The Library Annex

Notes such as yours, however, could, I believe, serve as raw material for some future literary work, for a future picture of the present disorder, but written when the period is already in the past. Oh, when the anger has gone and the future is the present, the artist of that future will discover appropriate beautiful forms to convey the chaos and disorder of the past. And that’s when your Notes will be needed, and they will provide good material, despite their chaotic and fortuitous nature…At least some revealing traits will be preserved, traits from which it will be possible to guess what might have been hidden in the heart of an adolescent who lived through those troubled times, a finding not altogether without value because it is out of adolescents that generations are built…

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent recounts the early adult years of Arkady, an illegitimate son saturated with desire, battered by inner-conflict and imprisoned by impulses. Weren’t we all.
However, through this adolescent, Dostoevksy has much to explore and contemplate. He makes very careful choices about how to present this story and wrestles with contrasting intellectual concepts such as beauty and desire, science and God, perfecting individualism or establishing social Utopia. Within this young adult we dance with the Double.

We must address Dostoevsky’s choice to present his narrative from the point of view of an older Arkady describing events taking place in the past. I believe that he chose this form to instill hope amidst a chaotic and emotionally draining sequence of events. Dostoevsky accepts certain risks with the first-person narrative form – namely the reader’s trust – but the it serves as a light at the end of a tunnel; a certain confidence that Arkady will become whole and learn from his past, as do we all. When comparing Arkady’s coming of age with that of modern society, those of us frustrated by the adolescence of our society can rest assured that it will rediscover its roots, naturally grow strong and give its citizens a sense of shared identity.

Admittedly, I did find the characters’ inter-connectedness a bit difficult to comprehend amidst the dense text. Dostoevsky so thoroughly embraces the first-person narrative form that the reader must discern the real nature of the characters through the blur of adolescent lenses. Nonetheless, I won’t discuss each character, but I will attempt to analyze a few key players and themes surrounding Arkady.

First, his biological father Versilov who seems to foreshadow a possible future for Arkady. Both men suffer from a self-loathing wrought from inner conflict between impulse and their noble, intellectual ideas of how to achieve a subjective Utopia either as individuals or a society. Unfortunately, love, judged as an uncontrollable impulse, catalyzes this self-loathing which thereby manifests itself as a childish hatred for and degradation of women.

The story climaxes with a violent split within Versilov; a manifestation of this inner conflict. To add further dimension, Arkady, Versilov’s illegitimate son lacking in traditional family roots, has a compounded inner conflict wherein the contrast of his intellectual ideals and base impulses takes shape as his desire for both reconciliation with family and the comfortable sanctuary of living by his intellectual ideal. Many of Arkady’s temper-tantrums sprout from his inability to accept his family’s flaws, as he would define them. He strives for an individual Utopia wherein he lives perfectly by his ideal or reconciled to a perfect family. When disappointed by his family’s failure to meet the standard of his perfection, no matter how petty, he vows to withdraw into his ideal.

Dostoevksy later introduces Makar, Versilov’s father-in-law, who presents an entirely different manner of living. Makar enlightens Arkady to another double, or inner conflict, within society. With a sense of satisfaction that science explains the mystery of God, thereby refuting his existence, society chooses its intellectual ideal and pursues social Utopia through the pursuit of knowledge and abandonment of holy guidance. However, in this pursuit, society loses its sense of mystery, and therefore beauty, which then cheapens a grander sense of a life fully lived. With this pursuit and abandonment, humanity and society mutilate itself by chopping off its roots. As a result, it lacks unifying direction and becomes aimless and easily falls to the ground. Ironically, Arkady, until his time with Makar, had been searching for beauty impatiently but through intellectual means destined to fail which brought about debilitating frustration and anger. By depending on his own reason to find beauty, he idolizes it as a new God, like society’s pursuit of knowledge.

Ultimately, Arkady must master his own double by making choices for which he can accept responsibility. The angst and anxiety of adolescence quite simply comes from a lack of understanding life, embracing grace for oneself and others, and he must venture through this gauntlet of the fearful unknown to learn and become a man of sound identity living within a society rooted in common values. After all, once one contains all knowledge, and can explain all the mysteries in life, what would be next?