leaves. He runs out after her to no avail: when he reaches the street, there is no sign of her. He will never see her again. At the end he says he will write no more, yet a final paragraph says he couldn't help himself, but Dostoevsky ends it with the words 'it also seems to us that this would be a good place to stop.' That's is probably the saddest ending of all, knowing that this man's life was lived with no one to care, not even himself.