A book inspired both by Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground and Orwell's 1984, Portrait of the Rat is an image of a man living inside of a society he is entirely foreign too. It's told from his point of view as he watches a society, based on our own, fail and collapse. Despite this subject, it's still a dreamy tale, mostly about ideas and friendship rather than about government and totalitarianism. It's a novel of idealism.
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era. He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.
Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his parents to become a preacher, but while at the University of Edinburgh, he lost his Christian faith. Calvinist values, however, remained with him throughout his life. This combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order.
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