Nikolay's Irrational Mind Born from His Pathology Or the Other Way Around?
Nikolay suffers from the most extreme form of egotism, called solipsism. Solipsism can be defined in many ways:
Only one's mind exists.
No one exists as humans, only a two-dimensional, fawning audience.
The self can never know others, only its own self.
The solipsist can attach no meaning to others, only to himself.
The solipsist lives in an insular, private world disconnected from others. We could argue therefore that smart phones are a form of solipsism.
Ludwig Wittgenstein writes of solipsism: "Hell is not other people. Hell is yourself." And he writes, "I am my own world."
Nikolay's second pathology is self-complacency.
Complacency is being satisfied with mediocrity.
Complacency is being content without new challenges.
Complacency is being soothed and medicated on routine and the comfort of monotony.
Complacency dulls one's appetite for life.
Complacency is a form of the Jahiliyyah, a long period of ignorance and darkness.
Nikolay's third pathology is the spiritual death resulting from cocooning or contracting rather than expanding in life.
Cocooning is retreating into the home and creating a safe place while avoiding the challenges and anxieties produced by interacting with the outside world.
Cocooning in the modern age is constructing elaborate home entertainment systems and personal chefs that allow us to never leave the home.
Sample Thesis Structure
Reading Chekhov's stories, we begin to see that we all have limited free will, but it eventually vanishes as we surrender to our Irrational Mind, which includes, ____________________, _________________________, _______________________, _________________, and _________________________.
“Gooseberries”
- How does Ivan criticize his brother Nikolay for “egoism” on page 269? Laziness and ego make his brother contract into a tiny world without adventure and challenge; it's the same as disappearing into the "TV cave." The ego is not challenged in such a small world. A tiny world is the world of solipsism.
- How does the story contrast a communal life and a solipsistic life and for what purpose? Communal life requires empathy, cooperation, and adapation. Solipsistic life requires nothing and is therefore a form of death.
- We read: “Once a man is absorbed by an idea, there is no doing anything with him.” Explain what this means. Are we talking about a chimera, an obsession? Is solipsism the logical conclusion to an obsession? Do we live too much inside our heads and get lost in the ongoing loop or echo chamber?
- Reading about the merchant who poured honey on his riches so he could eat his money before he died, we see a connection between greed and spite. Explain."I want mine and you can't have any."
- We see that Nikolay the Greedy uses his widow’s money to buy an estate and “live the life of a country gentleman.” How is his life squandered on being a poser to others and himself? How has he made a deal with the devil? He lords over a tiny kingdom.
- Why does everyone, including the red dog, look like a pig at the estate? What does this all mean? We matter to others. We affect others. Our life is not our own. Our own moral dissolution injures others as well. We get fat and our dogs and children get fat.
- How does egotism infect everything Nikolay does including his acts of charity? He descends more and more into narcissism and solipsistic hell. He’s outwardly pious but dying inside. Yes, he gives money to inflate his image, but he has contempt for the human race. This reminds me of Pascal who wrote we live for image more than for substance. He uses liquor to soak the peasants’ brains so the peasants will be his sycophants and treat him like a god worthy of lecturing them on the greater truths.
- Explain Nikolay’s gooseberry fetish. They must be fake, a mirage, a chimera because we read a quote by Pushkin: “Dearer to us the falsehood that exalts/Than hosts of baser truths.” What do they represent? Rosebud? Unconditional love? Transcendence? Permanence? All of the above? The way I see it, the gooseberries represent medication. Nikolay has a huge ego and going through the world with a giant ego is tiring. I would even say the ego poisons us. So what does this have to do with gooseberries? The gooseberries are like Alka-Seltzer you take after getting a bloated stomach ache.
- Why does Ivan say there is a sadness to seeing people who have achieved fulfillment and happiness? Could it be that this sadness is seeing the illusion and misguided passions that are behind this happiness so that what is happiness is something perverse?
- Perhaps the gooseberries represent a drug that produces self-hypnosis that we can deny the world’s suffering and experience happiness in a cocoon. Perhaps the gooseberries are an indulgence, a self-medication. See page 273.I remember when a professor agreed to help me and a few other students prepare for our Masters degree test, the professor's wife gave us store-bought cookies while he ate Danish, stacked high on a plate and we weren't allowed to touch the Danish.
- What is Ivan’s psychological state after telling his friends the story of his brother Nikolay? He is in a state of urgency to warn his friends about self-complacency and the false happiness of being idle and mediocre.
Using an Analogy Or Extended Comparison As an Introduction:
During my first marriage I lived in a five-bedroom house, had four kids, the whole works. Then I got a divorce, remarried, and with the kids all grown up, I got into a three-bedroom house. I got divorced again, remarried and with all the alimony I had to fork out, I found it more practical for my third wife and me to live in a modest two-bedroom bungalow. I got divorced again and now I find myself living alone in a one-bedroom condo. The thing is the condo feels too big for me and I really hate doing housework. I prefer to drive my BMW up and down the Pacific Coast Highway. It relaxes me. Going back to the empty condo, however, is completely depressing. It’s a mess. I hate doing house chores. I’m sorry but at my age I’m simply not motivated to clean up around the house. That’s when I decided to say the hell with making mortgage payments. I sold the condo and moved into my Beamer. What a difference this has made in my life. For one, sleeping inside my car means I don’t have to get up at all hours of the night to make sure thieves haven’t stolen the rims or to wipe bird crap off the roof before it calcifies on the paint. You know how it is, getting up at four A.M. because you remember you forgot to vacuum the corn nut that your buddy got lodged underneath the passenger seat.
As I’ve indicated, I never spent time in my condo anyway. I don’t cook so my car doesn’t need an oven, just a toaster inside the glove box. I haul a port-a-potty so I don’t have to keep doing my business at restaurants. As far as showers go, I work-out at a gym three days a week. That’s more showering than any man needs.
As far as my car’s limited “closet space” goes, I don’t use a closet anyway. Then there’s your car clean-up, which inside a car is a helluva lot easier. There are fewer square inches in a car than your smallest apartment by a long-shot. Besides, I’d rather detail my car than vacuum and mop my condo any day of the week.
Living inside my car seems kind of cozy. Like when I was a little kid and I took my baths inside the sink. Yeah, I’m talking about being a baby again. Feeling safe, comforted, and insulated inside the womb. I’m talking about the days when life was simple and I had a minimum of responsibilities.
This is it for me. Inside my car, I have found paradise.
The narrator of the above is a misguided soul who has stumbled across a false paradise based on cocooning inside his car. Similarly, we see that Nikolay has retreated into his own cocoon, the false paradise of his small country town in which he feeds his ego and disappears into a world of solipsism. This human tendency to retreat back into the womb is one of the major components of The Irrational Mind, which also includes _____________, _____________, ________________, and _________________.
Links
“The Lady with the Dog” Lesson
- How might Gurov’s wife contribute to his misogyny? See 323; and see 326
- Why is it ironic that Gurov is a misogynist? See bottom of 323 and top of 324.
- What bitter experience compels Gurov to be a womanizer? 324
- How has Anna deceived herself? 327
- Is Gurov right to be annoyed by Anna’s histrionics? Is she indeed full of histrionics? 327
- Why does the official ignore Gurov’s (Dmitri’s) declaration of adulterous love on 331? It is taboo to mix public duty with private desire. See 335 bottom.
- What is the story’s tragedy rendered in its final pages?
Sample Thesis from McMahon Imagining a Student Writing an Essay
As McMahon interprets Chekhov's stories, I see that we are a diseased, miserable lot, a race doomed to misery and self-destruction. Contrary to what I assumed before taking McMahon's 1C class, I see that the idea of free will is an illusion, pure foolishness. In fact, the characters in Chekhov's stories are slaves to their irrational minds, which are sodden with a variety of pathologies, chimeras, self-delusions, narcissism, self-centered rage, and the irresolvable conflict between private desire and public duty.
Links
Comments