Point of View

The book is written in first person though the "I" is never fully identified. It is a person who has lived beneath the floorboards, listening in on conversations but never participating. This person could be Dostoevsky, though he adds a footnote at the end of his first page advising that the person is actually fictional. Dostoevsky says that the person must exist but as a collection of personalities making up one person—the fictional character of this work. For the sake of continuity, "I" is identified throughout this guide as Dostoevsky.

There are likely to be various places throughout the book that offer up points or themes with which any reader can identify. At one point, Dostoevsky writes that everyone has something from their past that they won't admit to others and some things they won't even admit to themselves. Most people can probably think...