http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_Underground
Notes from Underground (1864) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is
considered by many to be the world's first existentialist novel. It presents
itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated,
unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man)
who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.
Plot summary
The novel is divided into two rough parts.
Part 1
Part 1 falls into an introduction, three main sections and a conclusion. (i)
The short introduction propounds a number of riddles whose meanings will be
further developed. (1) Chapters two, three and four deal with suffering and
the enjoyment of suffering; (2) chapters five and and six with intellectual
and moral vacillation and with conscious "inertia"-inaction; (3) chapters
seven through nine with theories of reason and advantage; (c) the last two
chapters are a summary and a transition into Part 2.
War is described as people's rebellion against the assumption that
everything needs to happen for a purpose, because humans do things without
purpose, and this is what determines human history.
