Notes from Underground and the Double

A predecessor to such monumental works as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoyevskys writing towards the more political side. In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story who disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives withdraws from that society into the underground. A dark and politically charged novel Notes From Underground shows Dostoyevsky at his best. In Dostoyevskys The Double we see an intense psychological study of its main character Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin a government clerk who becomes obsessed with the idea that a fellow clerk has taken over his identity. Notes From Underground and The Double are two of Dostoyevskys more popular shorter works which exhibit the authors uncanny ability to portray the darker side of the human psyche.