Notes from Underground

"What sort of Crystal Palace would it be if any sort of doubt were allowed?" —the Underground Man

Notes from Underground written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Study Guide

Brief summaries, commentaries, and notes on Notes.

Notes from Underground, Part 1

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11

Notes from Underground, Part 2: Apropos of Wet Snow

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10

Characters

The Underground Man

The Underground Man is the narrator and protagonist of Notes of Underground. The Underground Man can be viewed as: "a sheer irrationalist whose rejection of Rational Egoism is a tortured emotional outburst with no logical credentials" (Scanlan). He beleives that consciousness is a disease: " I swear to you, gentlemen, that being overly conscious is a disease, a genuine, full-fledged disease" (1257). Such consciousness shows: "within Underground Man's self-descriptions, while relational in the ways not reducible to behavior" (Hagberg).

Themes

The Artificiality of Russian Culture

For decades, the Russian social and intellectual elite had been imitating western Eropean culture, in the middle of the nineteenth century. In Russia, a man was considered "developed" and "educated" only if he was familiar with the literary and philosophical traditions of Germany, France, and England. Dostoevsky may have shared this view when he was a young man, but by the time he wrote Notes from Underground he had decided that that certain mindset was destructive. In being captavated by the west, Russian intellectuals had lost touch with the true way of the Russian life. The life that many of the peasants and lower-class workers still practiced (Madden).

Major Symbols

Underground

It is the home of the underground man. It is also refered to as his corner. " Yet the underground is more than a physical placeof isolation; it's a psychological hang-up as well. Possessing the overly sensitive and sheltered consciousness of the underground, the underground man finds himself unable and unwilling to meaningfully interact with others, despite his desire to do just that" (Novelguide). The underground man claims to prefer the underground to the real world. There he is able to express his indviduality.

The Ant Hill

This shows that there is no individuality. All of the ants are working for one main goal.

Critical Perspectives

Notes from the underground is an important work in Western European history. " It has attracted attention for many reasons. For one , it contains an all-out assault on Enlightenment rationalism and the idea of progress which foreshadows many such assaults in the mid-to-late twentieth century" (WSU). Another example of this novels' importance is the fact that it has one of the first anti-heroes in fiction. " It portrays a protagonist utterly lacking every trait of the Romantic hero and living out a futile life on the margins of society. Such figures were to dominate much serious fiction in the mid-twentieth century" (WSU).

The underground man: A question of meaning by Linda Williams

Linda L. Williams explores Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man in her article entitled The underground man: a question of meaning. Williams looks at how the main character searches for meaning and value in his self and his life from the very first words of his notes exclaiming that he is a “sick [and] spiteful man” (1). She also examines how Dostoyevsky uses the underground man to “question whether human beings can be their own source of meaning” (Williams 1). This novel is a reaction to the ideas prevalent in Western Europe at the time that “reason provides the foundation for all knowledge” (Williams 1).

Williams looks at why the Underground man refers to himself as a “zloi” which has been translated as spiteful but in actuality carries the connotation of immorality and malicious behavior in which a person isn’t by nature, but is because they are made that way due to circumstances that person has control over. The author of the article contends that this is because the underground man’s “refusal to attach the common man’s meaning to himself and due to his exaggerated consciousness and vanity.”

In part two we see the underground man’s attempt to “make his life as meaningful to others as it is to him” (Williams 2). This is done through several attempts by the underground man to be noticed by a young officer, some old friends, and Liza. With the young officer the underground man’s desire for the “officer to step aside becomes a measure of the meaning and value of the underground man as a person” (Williams 3). In the case of his meeting with the old friends, we witness the night through his very subjective eyes in which he has “one humiliation piled on top of another” (Williams 4) in his attempt to present himself as having meaning and value in the eyes of others. Since the underground man has the ability to blame his behavior on alcohol as opposed to deliberate action, Williams contends that Dostoyevsky proves that “when an individual is the sole foundation for meanings and values, he may twist them any way he likes” ( Williams 4).

Through his experience with Liza, we see that “his existence has finally been affirmed just as if [the officer] had thrown him through the tavern window” (Williams 5). He then must change the “significance of the encounter with Liza to recapture the sarcasm of his vain ego” (Williams 6) because he has failed to prove himself of any value to anyone other than someone he sees as lower than himself. He attempts to regain control over what he feels like he has lost by asserting himself in a position of power over Liza by insulting her and then exerting “domination and possession over her body” (Williams 6). The underground man tries to “rationalize his sick, zloi act away [by giving her] money” (Williams 6), but Liza’s refusal to accept it along with “all its implications” (Williams 6) reveals what Williams calls the ugly truth about him.

The underground man is incapable of loving anyone due to his unlimited vain ego. Further more, it is this ego that has led him to commit an act that “in the nineteenth century was considered more terrible than murder” (Williams 7) hence the reason why the term originally used in he beginning of the text as zloi which is translated as spiteful. Williams then goes on to say that “The underground cannot be his own foundation for meaning” and to Dostoevsky “the foundation of meaning does not lie in science or in Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism but in placing others interests before your own—in genuinely loving others” (Williams 7).

The author looks at the underground man’s motives in a manner that is easy to understand although the character himself is not. I agree with Williams’s depiction of the underground man’s search and failure to gain the respect of his colleagues which only served to push him into farther underground. In the last moments when he has to reconcile with the fact that he can neither give nor receive love seals his fate in the underground where he is writing from years later. It is least likely that he will encounter another chance to escape. In the underground we will find him languishing untll his death.

External Links and Resources

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/underground/themes.html

Works Cited

• Hagberg, Garry L. "Wittgenstein Underground." Philosophy and literature 28.2 (2004): 379-392.
• Madden, Caolan. SparkNote on Notes from Underground. 12 Mar. 2006 <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/underground/>.
• Scanlan, James P. "The Case against Rational Egoism in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground." Journal of the History of Ideas 60.3 (1999): 549-567.
• Novelguide.com. "Notes from the Underground". March 2006 [<http://www.novelgude.com/notesfromtheunderground/metaphoranaylysis.html>.]

Williams, Linda. "The underground man: A qusetion of meaning."