The anonymous narrator, it seems, has lied to us about every aspect of his life. The man I so greatly admired for his genius and insight appears to be a hypocrite and a fake. Part II has been infuriating me for this reason. The first lie we are introduced to is his age. Part II begins with the narrator remarking he was 24 when he wrote those notes. Immediately upon reading the line, I laughed. Of course he made it up, I thought. He loves to contradict everything he says. Was he a young prodigy or was he simply babbling everything that came to mind? I hoped the rest of Part II would help me understand him, but it just threw me further off track.
The man who told us that to be valiant is to be simple-minded and stupid wants more than anything to be a hero. The narrator who once seemed confident and prideful of his genius will suddenly do anything for a bit of attention. Part I, perhaps, was the voice of a man he imagines in his “dreams”.
In Part II, however, we accompany a man whose social skills are almost physically painful to witness, and who twists every small encounter with others into one that merits capital punishment. He hates the people around him and hates himself most of all. His plans for revenge are quite comparable to those of characters found in Edgar Allen Poe stories; his plot to bump into the officer and to slap Zverkov in the face are frankly absurd.Through his bizarre actions and twisted perception, he has become an extremely unreliable narrator. I feel bad for him, and yet I really just want him to go away. I am curious as to how the novel will end.
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