While not to the extent of the paranoid, delusional schizophrenia that
             Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin suffers, in many ways, the novel "The Double"
             (Dostoyevsky, 1997) mirrors the social and moral attitudes of its author,
             Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. Some of these attitudes come from
             Dostoyevsky's life experiences. These views he transmitted through his
             work. This essay will show that the author's protagonist Golyadkin is a
             metaphorical struggle for Dostoyevsky's soul and also the dichotomy that
             was Russia. It is a struggle to find an identity. And even the creation
             of a multiple personalities still leaves us looking.
             Without delving into a summary of the novel, consider only Golyadkin's
             character. He is hardly the physical Adonis-like specimen that we see
             heroes of novels, even if they are tragic heroes. He is slim of build. He
             is balding. He is also miserly. He hoards away his money from his job as
             a clerk in a Russian organization. He is the very epitome of the
             apparatchik. As for his emotions, Golyadkin is pathologically shy. Every
             attempt at contact with another person is met with an almost stupefying
             hesitancyâ€"irrespective of whether they are his seniors or inferiors.
             Golyadkin is more adept at working out problems and conversational
             scenarios in his thoughts. While trying to articulating his thoughts,
             Golyadkin stumbles, hems and haws: so much so that he presents himself as a
             perfect nincompoop and hence the object of derision and the epitome of
             clumsiness. He is thoroughly unsocial. He abhors any kind of unnecessary
             contact with others. He actually defends this anti-social behavior. He
             mistakenly believes that he is happy in his state of solitary bliss. He
             considers it below his dignity to "bow and scrape."
             One might suppose t...