A Study on the Shapes of the Narrator in Dostoevksy’s Notes from a Dead House: Focusing on Movement of Electron and Uncertainty

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Dostoevsky's poetry and philosophy of ‘redemption’ are interconnected by analyzing the narrator in Notes from a Dead House. Goryanchkov is the most complex narrator among Dostoyevsky’s works, which becomes further complicated through the novel’s “Introduction”. Based on this, this paper adapts the concepts of quantum mechanics to the context of a novel. Goryanchkov does not seem to have mobility. Instead, he has the ‘movement of electron’ and the changes he goes through are only made possible through the reader’s eyes. This movement has an ‘uncertainty’ and makes readers impossible to understand the narrator. Therefore, it makes redemption unattainable for the readers and does not completely eliminate its possibility. In addition, movement and uncertainty become sophisticated narratives devices in “Introduction” proving that Notes from a Dead House is not a report or a documentary, but a novel that integrates the author’s poetry and philosophy.