Notes From Underground | Antihero: The Self-Hating Existentialist in Notes From Underground
Scott Malia received his PhD in drama from Tufts University, and he currently works in theater and education. In the following essay, Dr. Malia discusses the philosophy of existentialism and its relation to the titular narrator/character of Notes From Underground.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground is often considered an early example of existentialism, and a particularly influential one. Although written in the mid-nineteenth century, it easily invites comparison to twentieth-century works such as Albert Camus’s The Stranger and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Certainly, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man is comparable to the disaffected heroes of Camus’s and Salinger’s stories. The specific qualities of existentialism that tie the novel to a movement it predates are the lack of meaning in life, an...
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