Throughout The Double Golyadakin gets himself into trouble because he’s never sure how to express himself in public—outside his own head, or outside his own internal monologue. He doesn’t know how to present himself socially—or, in a contemporary phrasing, he doesn’t know which self to present, struggling as he is with a decaying class system, stagnant bureaucracy, Godlessness, materialism, precarity, and dread—all of which have rendered him incapable of appropriate behavior, or e...
