The Split Existence: (An Analysis of F.M. Dostoevsky’s The Double)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the existential situation of the protagonist of The Double from the position of its manifestation in the discourse he undertakes. Dostoevsky exacerbates the problem of the crisis of self-consciousness, a complex collision of personal and social being, showing the risk of a split identity that leads to insanity, largely associated with the tension between supra-individual value constructs and the lifeworld. “Doubling” is a vivid artistic means for conveying the deep meaning of the polyphony of the Self, which can be split under the influence of insurmountable social and existential contradictions. The story suggests two forms for reconstructing a person’s consciousness of self: discourse and text. Discourse is revealed in dialogue with others and with an Other; the self-text is created by man as the author of his own life story disentangling his experiences. The protagonist fails to cope with the discursive conflict largely because he is unable to construct a story allowing him to balance the voices that speak within him, to create a personal polyphony, and to overcome existential and ontological disaster. The protagonist’s dialogue with the doctor is an attempt to disentangle his existence and create this kind of story through an appeal to a real Other. However, Dostoevsky cannot see the proper cultural ground for this disentangling in the protagonist and his environment; he proposes no cultural resources, showing the “little man” as rootless, “without portents,” at the mercy of fatal chance, of an ill-starred mundanity, of spiritual chaos, “abandoned in the world.”