The Waltonian

I’m not sure if you’ve really met an unlikable character until you’ve met the narrator of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground.” And yet, repulsive as he is, the reader can’t help but pity him and, in strange instances, even relate to him.

This narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the whole book, begins with a diatribe addressed to an unspecified audience. The narrator rants about the universe and free will, with the air of someone who’s been driven to the brink of insanity by his own unsettled musings. Here, he raises questions that lead him to recount a story from his past, but the story does little to answer any of his questions.

In the narrator’s opening address, he talks about unchanging laws like 2×2=4. At one point, he makes the startling claim that, perhaps, 2×2=5 could be a beautiful thing. It’s shocking. But the narrator isn’t claiming that it’s truth. He’s pushing back against the strict rationalism of his day—the rationalism that tries to explain everything, even human behavior, through unchanging laws and equations. It’s a rationalism that wants to say that everything in the universe is predetermined—that all our choices could be explained and predicted.

Through his narrator, Dostoevsky explores the idea of real freedom. The narrator wants to be able to make a choice merely because he wants it, not because reason or laws of nature demand it. It leads him to make shocking claims about resisting the physical causes of the universe, like when he says: “To be sure, I won’t break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength enough to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough.” Even if resistance is futile, it’s better than being simply an unthinking cog in a machine (as he says many times).

Eventually, he stops ranting and tells a long and winding story from his early twenties. It reveals some background information, like the narrator’s social oddities and his lack of close companions. At times, he thinks of himself as a hero; at other times, he loathes his very being. He worships himself and disgusts himself. Dostoevsky explores this in the narrator’s way of acting toward old classmates (people that he only acknowledges every so often, when the mood strikes him). He invites himself to a party they’re hosting, insults the guests, feels insulted himself, and tries to chase down the guest of honor so he can slap him. All for the sake of honor—the narrator’s rather twisted sense of heroism.

The narrator’s romanticist side is revealed again later in the evening, when he spends the night with a prostitute named Liza. Taking upon himself the role of a hero (which later devolves into an angry tormentor), he tells her of the horrors she’ll experience as a prostitute, convincing her to leave her life there before it’s too late. But his heroism is merely an egotistical fancy. He can’t, or doesn’t want to, fulfill the image he made for himself that night, so when she comes to him for help later, he abandons her.

It isn’t totally clear, at least to me, what Dostoevsky’s trying to illustrate with this story from the narrator. It gives us a glimpse of what the man used to be, what he was in the earlier stages of becoming a spiteful, arrogant, disillusioned wretch. But surely Dostoevsky is doing more than this with the narrator’s story.

The story must illustrate or inform some of the questions Dostoevsky’s narrator raises in the earlier part of the book. For one, it gives us a deeper look into the narrator’s character. Perhaps the story illustrates a struggle between his romantic and rational side, like the tension between romanticism and rationalism in Dostoevsky’s society.

Or perhaps the story forces us to ask whether the narrator’s moral corruption, and his spite, are really grounded in his resistance to the determinism of the universe. Does he do these evil things just because he can? If so, it imposes a question for all of us readers. Surely we, too, want to resist this notion of a physically determined universe. But how do we ensure we don’t make unreasonable, evil choices just for the sake of it? How do we maintain our free will at the same time as we maintain our moral integrity?

Maybe you go to church every Sunday. Or maybe (like me) you go every-so-often when your workload allows it and you find a church that looks interesting or beautiful. Perhaps church is somewhere you’ve never gone, somewhere you go on Christmas or Easter, or a place you used to go but now can’t stay far enough away from. Maybe you’ve wondered if Christians have ever given a thought to who they’re actually worshiping. I know I have.

David Bentley Hart, an Orthodox theologian from Maryland, takes up this issue in his book That All Shall Be Saved. What kind of God would create a good world filled with good creatures, knowing that most people would end up separated from his love forever?

Not a good one, Hart answers. “If he is not the Savior of all,” he writes, “the Kingdom is only a dream, and creation something considerably worse than a nightmare.”

It might sound bold, but that’s a pretty tame statement for Hart. As he lays out a few main arguments for universal salvation, Hart insists that he must be right. There can be no alternative to the conclusions he’s reached. Everyone who thinks otherwise is either an idiot, a monster, or (most commonly) a victim to the manipulative Christian teaching passed down from St. Augustine. At best, Hart’s rhetoric is emotionally charged; at worst, downright browbeating.

But honestly, who can blame him? He calls the doctrine of hell (which he labels “infernalism”) the most reasonable objection to Christianity, and thus the biggest barrier to a person’s happiness in Christ. Worse yet, the traditional view of hell has no good foundation. Hart argues that it all began with Augustine’s inability to read the Greek New Testament.

Recognizing that his book won’t be able to reverse the centuries of the Church’s damage, Hart nonetheless traces his reasoning back to where tradition started to get things wrong. If only St. Paul and Gregory of Nyssa had been a little more popular than Augustine. All souls, these writers insist, must eventually be redeemed by God, even if they resist him to their very last breath.

But what about justice? What about free choice? Hart anticipates these questions. We all know the story of how God created the world out of nothing. And everything he made is good—a perfect God can’t make anything bad.

And before he even began creating, God also knew how everything would end. He knew Adam would sin, he knew humanity would reject Christ…and according to traditional teaching, God knew that he would sentence some, maybe most, of his people to an eternity without him.

And God caused this. In creating the world, he brought about this destiny of eternal unhappiness. And if this were true, it would be a tragedy. A good God couldn’t create persons for an eternity void of the only love that could give them a moment’s rest.

The tragedy wouldn’t even end there, with the question of why God created the world in the first place. Hart forces his readers to consider the lucky few that find their way into heaven. What about the parent or sibling or friend whose loved one didn’t make it in? Will they simply not care about those in hell anymore—or will God make them forget all about them?

Hart bashes the first possibility for its mere repugnance before going on to argue that this indifference toward souls in hell isn’t possible without a degree of indifference toward all humans. Using a murderer in prison as an example, he asks how we can stop caring about the murderer without ceasing to care about those that love him, and those that love them, and so on. And what is heaven if it’s a place where we don’t love?

And as for the idea that God could just make us all blissfully ignorant? Hart asks who we’d even be in heaven at that point. Our identity as parent or sibling or friend is part of who we are. Our memories are part of what makes us individuals. We are people communally, and who and what we love is essential to who we are. To lose others means to lose part of ourselves.

So what now? God saves everyone whether they like it or not? Didn’t he give us free will? Of course he did. But, Hart argues—and this might be unfamiliar to many in the church (as it was to me)—hell could never be a truly free choice. When we choose something, it’s because we want it. We think it’s good. If we choose to reject God, then we think there’s something else that’s better. But what could be better than God?

If we could really know who God is, Hart argues, and nothing kept us from choosing him, we would always choose him. If we reject God, we don’t understand who he is. How could God damn someone to hell for an ignorance he could have prevented?

Maybe you agree with all this, or at least think it makes a little bit of sense. But what about the Bible verses that talk about eternal punishment? Are we supposed to pour centuries of Church teaching down the drain? I think Hart might say yes, and there’s so much more he has to say on the matter that I don’t have time to talk about here.

But I’ll leave you with one note that seemed particularly relevant to me as I was reading his book. Christians often say that God is just too great to be comprehended. His justice is a divine mystery. We just have to trust that he is Good, and that, therefore, Hell is good.

Hart’s not buying this copout answer. Can we comprehend the mysteries of God? No. But are we really supposed to believe that we have no idea what “goodness” means as an attribute of God? If that’s true, then the words we use to describe him (words like “loving” or “gracious” or “good”) are totally meaningless, and we really don’t have any idea what we’re worshiping.

While maybe we can’t understand everything God does, or why he allows bad things to happen, surely we have to trust that our idea of goodness comes to us from him, and that it at least reflects the goodness that is God. On page 81, Hart quotes John Stuart Mill, who says it as well as anyone could: “To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?”

Broken pavement and old construction supplies litter the ground behind Doane. When you walk inside, it smells musty and old. The floorboards creak as you make your way up the stairs. Why doesn’t Eastern take care of their dorms?

In the wake of the recent chaos from the power outage, students might be wondering this more than ever. And problems with Eastern’s residence halls seem to be an ongoing issue. Mold in the dorms. Buildings that students are unable to access with their keycard—or doors that are propped wide open for any and all to enter. We pay roughly $7,000 for room and board. Where is that money going?

A few days ago, I met with Mares Stellfox, who became the director of Plant Operations in September. Plant Ops organizes housekeeping and maintenance for the whole campus, responding to small work requests as well as bigger problems with electricity, plumbing and so forth. I asked her about the problems with the power outage a couple weeks ago.

“Some of it was Eastern because we had the trees come down that took down our internal lines,” she said. But this was fixed within a day. The longer-lasting power outage was a problem with our electricity provider—an outage that occurred over a much wider area than just Eastern. “Not everything is controlled on our hands,” she said.

But I know what you’re thinking. The dorms lose power all the time. Though we can understand that inconveniences happen sometimes—that trees fall on power lines once in a while—the frequency with which it occurs seems a little ridiculous. Perhaps that’s just the price we pay, not going to school in a concrete prison in downtown Philadelphia. But can’t anything be done about the trees to prevent future power outages?

Stellfox agreed that the trees have been a problem. It isn’t easy to cut them down, since in Radnor Township the rule is that for every tree you cut down, you have to replant two more. Eastern at times shuts down campus to take care of vegetation and trees near the power lines, but it isn’t feasible to cut down all trees that might possibly fall. However, on a brighter note, Stellfox mentioned a hope of getting another generator for Walton Hall, so the Dining Commons can function more fully even in a power outage.

Another problem I often hear students complaining about is the mold in the dorms. When I asked Stellfox about it, she noted that there have been problems with mold in the past, but they aren’t that common in the dorms anymore. “We’ve had six rooms that were complaining about mold,” she said. “I had the mold specialist come in, and out of the six rooms they said had mold, two rooms had one spore.”

There are issues with Eastern’s dorms, for sure, but do we really have it that much worse than other students? A student at Mississippi State University, where the average room and board is about $10,000, told me that though she feels that she’s getting her money’s worth, her campus has experienced many problems similar to those of Eastern’s dorms.

“We…seem to lose electricity in every storm,” she said. She described a time a year ago when pipes burst and flooded her building, damaging students’ personal belongings. Though the campus cleared the water quickly, it was unable to fully dry the carpets or reimburse students for what was ruined. The dorms at MSU, like Eastern, are old, having frequent issues with mold. “These dorms need major upgrades, especially the old ones,” she said. “The old ones have mold problems, bug infestations and they are practically falling apart.”

A friend at Auburn University, where housing alone costs an average of $9,000 (and the meal plan is an additional $6,000), has had a more positive experience with her living situation. The campus has lost power only once in her time there, and it was fixed in less than an hour.

While there are certainly still improvements that need to be made to the dorms, and living conditions in general at Eastern, a lot of resources, both money and time, go toward problems that shouldn’t even exist. Stellfox described students flushing items down toilets, dumping candle wax into drains and leaving old food in sinks.

“We’re here to help out, and to fix things when they break,” Stellfox said. “But when things are maliciously done, and food is put in drains, that’s just not… something that Plant Ops should be dealing with.” This irresponsibility wastes both time and money, preventing real issues from getting addressed.

Don’t get me wrong—I lived in Kea last year. It was rough. And though a new coat of paint isn’t the solution to all its problems, it’s certainly an improvement. But for the prices we pay compared to other universities (even though the bill feels ridiculously expensive each semester), the dorms here really aren’t that bad. Could Eastern manage its money better? Of course. But the dorms are gradually improving, still recovering from post-Covid supply chain issues and the problems we have aren’t problems that are specific to Eastern. Most colleges have one downside or another. And if it means I don’t have to pay thousands more dollars per semester, I’m happy to live in dorms that are a little old and dusty.

The alarm rings at 7 a.m. And then again at 7:03, 7:05 and 7:10. Muttering your usual threats to drop out, you finally get up, miserable and unhappy, with nothing to look forward to but a day of classes that you’ll sleep through anyway. You cross your fingers that you’ll retain enough information to at least remember how to review before the next exam, but it’s not looking hopeful. And then you go to bed and get up the next day, only to do it over and over again, every day, for the next three months. And then the next semester. And the next. Something has to change. You can’t live the rest of your life in this repetitive hell.

If you’re anything like me, you hate repetition and routine. The idea of waking up every day to do the same thing over and over again makes you crazy. I’d rather run into a brick wall or slowly and painfully drill holes into all my teeth than work a 9-5. And I’m nearing that point now, despite being only four weeks into the semester (and not working a 9-5).

This doesn’t sound healthy. It certainly isn’t a good way to live a flourishing life. If my own experience is any indication, humans weren’t meant to exist by doing the same thing again and again—slogging through dullness and drudgery, never trying anything new. I, for one, don’t retain anything from my classes when I arrive each day in the same exhausted stupor, weary of never accomplishing anything but the same old, same old. I sleepwalk in and out of class.

What better way to fix this monotony than a day where you forget classes, do something just for fun and enjoy a rush of adrenaline and excitement? A day that allows you to sleep well at night for reasons other than mental fatigue and brain fog? It reminds you how to actually live. And you go to classes the next day rejuvenated. Even happy. The break allows you to focus the next day, and the knowledge you gain from actually being alive during class more than makes up for the knowledge you missed out on from the one day you skipped.

And this next reason might not seem as important (because it isn’t), but sitting in a classroom all day every day isn’t exactly the most enriching way to live your life. Your professor can give some great lectures, your class can have an excellent discussion and your reading can be eye-opening or even beautiful. It doesn’t matter. Or rather, it does matter, but there are other things that matter just as much. Even aside from the drudgery of going through the motions of the same routine every single day, you can’t live a fulfilling life trapped inside the four walls of a classroom. Reading or talking or learning about good things isn’t the same as seeing them or doing them yourself.

So next time you want to skip class to go to the Grand Canyon (there’s one in Pennsylvania), or take a midnight drive to the nearest dark sky park (only 4.5 hours away) or tramp up to the Catskills to watch the forest transform, leaf by leaf, into an explosion of fiery color, you should. It’ll be worth it. Both your education and your spirit will thank you.