The Painful And Confused Quest

Dostoevsky is a far-reaching writer who have exerted great impact on many writers from different nationalities and countries,in which Camus included. Camus had great respect for Dostoevsky as well as read a lot of his works. Camus not only devoted a lot of space to the characters of Dostoyevsky's novels in his philosophy essay Myth of Sisyphus, but also adapted Dostoyevsky's novel The Possessed for stage performance.Notes from The Underground and The Fall are the most controversial and abstract work of Dostoevsky and Camus respectively.Separated in time nearly one hundred years, The Fall and Notes from The Underground,these two great works from different nations, have many similarities.The former was greatly influenced by the latter.In the past,most scholars were used to study these two novels separately or make a comparative study with other novel from their own angle,but no domestic scholar who had conducted any comparative study in the perspective of Comparative Literature.Therefore, this paper tries to find out the differences and relations between The Fall and Notes from The Underground from the angle of society and history critique,characterization as well as philosophical thinking,by combining the methods of social and historical research, philosophical research and comparative study, so as to probe these writers' exploration and consideration about humanity and society in their novels.This paper is composed of five parts:The first part introduces and combs systematically the existing research on Notes from The Underground and The Fall so as to find out the perspective of this thesis.The second part analyses and concludes that The Fall deeply developed the exposure and critique on corruption,degeneration and the dirty of capitalism elaborated in Notes from The Underground,by comparing these two novels' strong criticism on capitalism in the method of social and historical research.Meanwhile, both novels have many similar controversial words.In the third part,it analyses and compares the heroes of the two novels in the angle of character of anti-hero, monologue with dialogue and the dissection to the dark side of human nature,by which concludes that the hero Clamence is one of descendants of Underground Man.By comparing the two novels' literary style and spiritual connotation in the way of philosophical research,the fourth part proves that The Fall, philosophy's Expression in Literature,is not only similar to the literary style of Notes from The Underground,the literature's Expression in Philosophy.Moreover,it developed the latter's philosophical thinking on human's existence,that human being is lonely and irrational,the world human being survived likewise is absurd.The fifth part summarizes the whole text.Furthermore,on the basis of the analysis of these two heroes' paradoxical state,the thesis concludes that Notes from The Underground and The Fall are the reflection of these two great writers' painful and confused quest.