The ultimate feeling one gets from reading The Double is that they cannot tell whether Golyadkin – and by default, each one of us – belongs in the asylum or society itself. When Golyadkin thinks he’s triumphed, the reader feels triumphant with him. When Golyadkin feels awkward, we feel awkward with him. As he would do later on with Crime and Punishment and Notes From the Underground, Dostoyevsky doesn’t merely invite us into the story but forces us to connect our nervous system with those of his subjects. While Dostoyevsky was not yet at the peak of his powers, the reader can already recognize the psychological power brewing beneath Dostoyevsky’s pen that was waiting to be amplified by his Siberian exile.
But its merit does deserve some recognition. Many Dostoyevsky’s fans may not share Nabokov’s appraisal for what is largely considered a minor novel of little importance. Still, as far as form was concerned, I failed utterly.” An unexpected admiration for the novel came from Nabokov, however, who called The Double, “the best thing he ever wrote…it is a perfect work of art.” In his Writer’s Diary, Dostoyevsky wrote, “”Most decidedly, I did not succeed with that novel however, its idea was rather lucid, and I have never expressed in my writings anything more serious. Upon its release, most critics set out to annihilate the story, a reactionary doppelganger effect in and of itself in the sense that it ruined the fame and positivity that came with Poor Folk, Dostoyevsky’s debut. The Double has had a surprisingly diverse set of reactions since its creation. Unlike Golyadkin, his double is beaming with confidence and charm and is in every other way his exact opposite which eventually leads to trouble for Golyadkin when the doppelganger sets out to ruin him. Titled The Double, the novella follows a socially awkward government clerk named Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin – amusingly called “our hero” by the narrator – when a doppelganger enters his life. In 1846 a 25-year old Dostoyevsky published his second novel. “The door from the next room suddenly opened with a timid, quiet creak, as if thus announcing the entrance of a very insignificant person…”
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