Our Christmas reading is to be Dostoevsky’s ‘The Double’.
This is the description on Amazon:
“The Double is a remarkable tale in the tradition of doppelgänger literature. As Dostoevsky examines the neurosis and paranoia that cripple a seemingly ordinary man, he produces a thoroughly ‘modern’ nightmare, brilliantly foreshadowing the works of Kafka and Sartre. Mr Golyadkin is a rather middling man, a somewhat insignificant government official. Then one day he meets his ‘double’ – a man with the same name, face and background. Initially charmed by the co-incidence, Golyadkin soon notices a discernable cooling in the reaction of his friends and colleagues towards him, whilst his double seems to grow in popularity. Unable to escape the relentless presence of ‘Golyadkin junior’, suddenly even the most ordinary activities – going shopping, attending parties – take on a terrifying significance, and Golyadkin finds himself on the brink of breakdown.”
Due to the Christmas and New Year break, our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 5th February 2008. Time and place to be confirmed…
I found the most surreal aspect of the story was that no-one else seemed to realise that ‘the double’ was indeed that. Everytime Golyadkin mentioned the fact, the response was merely to acknowledge a passing resemblance. This was despite that ‘the double’ had exactly the same name, job and appearance as Golyadkin. It is therefore unsurprising that Golyadkin begins to question his own sanity. It seems we are so conditioned to conforming to majority opinion that we are more likely to relinguish our own beliefs than others – as demonstrated by Asch’s psychological experiments (http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html)
Poor Golyadkin; not only was his identity and individuality being stolen, but no-one else would accept it. No wonder he ended up being carted off to a mental institution…