In part two of the Reader we are introduced to who Hanna really is. Hanna was a Natzi who worked many years as a camp guard. After years of not seeing Hanna nick reencounters her in the courtroom, she is on trial for the acts she committed during this time. Hanna’s behavior and being is explained through the trail and we get a better understanding of why she was the way she was, but it still comes as a shock all the things she is being convicted of. The worst part about the whole trial is that Hanna does nothing to help herself; in fact she arguable incriminated herself further. I find it idiotic that Hanna lets her disability to read and write (yes she’s illiterate like I predicted. refer to first post) consume her life and motivate her to take do things she would otherwise not do. She is so ashamed of being illiterate she is willing to take extraordinary measures to keep this a secret secret. On trial she even admits to acts she didn’t do to keep it quiet even though admitting to these things might make her sentence worse. In the trial we find out that while Hanna was a camp guard she used to pick the youngest and weakest of the inmates and have them read to her just like she did with Micheal. Hanna took Micheal’s childhood, innocence, and love and left him numb and detached from his life and people. I am intrigued to see what will happen to Hanna once the trial is over.
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Diana Emden Final Reaction
Notes from the underground was like a puzzle it had all these jumbled up pieces that as individuals made no sense but once put together and analyzed correctly the greater picture is right in front of you. Notes from the Underground can also be compared to a puzzle because even when it is all put together it still has its cracks and flaws never fully allowing it to be a solid whole or concrete. This is how I think of Dostoyevsky’s ideologies about human life they all fit together nicely yet they are flawed by contradictions.
Was this book worth reading? Absolutely! Notes from the underground along with Atlas shrugged are one of those books that once you read changes the way you look at things, the way you look at life, and that is exactly what Notes from the underground did it challenged everything I thought I knew in merely 28 pages. For this I praise Dostoyevsky, he got me to see new answers for different questions but most interestingly he got me to ask questions that have no answers. The author shines light on the paradoxes of our time from below.
The first reading of the book made little to no sense to me as if I was reading words in a foreign language but after the class discussions were passages were broken down and explained like pieces of a puzzle everything came together and almost made sense. It amazed me how only a few sentences of his could be so jacked up with elaborate meanings of life. Dostoyevsky takes simple ideas of life that people do not really question and questions it to show us that we surround ourselves by “walls” that we built weather it be religion or science and are satisfied with not knowing anything beyond those barriers.
Notes from the underground first stuck me as a strange name I had no idea what it meant of how it related to the actual story. Now I understand why it is called this because Dostoevsky is looking up at society a mere bystander of his life instead of an active participant. This is why the author sees things so much differently than most people do and is able to criticize society from another perspective. That is his biggest contradiction wanting to belong to something he despises.
Diana Emden Reaction 18
Dostoevsky is criticizing the whole concept of free will by using the comparison of man to a piano-key. Only the person who plays it manipulates a piano key, it is a single note that has a specific job in a sea of other glossy black keys. I think this is Dostoyevsky’s best comparison yet, we as humans have a need to be in control or our own lives and have a sense of freedom however false it may be. Our race refuses to have nature, or any other “walls” we have in place, play us like a note easily overlooked in the melody; so in turn we defy the laws of nature not because it is logical but because we like to feel in control of what happens to us. Dostoevsky uses this metaphor along with evident sarcasm to mock the whole idea of “free will” and how people will do the most irrational things to make sure their “free will” is exerted no matter how self-destructive it might be.
Diana Emden Reaction 17
Today in class there was more of a debate rather than discussion on whether evolutionary theory is relevant to human behavior. We as humans are supposed to be the “logical” ones the ones that are able to analyze things and put things together yet Dovekey’s argues that we are in fact not logical at all we are illogical when it comes to many things. Why do people smoke? Why do people jump out of planes for fun? Or drink until they drop? None of these things are in our best interest most of these things can be very harmful if not deadly yet we do them anyways simply because we can. I think that is why humans do the things they do even if they are not beneficial, because that is where we think our power lays, being able to do things no matter how irrational they are because we are able to do them. This is our way of expressing “free will” and maybe it does go against the evolutionary idea of “survival of the fittest” but we do it anyways because that as the author says is our most “advantageous advantage.”
Diana Emden: Reaction 16
Religion was a byproduct of evolution, it was essential in the progression of the human race to prevent man from killing off other men but ironically today religion has been the leading cause for war and death throughout mankind. Animals kill to protect, animals kill to feed, and animals kill to survive. We as humans are the only species that kills one another simply because we can. The crazy part about this is that we are killing; people are dying over beliefs that we created that might not even be true. Wars are being fought because of differences in beliefs and ideas. In class we tied this concept into what is currently happening right now in Venezuela. Originally from Venezuela myself it is heartbreaking to see my hometown go up in flames and have my family and friends in danger but what is really crazy to me is how far people will go to impose their beliefs on others.
Diana Emden: Reaction 15
Charles Darwin popularized the phrase “survival of the fittest” this essentially means that through natural selection only the strong will live and the weak will die. Every species on planet earth follows these laws of nature except us humans. The human race defines the Darwinian law that only the fittest will survive through rehabilitation centers and Medicare even though it is arguably making us weaker as a race. Why do we do this? That is a question there is no answer to. Ironically what is supposed to set humans aside from animals is our logical ability, but that seems to be contradicted by our actions. Smoking cigarettes, jumping out of a plane, binge drinking can not only harm us but can kill us, yet these activities are vastly popular amongst society. People unlike animals are motivated by causes other than their natural born instincts which are hunger, thirst, or the need to survive, instead we do things out of love, greed, and vengeance. So how can we as a race call ourselves logical when so many of our actions are not that is what I think Dostoevsky is trying to get at in this passage.
Diana Emden Reaction 13
Today’s class discussion was thought provoking it was the idea that people only have a choice to believe one of two things science or religion. Dostoyevsky is trying to communicate in this section of his writing is that humans need something to believe in a “wall” so to say, something that they can lean on and find most of the answers to their questions. But what if we chose not to believe in none of these things what if we believe in nothing, and that is where Dostoyevsky finds himself in nothingness with no walls around him unable to move neither forwards nor backwards. That is what humans fear most the idea that nothing is concrete, nothing is definite, and that is why we as a race spend our existence studying and trying to find answers in the past and ideas on the future instead of living in the now. I found it interesting how Dostoyevsky mentions that we are the only species that do this because we have what we call “logic”. Logic is man made, logic is something we created to explain the world around us and we are apparently logic when go by facts but in reality nothing is fact. That in my opinion is what the author is trying to communicate the idea that we know nothing and we will always know nothing and that will never change no matter how many hours are spent slaving over specimens in a laboratory or studying religion in a bible, all of our questions will never be fully answered.
Diana Emden Reaction 12
The segment we watched today from the Creationist vs. Evolutionist debate appealed more to me because Bill Nye presented his argument for evolution. Bill Nye’s argument was not only better supported by scientific research and facts it was also much more entertaining to listen to. Nye made sure to keep his argument light hearted and joke around in his speech which I appreciated compared to Hams monotonous argument. Nye stated facts supporting evolution while Ham presented concepts that made creation not true but possible. That is what made Nye’s point of view a lot stronger than Hams in my opinion because he had facts that evolution did exist while Ham had facts that creation COULD be true. This debate in my opinion was won by “Bill Nye the Science Guy” but I’m interested in what Ham is going to say in his rebuke. How will Ham discredit evidence of trees older than 4,000 years, fossils of animals proven to date long before the supposed creation of the world or sound waves still left over from the Big Bang that set everything in motion. I am renaming this debate from evolution vs. creation to fact vs. possibility.
Diana Emden Reaction 11
Today’s video was a debate between a creationist and an evolutionist. I found this very interesting because both these men were arguing their case from a scientific point of view. I have never really thought about the role religion has in science and how it affects the interpretation of data. What immediately caught my attention was that Ham, arguing his creationist point of view, was overly eager to present his side while Bill Nye was more relaxed and told a personal story to start out the debate. In class today we were only able to hear Ham’s argument however, I was suprised that not everything he said was inaccurate. I am an atheist and a strong believer of evolution but I took some of the things Ham said into consideration. I particularly found interesting how he said public school textbooks are teaching children to become evolutionists.ALthough I do not completly agree wihth this claim I do think it is noticable that religion is never seen in a science textbook and evolution is. Ham’s argument might have had some valid points but I am more interested in what “Bill Nye the Science Guy” will retaliate with because I agree more with his beliefs.
Diana Emden Reaction 10
To imagine infinite space is almost impossible to do because it is something so vast and wide it is never ending. Head down on the table I tried to imagine infinite space, beyond our solar system, beyond our universe and all I pictured was black, a darkness that continued forever but even the picture in my head of an infinite universe had to end. Humans have a tendency to make boundaries for themselves and others because to picture something as great as infinite space is too much for humans to wrap their heads around. There is a certain protection that comes with boundaries, a protection against the unknown and all the fears that come along with it. The most popular “wall” or defense is religion. Since humans don’t know the answers to everything they create and find comfort in a “God” or “higher being” that knows everything.
Infinite space is a mind-blowing concept, the idea that we are part of something that never ends and continues forever although we ourselves do not. Understanding the concept of infinite space is hard enough to do but once you do you realize how small and insignificant we really are. To put this in perspective, we are merely a speck of dust, if even that, in something so large and uncertain that it is difficult to understand or even imagine. I might be wrong but this may why Dostoevsky has so many feelings of little worth and value because in the grander scheme of things, like the infinite universe, we essentially are nothing.
Notes from the Underground 