Dostoevsky's Irrational Man

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In Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Literature William Barrett notes about Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s highly acclaimed work Crime and Punishment: “Thus Raskolnikov kills out of an insecurity and weakness, not out of an excess of strength: he kills because he is desperately afraid that he is nobody” (Barrett, 121). The anxiety stemming from the awareness of being a “nobody” drives a person to bouts of irrationality which might culminate in insanity. Golyadkin, the tragic-comic protagonist of The Double (1846) gets weighed down by the same anxiety of being perceived as a “nobody”; of his existence being wiped out on account of being an outsider to the society where everyone save him has donned a mask. Spurred by his anxiety

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