Outsiders

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how literary works have described outsiders in a society through various settings and tried to provide the majority with the sense of discrimination these minority groups feel in an effort to overcome the differences and allow assimilation. Two such works are the "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison and the "Underground Man" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Each written in different parts of the world and about different social groups, they have in common a protagonist whose misery is palatable as he searches for his identity in a world where he is an outsider. It discusses how in both stories, the conflict within the character of the individual and the society in which they live arises that is hard to overcome and causes misery and dissent. It shows how Ellison's protagonist is ostracized by the society on the basis of his skin color, which leads him to feel dissatisfaction and causes him to search for his identity as perceived by himself and the others around him while Dostoevsky's main character is isolated through his own thoughts in a society where he feels deprived due to the pressures he perceives.

From the Paper:

"Dostoevsky's Underground Man is set in Russia at a time when the peasant class was being exploited to such a degree that they had no rights of their own. The peasants perceived the upper class as their enemy and as such there was in the society a conflict that was so bitter that the sense of the individual had been lost and people were identified in terms of their social class. Thus, Dostoevsky's underground man is a radical youth who epitomizes the total dissatisfaction of the masses with the government of the time. Dostoevsky has related how the individual is so frustrated with his own helplessness that he has become an outsider in a place where he shares his culture, religion and norms with the majority. Yet, the personal dissatisfaction, his spiritual inconsequence in his own mind creates a boundary between the self and the society isolating him from others."

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