First Reaction

From the first paragraph, I could tell that Mr. Shapiro was right; this book was going to be dense, confusing and in a way, at least for me, somewhat annoying. Throughout the first couple of pages, I got the impression that Dostoyevsky had low self conscience or was at least very self conscious. However, even without directly contradicting himself like he does in other instances, he shows through his writing that he is actually a confident person. At least in my opinion, someone who is unsure of themselves will not ramble and write about anything that comes to mind. He seems to not care what people think, even though he does care about what people understand. I can relate to the superstition contradiction though. For example, I know that superstitions are not factual and simply a belief, but when it comes to soccer, I tend to have a sort of ritual because I believe that it will bring me good luck. Even though the ritual does not make a difference in real life, it gives me a spurt of confidence. I think Dostoyevsky is smart though, he has a lot of ideas and somehow merges them all together and builds does not stop building on them; it would be better if it was more comprehensive.