Intro to My paper -- Great Books II

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Date Posted: 22:08:58 05/04/08 Sun
Author: Manuel Valle
Subject: Intro to My paper

�God�s Mystery�: Love and Vulnerability in Dostoevsky
While Dostoevsky�s Notes from Underground focuses primarily on the Underground Man�s crippling lust for autonomy and dominance, in the character of Liza, the author presents a model of love and vulnerability�the antithesis of the Underground Man�s condition and its potential cure. For Dostoevsky, these two acts�love and vulnerability�are inseparable: �Love consists precisely in a voluntary gift by the beloved person of the right to tyrannize over him� (88). Because of this connection, the Underground Man cannot love, for he must always be the tyrant. Liza offers the Underground Man an example of love joined with vulnerability, which, could rescue him from his fixation with freedom and his enslavement to vice. A lowly prostitute in debt to her madam, Liza initially presents this expression of love, after the Underground man has slept with her and then lecture about how she, as a prostitute debases true love��God�s mystery.� While Liza initially reacts to his words with derision�through sarcasm maintaining some control in her relationship�her subsequent repentance and �childlike� love of the Underground Man places her completely in his power. This position as �father��a position of responsibility�frightens the Underground Man and he flees any obligation to Liza. At home, the Underground Man begins to obsess over Liza and her example of love, but his fantasy of marrying and redeeming Liza manifests only his perverse idea of love which attempts to imitate Liza�s selfless model while retaining dominance. In rejecting his daydream, Underground Man recognizes this contradiction, but he also recognizes that marrying Liza would give him responsibility and steal his autonomy.

When Liza comes to his apartment, the Underground Man expects her to revile his poverty and filth�what he condemned her for in the brothel�but she shows the permanence of her love through her forgiveness and pity. Shocked by the intensity of her love, the Underground Man unconsciously relinquishes his autonomy, at once acknowledging his responsibility and reciprocating Liza�s love. In this moment of redemption, the text explicitly depicts how love, responsibility toward others, vulnerability, and repentance are in essence the same experience, all flowing from one another and leading toward salvation. Furthermore, during his momentary taste of redemption, the Underground Man�s hyperconscious deliberations have ceased, manifesting that this experience of love is not a rational choice, but the relinquishment of personal choice. Because of this, when the Underground Man reasserts his autonomy and resumes his deliberations, both his love for Liza and his repentance fail. Refusing the vulnerability of love, the Underground Man returns to his former spite and hatred, raping and humiliating Liza for his momentary loss of autonomy. In this act, he turns on the only one who truly loves him, the only one who could have been his salvation. Thus, an analysis of the interaction between Liza and the Underground Man reveals how the Underground Man�s tormented existence results from his inability to take Liza�s love as his model, to put himself at her mercy.

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