The Thoughts Loom

  Part II of Notes from Underground is where I started understanding the Underground Man much more closely. Not because I agree with him, or because I see myself in his actions, but because I could recognise something in the way his mind works. At one point I was also in an underground of my own. Every thought I had, every statement I heard, I could reason in both ways. If someone said something was right, I could understand why it was right. If someone said it was wrong, I could understand that too. Then I would start questioning the question itself. What is the reference? Why should this value be considered a value? Who decided it? What if the opposite is also true? And then the questioning can continue forever. I think this is part of what Dostoevsky is showing through the Underground Man. He doesn't seem to have a stable reference from which he judges himself. He is always comparing himself with someone else. Am I above this person or below him? Did he respect me? Did I humili...

  Charles Dickens has done something quite clever in this book. It is often said that the story was written to bring back the spirit of Christmas, but that is not the main point. Christmas is only used as a setting. The story could have been placed around any other occasion. What Dickens is really trying to show is something deeper about how a person lives and thinks. The main idea of the story is about goodwill-seeing the good around us, doing good to others, and thinking about our own actions. It also points to how empty life can become when a person focuses only on one thing and ignores everything else. Scrooge was not always the way he is shown at the beginning. As a child, he was cheerful and free. He had reasons to be happy and was not burdened by worry. Dickens shows this clearly through the Ghost of Christmas Past. This part is not just about remembering old times. It creates a clear contrast. It makes us ask what changed in Scrooge. How did he become someone who calls Chri...