Finding a Community

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s popular Russian novel, Notes From Underground, is a perplexing story about one man who is trying to fit in to a community and figure out who he is. The Underground Man is in a constant struggle to find others like him and fit in to a community. He has no one like him because his community has died out years ago. The Underground Man, “has suffered all his life and has only recently begun to accept and enjoy the pain of suffering” (“Pain is Fun” Blog Post). The only community that the Underground Man believes himeslf to be a part of is the community of pain and suffering. Personally, I have not experienced what he is going through and have always felt like I am part of a community no matter how large or small. Although, I am empathetic towards the Underground Man’s feelings of having a community you are a part of slowly corrode away and dissapear leaving you having to find another community or try to reform the old community. I had to find another community to become a part of, whereas the Underground Man decided to try and revive an old community which was dying more and more every day no matter how hard the Underground Man worked to bring it back.

Before reading Notes From Underground, I had the preconceived idea that all people belonged in a community and loved their community. I had this idea because I had always had good friends and loved the people around me. Only after reading this novel did I realize that some people struggle in finding others with similar thoughts and habits in a solid community. The Underground Man is one of the people that tries and can’t fit into a community and uses every excuse, including pain, to create and join a community because his community has died years before. This novel has changed my perspective about people who struggle to find others with similar ideas.

In my life, I treat people who having a bad day or who are sitting alone differently than I used to, and now I try and help them by introducing them to my community. Dostoevsky has created an idea in my mind of how some can try and try to find a community and never find one without the consistant and supportive help from others in another community.