THEMES OF NOVEL

In Notes from the Underground, hyper-consciousness distinguishes

the Underground Man from the rest of the world. Cursed with acute-
awareness, he can't act because consciousness causes him to believe
that no action is truly justified. If a conscious man can't act, the
argument goes then he can't ever become anything. This notion of
"the conscious man" is tied with "the intelligent man" and also "the
decent man," so the concept carries both moral and intellectual
implications. Although consciousness arises from suffering, allows
for suffering, and necessitates suffering, it also makes possible free
will and individuality. With consciousness, man must suffer, but
without it, man will never be

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF LITERATURE

AND WRITING

In Notes from the Underground, the Underground Man has

retreated from reality to a world of books. He lives in literary
fantasies duels, chivalry, impractical love affairs, redemption and
then (not surprisingly) has difficulty reconciling these dreams with
real life. He goes so far as to conclude that we all live in books, that in
fact we all need books to tell us how to live. Notes itself is steeped in
literary references and clichs, and reflects Dostoevsky's disdain for
the Western European ideals seeping into his country. Nowhere this
is clearer than in the Underground Man's discussion of romanticism.
He argues that French and German romantics are silly and idealistic,
while Russian romantics are able to appreciate "the sublime and
beautiful" while remaining grounded in the real world.
."
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF FATE AND
FREE WILL

Notes from the Underground presents a fascinating twist on the

classic fate vs. free will argument. Fate in this case has nothing to do
with divine will. If man is "fated" in any way, it is only because he is
beholden to the laws of nature, like science or mathematics. 2+2=4,
and this holds true whether we like it or not. How can there be free
will if the world has such laws? The Underground Man argues that
the only way to preserve free will is to beat one's head against the
stone wall that is mathematical certainty. You may not be able to
make 2+2=5, but you have to try if you want to be free. Additionally,
he offers a terrifying vision of what might happen if we were to figure
out all the laws of nature. If man always acts according to reason and
the laws of nature, then we could predict everything man would ever
think or do. The Underground Man argues that man will
act againstreason in order to prove his free will. He is willing to
suffer, destroy, and abandon reason all for the sake of his own
freedom.
The Underground Man does not have free will; he only thinks he
does.

The Underground Man's inability to do anything except find fault is

the best evidence that he lacks free will.

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF

PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWPOINTS: EXISTENTIALISM
Notes from the Underground is generally seen as a forerunner to
existentialism, so the text presents many of the philosophy's main
tenets, if in a less developed way. Let's start with absurdity: the
Underground Man's logic is twisted and convoluted, often
contradictory. He concludes that the universe is without reason.
There's also a strong current of radical, existentialist freedom and
responsibility: the Underground Man suggests that man has the
freedom to fight against everything, even 2+2=4, but he also admits
that he is to blame for everything in his life. Because he is always
alone, the Underground Man acts as a great forerunner to the
existentialist notion that every man is in constant isolation from his
fellow human beings. Last is the claim that there are no primary
causes of the things we do, hinting at the later existentialist belief
that man always creates his own meaning through action.
The Underground Man fails to recognize the Existential solution to
his "inertia" dilemma: there may not be good reasons or justifications
for the things we do, but we all must act anyway.

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF SUFFERING

In Notes from the Underground, the Underground man argues that

suffering is enjoyable even a toothache. The pleasure, he says,
comes when you are intensely conscious of your pain, adding that it's
enjoyable to make others suffer with you. Suffering is necessary, he
continues, because it leads to consciousness. The two notions
suffering and consciousness have a complicated relationship in the
text, each necessitating the other and making the other possible. For
this reason, man will never give up suffering, since man needs to be
conscious and have his free will. He will even purposely cause himself
pain to prove that he's free to do so.
Dostoevsky holds up the Underground Man as a negative
example; Notes from the Underground argues against self-inflicted
suffering.

Dostoevsky holds up the Underground Man as a positive

example; Notes from the Underground argues in favor of self-
inflicted suffering.
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF HATE

"I am a sick man I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man."

These are the opening words of Notes from the Underground, and
indeed the Underground Man lives in a constant state of misdirected
and paralyzing spite. His plight, he explains, is worsened by the fact
that an intelligent man of consciousness cannot alleviate his spite
through revenge; he is so conscious and so intelligent that he raises
doubt after doubt until he is paralyzed in inaction. So instead, the
Underground Man harbors his spite underground even for the
most trivial offenses for decades.
The Underground Man hates himself more than he hates other men.
His isolation underground, then, has less to do with an aversion to
humanity and more to do with his attempt to take revenge on his own
character.
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF ISOLATION

Notes from the Underground features a lonely, self-isolated, self-

hating hermit who has spent the last twenty years of his life
underground. However, this Underground Man has been alone,
"always alone," for all of his life. His isolation seems to stem from an
acute and paralyzing self-awareness. He expects the world to operate
the way it does in literature, and after each inevitable disappointment
he can do nothing but retreat back into his lonely world of books.
Nursing a fragile ego, the Underground Man will often hate in return
for being hated, which is not the quickest way to make friends.
The Underground Man chooses to remain underground in order to
avoid other people.

The Underground Man has been driven underground by the

callousness of other people; in a nutshellit's not his fault.
 NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF SOCIETY AND
CLASS

Notes from the Underground was written at a time when the plight of
the lower classes was finally being recognized in Russia. The
Underground Man himself, while not of the lowest class, does
consider himself impoverished, much to his embarrassment and
resentment. Many of his attempts at revenge are simultaneously
driven and thwarted by his social standing as compared to that of his
enemies.
In the Underground Man's view, moral and intellectual superiority
ought to be synonymous with social and financial superiority.
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF REVENGE

Much of Notes from the Underground has to do with thwarted

attempts at revenge. The Underground Man argues that revenge is
more difficult impossible, actually for an intelligent and
conscious man than it is for a normal "man of action." The reason is
this: men of consciousness can't justify their need for revenge. They
understand that it cannot be explained in a rational way, so they are
paralyzed with inaction. Revenge, then, is portrayed as an outlet for
spite. Without an external outlet like revenge, the Underground Man
suffers inner anguish for decades when the smallest of offenses are
done to him.
Notes from the Underground argues that revenge is always trivial
and destructive to both parties involved.

Notes from the Underground argues that revenge is a necessary

outlet for spite. Without it, we would all suffer like the Underground
Man.

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND THEME OF PRINCIPLES

In Notes from the Underground, the isolated anti-hero lives under a

strict, harsh philosophy of his own choosing. He is convinced of a
series of certainties, such as the necessity of suffering. He needs to
find real justifications for all actions, but he always fails to do so and
thus can never act. His other doctrines include: Real men of
intelligence can't ever become anything. Free will is man's most
prized possession. The list goes on, as does the Underground Man's
vehement adherence to these beliefs.
Although the Underground Man claims to be a romantic, he is really
a hardheaded realist for whom nothing is sacred.
THE CRYSTAL PALACE (OR "THE PALACE OF CRYSTAL" IN
CONSTANCE GARNETT'S TRANSLATION

Sowhat exactly is the Crystal Palace? In 1851, The Great

Exhibition was held in London. It was basically like a World's Fair,
where everyone got together to show how cool and modern things
were those days, and especially how much cooler and more modern
England was than France. Architect Joseph Paxton said something
like, "Hey, let's build a building made out of glass and iron, but
mostly glass." The Crystal Palace became a symbol of modernity and
technology. When Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote his radical socialist
novel What Is to Be Done?, he used the Crystal Palace as a metaphor.
If we all become socialist, he said, we can turn society into a Crystal
Palace. And then we can do anything we want!

And that's where Dostoevsky comes in. The Underground Man first
brings up the notion of the Crystal Palace in Part I, Chapter Seven
when he's talking about how awful things will be if we ever figure out
all the rules of nature (because then man won't have free will
anymore). It is at this moment, he says, that the Crystal Palace will
finally be built. Then he digresses for a bit. When he comes back to it,
he's got a few reasons why we shouldn't go along with
Chernyshevsky.
Reason #1: Hen houses are not mansions

The Underground Man talks for a bit about the dangers of

establishing an ideal: once we do, we'll never settle for anything less.
This is part of the danger with wanting or expecting a Crystal Palace
of utopian perfection; we'll spend our whole lives being dissatisfied if
we never get it.

Reason #2: Suffering is stylish right now

The Underground Man knows that "in the Crystal Palace, it

[suffering] is unthinkable." As he's told us time and time again,
suffering is man's best friend. We enjoy it inflicting pain is our way
of proving that we have free will and aren't beholden to the rational
laws of nature. Living in a Crystal Palace would mean giving up
suffering, which would mean abandoning free will.

Reason #3: You can't make fun of the Crystal Palace.

More than anything, the Underground Man rejects the idea that he
can't "stick [his] tongue out at" the Crystal Palace. This is highly
problematic for a man who makes it his life's work to mock
everything.

2+2=4 AND THE STONE WALL

These two ideas come up a lot. And they really piss off the
Underground Man. His argument goes like this: 1) free will means
man gets to do whatever he wants. 2) The laws of nature say that 2+2
always has to equal 4. 3) He wants 2+2 to equal 5. 4) The laws of
nature are a stone wall standing in the way of his free will.

The metaphor continues when the Underground Man compares the

way a man of action would act as opposed to a man of consciousness.
The man of action sees the wall and goes, "Oh, it's a wall," and leaves
it at that. But the Underground Man is "not going to be reconciled to
it simply because it is a stone wall." Rather, he's going to smash his
head against it, even knowing the futility of his actions.

So how is this a symbol? Well, when the Underground Man talks

about the rule of 2+2=4, he isn't just talking about 2+2=4. He's also
talking about3+3=6? Well, yes, but even more than that, he's
talking about all rules of rationale and logic: the rule that if you're
hungry, you'll eat; if a dog is threatened, he'll show his teeth; if
someone hits you, you will feel pain. He finds all of these rules to be
restrictive in the same way that this very specific example the
2+2=4 example is limiting to his free will. The stone wall, then, is a
great way to represent the barrier that these rules construct.
THE UNDERGROUND

We know that the Underground Man has been underground for

twenty years, but he tells stories about his interactions with the world
sixteen years ago. So when he talks about being "underground," he's
speaking metaphorically.

So think about what this indicates. Underground = isolated. The

Underground Man is solitary. When he witnesses other people
speaking, he describes it as "listening through a crack under the
floor." When he speaks to others, he imagines himself coming "out
into the light of day." When he oscillates between wanting friends
and preferring his solitude, it is a decision between the real world and
his imagined world underground.

Why underground? That is, why doesn't the Underground Man

imagine himself indoors, or in a closet, or behind a tree? What is it
about beingunderground that is such a powerful image? Well, taken
literally, if the Underground Man is under the ground, he's beneath
us. What we're getting at is the connotation of inferiority
fascinating, since all the guy seems to do is tell us he's "more
intelligent" than any of the men walking around above him. This
conflict the fragile ego afraid of being "beneath" and convincing
itself it's "above" is central to Notes from the Underground.
"THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL" (OR "THE LOFTY AND
BEAUTIFUL" IN SOME TRANSLATIONS)

This phrase comes from Immanuel Kant's 1764 essay, Observations

on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. In this work, Kant (an
enlightenment philosopher) explores these two emotions we feel
when looking at things like mountains or roses or breathtaking
artwork. Dostoevsky appropriates the term and uses it to describe,
somewhat satirically, the Underground Man's "appreciation" for all
that is fine in the world. The Underground Man tells us of his
"attacks" of the sublime and beautiful, moments when he is
"conscious of goodness" in the world. Unfortunately, those moments
end up driving him into mire and filth. The sublime and beautiful,
then, come to represent one half of the Underground Man's crazy
flip-flopping between a life underground and an aesthete's awe of the
best the world has to offer.

ANALYSIS: SETTING
Where It All Goes Down

St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1840s and 60s, in a metaphorical hovel underground

Remember all that cool intellectual history stuff we talked about in

the "Overview" of Notes from the Underground? That was
Dostoevsky's time/place context for writing this work, but it's also the
time and place in which the Underground Man is
set. Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, the Crystal Palace, rational egoism,
socialism, the fall of the feudal system these all compose the setting
for Notes and the intellectual environment to which the Underground
Man is responding.

As for the actual underground hovel itself, well that's a big metaphor
you can read about in "Symbols, Imagery, and Allegory."
ANALYSIS: NARRATOR POINT OF VIEW
Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

First Person (Central Narrator)

The narrative voice in Notes from the Underground is, of course, that
of the Underground Man. And in fact, much of the text is just his
voice, talking to us.

Since you could imagine this getting a bit uneventful, Dostoevsky

does something interesting: he creates a second character, an
imagined reader to whom the Underground Man is speaking. The
narrator imagines our responses to his argument, which means his
voice takes the form of a retort. But don't take our word for it: "the
antithesis of the normal man [], the man of acute consciousness,
[] has come [] not out of the lap of nature but out of a retort, [a]
retort-made man." So that's your narrative voice: a retort.

When the Underground Man later declares that his readers don't
exist that these "gentlemen" to whom he has been speaking are
imagined he renders absurd his entire "retort." He's responding to
nothing. He's a retort to a voice that doesn't exist. And that's quite a
premise for a first-person novel.

ANALYSIS: GENRE
Realism, Philosophical Literature

Notes from the Underground is one of the earlier examples of realist

literature. Rather than focusing on, well, "the beautiful and sublime,"
Dostoevsky paints a gritty portrait of a shabby man in a dirty hole in
the ground. He's not trying to rise above the grisly details of dirty
reality he's putting it in our face.

But enough about realism. Philosopher and scholar Walter Kauffman

called Notes from the Underground "the best overture for
Existentialism ever written." So while the late-19th century German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wasn't really doing his thing yet, and
the mid-20th century French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was a
mere glint in his father's father's eye, we can see how they might
have picked up a thing or two from Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky wasn't strictly speaking a real honest-to-goodness official

"existentialist." In fact, that term didn't exist yet. And in fact, once it
did exist, most people called "existentialists" adamantly denied the
label.
But the point is, we can identify many existentialist ideas tenets
in Notes from the Underground. And if you want to know what these
tenets are, check out Shmoop's Themes.
ANALYSIS: TONE
Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?

Darkly Comic, "Polemic"

First of all, we're going to talk about the tone of Notes from the
Underground not the tone of the Underground Man himself. The
difference is that we're looking at the work as a whole and addressing
Dostoevsky's attitude, not just the bitter and angry attitude of his
main character. Now, the question of whether or not the
Underground Man isDostoevsky himself is a big can of worms. To
address this question means to go into Dostoevsky's other works,
mess around with his biography, read his letters and personal
accounts we're talking about a major, major project.

Still, if you don't want to do this, you can look at Notes as it stands
alone. If the question really interests you, check out the beginning
and end notes from the author. What hints does Dostoevsky give
about his view of the Underground Man? Does he try to distance
himself from his character? We'll let you take care of that while we
address what appears to be the author's tone as distinct from the tone
of his character.

We'll start with the easy part, our "darkly comic" label above. You
may have laughed a few times reading Notes from the Underground.
If you're reading the Constance Garnett translation (which we read),
the humour might not come across as clearly as it does with, say,
translator Michael R. Katz. Check out this passage from Katz's
translation: "Well, even if you reach the same result [], at least
you'll be able to flog yourself from time to time, and that will liven
things up a bit. Although it may be reactionary, it's still better than
nothing."

Now let's get to this "polemic" word. A polemic is a written assault.

When someone writes something opinionated and theoretical that
you think is absolutely wrong, you can respond to it by writing
something equally opinionated and theoretical that basically says,
"Not a chance, you got it all wrong." And that's called polemic. (If you
want the specifics about which theories Dostoevsky was refuting,
check out Shmoop's "Overview." For now we're just going to talk
about his scathing approach.)

How can we tell it's polemic? Look at the Underground Man's fantasy
of being a professional "aesthete" (a person focused on the artistic
qualities of everything). "An artist, for instance, paints a picture
worthy of Gay. At once I drink to the health of the artist who painted
the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all that is 'sublime and
beautiful.' An author has written As you will: at once I drink to the
health of 'anyone you will' because I love all that is 'sublime and
beautiful.'" This is Jon-Stewart-quality material. Dostoevsky is clearly
mocking the fat (his description, not ours), lazy people who
"appreciate art" for a living. Even the phrase "sublime and beautiful"
comes from Immanuel Kant, one of the men against whom
Dostoevsky rails. Dostoevsky's tone, in its exaggeration and incisive
bite, screams "polemic."

Of course, there are those who think it's not polemic, that Dostoevsky
actually wasn't writing in response to Chernyshevsky (the Crystal
Palace guy) and all the other thinkers/writers/philosophers to whom
he refers. For more perspectives on this issue, please see websites
such as this and this.
ANALYSIS: WRITING STYLE
Manipulative, Multi-Layered, Iterative, Metaphoric, and of course, Goosebump -Inducing

We'll start at the beginning of our list above. How

is Notes manipulative? Look at the narrative technique in Part I,
Chapter Seven. The Underground Man tells us that there is one big
advantage the mother of all advantages for which man will
sacrifice everything else, for which he will act against reason. He's
talking, of course, about free will, but before he reveals the subject of
his discourse, he digresses. A lot. He talks about Cleopatra,Henry
Thomas Buckle, the Crystal Palace, the history of the universe. And
the whole time we're all, "yes, OK, sure, hurry up" while he goes on
and on about how man doesn't want to act according to rules. And
then, before we know it, we've "Yes, OK, sure thing"-ed our way into
his conclusion about free will. He tricked us. He got us to fill in the
rest of his argument before he even finished it himself.

Now read this sentence not for content, but for structure: "And in
particular it may be more advantageous than any advantage even
when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest
conclusions of our reason concerning our advantagefor in any
circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most
importantthat is, our personality, our individuality." Structurally,
the meat of the sentence (subject and verb) are done with right away:
"It may be more advantageous than any advantage." That's it. The
rest of the sentence serves to qualify and refine this main idea, down
to the tiniest specification. Even the specifications have
specifications. This is what we mean when we call the style "multi-
layered' and even "iterative," since the Underground Man will often
repeat the same concept in slightly altered forms. All the time he is
refining further and further that which he wants to express. It makes
sense, too first he points out the big picture, and then he gets down
to the details. Since much of this refining has to do with metaphors
(the mouse, the wall, the Crystal Palace, the chess game, the ant-
heaps, we could go on forever), we think we're pretty justified with
the "metaphoric" label too.

Oh, and we couldn't help but admire Dostoevsky's sheer literary

prowess. Case in point:

What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that
men, consciously, that is fully understanding their real interests,
have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on
another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by
nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten
track, and have obstinately, willfully, struck out another difficult,
absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness.
Now tell us you don't have goosebumps. If that isn't sublime and
beautiful, we don't know what is.
ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH THE TITLE

First off, what is the title, exactly? You may have seen it as Notes
from the Underground, as we refer to it on Shmoop, or Notes from
Underground, or even Letters from the Underworld (someone was
feeling creative that day). This is all the fault of translation; since the
work was originally written is Russian, it quite fittingly has a Russian
title. Translations are never exact, so you end up with a variety of
titles to choose from . Notes from Underground is the most literal
translation; we refer to it as Notes from the Underground because
Shmoop uses the Constance Garnett translation by that name.

On the surface, Notes from the Underground is a set of notes written

from underground. (As you'll read in "Symbols, Imagery, and
Allegory," the "underground" hovel is likely metaphorical. This guy is
"underground" in the "I'm anti-social and hate the whole world" sort
of way.)

But that's not all. We're dealing with Russian literature; so there's
always a shout-out to other great literature somewhere. As you've
likely heard by now, Notes from the Underground was in part a
response to Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. In
Chernyshevsky's novel, while ranting about how great rational
egoism is, one of the characters asks rhetorically, "Do you hear that,
in your underground hole?"

Of course, this question didn't stay rhetorical for long, because Notes
from the Underground gives an answer (In short: "You bet your
fanny I hear it, and oh man, do I have a lot to say in return. You'd
better have a seat.")
ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH THE EPIGRAPH
Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entre of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story,
and they get us headed in the right direction.
(Epigraph for Part II)

When from dark error's subjugationMy words of passionate

exhortationHad wrenched thy fainting spirit free;And writhing
prone in thine afflictionThou didst recall with maledictionThe vice
that had encompassed thee:And when thy slumbering conscience,
frettingBy recollection's torturing flame,Thou didst reveal the
hideous settingOf thy life's current ere I came:When suddenly I saw
thee sicken,And weeping, hide thine anguished face,Revolted,
maddened, horror-stricken,At memories of foul disgrace. Nekrasov

Nikolai Nekrasov was a Russian poet and contemporary of

Dostoevsky. In fact, they were buddies; Dostoevsky actually gave the
eulogy at Nekrasov's funeral. Don't you wish you could give your
friend a pat on the back by using his work as an epigraph to your
world-altering novel? (Fun fact: Dostoevsky would quote this same
poem in The Brothers Karamazov. Nifty.)

But about the poem. Note that it's an epigraph to Part II, not to the
work as a whole. And that makes sense, since the subject of the poem
has much to do with " Propos of the Wet Snow," Part II of Notes.
And that subject isdegraded prostitutes.

OK, actually, it's more about saving degraded prostitutes. Nekrasov's

poem "When from the darkness of delusion", from which the
epigraph is taken, is written from a man to the prostitute he's saved.
The guy is basically saying, "I lectured at you until you stopped being
a prostitute, and now you get to be my wife." The wife part doesn't
come in yet, since the epigraph is only the beginning of the poem, but
the Underground Man quotes the last two lines when he's fantasizing
about Liza showing up to his apartment: "Into my house come bold
and free, / Its rightful mistress there to be."

The point is that the Underground Man is living his life according to
literature, which of course is ridiculous for a man who berates foolish
Romantics for being, well, foolish romantics. For more on this, read
everything else we have to say on Notes.
 ANALYSIS: PLOT ANALYSIS
Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax,
suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.

Initial Situation

"An intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only

the fool who becomes anything."

This is where we start: the Underground Man isn't anything, and he

can't ever become anything. Talk about static and unchanging.
Conflict

The Stone Wall, or "Consciousness-Driven Inertia," Depending On

How Complicated You Like It

The conflict becomes clear once the Underground Man starts talking
about "the wall," his metaphor for the laws of nature. (Read all about
it in "Symbols, Imagery, and Allegory.") Consider these two images:
the man of action is a bull who is stopped cold by the stone wall. The
man of consciousness can't do anything about the wall either, but he
is willing to smash his head against it. Both of these suggest that the
real conflict is the stone wall. As the Underground Man continues his
discussion, the wall becomes almost an antagonist. The laws of
nature, after all, are what threaten man's free will.

On the other hand, you could argue that the conflict is more about
inertia and consciousness than anything else. In this way, the conflict
is like a further exploration of the initial situation. "You can't act?
OK, why?" The answer is hyper-consciousness, which leads to inertia.
In this case, consciousness is the real conflict here. After all, the
Underground Man himself claims that "consciousness is an illness."
(Of course, he later negates this sentiment, but that's part of the
complication stage).
Complication
We don't even know where to start.

As you see below, the climax, denouement, and conclusion of Notes

from the Underground all fall in the last chapter of Part II. This
means that the majority of Notes comprises the complication. Here's
one example: the Underground Man states during the conflict stage
that consciousness is an illness. He goes on to say that man "prizes it
and would not give it up for any satisfaction." Here's another one: the
Underground Man claims to not have readers at all that certainly
complicated the process of us reading his work. And that's just Part I.
Part II is chock-full of complication after complication, which you
might expect when a man like our narrator is interacting with normal
people in the real world.
Climax

"They won't let me ... I can't be good!"

It would be reasonable to think that Liza slamming the door in

Chapter Ten is the climax. You can argue that if you want to, but we
wanted to offer an alternative.

Consider the idea that the scene in which the Underground Man says
"They won't let meI can't be good!" is actually the climax of the
story. You'll want to pay particular attention to the word "good" and
then go on back to the very first sentence of the novel: "I am a sick
manI am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man." As translator
Michael Katz points out, the Russian word for "spiteful" can also be
read as "evil." The two words dobryi in the novel's opener
and zloi in this line form a pair of opposites, much like our good/evil
pairing.

Now, this does quite a few nifty things. Structurally, it

packages Notes in between these two book ends. Thematically, it
forms a great start/end dichotomy. 1) I am evil, and 2) They won't let
me be good. This has some big implications for the Underground
Man, who is all about free will and personal agency. He refuses to
abide by 2+2=4, because if he wants 2+2=5, that's what he's going to
believe. But that's a far cry from the defeatist attitude we see here. It's
as if the "I'm going to smash my head against the wall" Underground
Man were admitting that, actually, his free will is out to lunch and
won't be back any time soon. It's not that his consciousness is causing
inertia which he claimed for most of the novel it's that "they"
won't let him move from his spite.

To peg this moment as the climax is to take a somewhat extremist

view: if this moment of defeat is the climax of the Underground
Man's argument, things aren't looking too hopeful for our narrator. It
also raises a lot of difficult questions, chief among them: Who are the
"they" to whom the Underground Man refers?

Suspense

Will Liza be lost forever?

No matter which moment you identity as the climax the door

slamming or the Underground Man's vocal finale, the suspense stage
is largely the same: will the Underground Man lose Liza? If you go
with Option #1 (the door slamming) climax, then the suspense lasts
about four lines while the Underground Man runs after her in the
street. If you choose Option #2, then the suspense starts earlier, from
their second and final (and short-lived) time in bed. Either way,
you're basically talking about the same dilemma over losing Liza.
Denouement

The Underground Man loses Liza. He wonders whether all his insults
will somehow "purify" and save her.

At this point, it's clear that Liza is gone and the Underground Man
will be left alone, forever. (Of course, we already knew that, as he's
forty now and living alone underground, but it doesn't mean the story
doesn't have its element of suspense. After all, we always knew
Indiana Jones was going to live, but that didn't make watching
Harrison Ford any less entertaining.) Usually, the denouement
makes something clear for the reader all the Underground Man has
done is raise more questions. This is fitting, since we shouldn't really
expect to walk away from a work about uncertainty with any degree
of confidence in objective truth.
Conclusion

The Underground Man addresses us (his imaginary readers) for the

last time

The conclusion begins right when the Underground Man pulls out of
his narrative and says, "perhaps I should end these Notes here?"
Then he takes a step back and is able to address what he's just written
as a whole. You know how some English teachers talk about how a
stellar conclusion does more than just reiterate, how it opens the
work in new and interesting ways without leaving loose ends, how it
encourages the reader to take the arguments further himself? Well
this is pretty much textbook-perfect as far as stellar conclusions are
concerned.

So what does he say, exactly? To start, he forces us to digest Notes in

a very personal way. Until now, we might have gotten away with
putting a wall between us and the Underground Man. He's doing his
weird underground things in his little hovel, which seem to have
nothing to do with us. But the conclusion strips away that barrier. "I
have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to
carry halfway," the Underground man declares. Now, like it or not,
we have to compare ourselves to this guy.
ANALYSIS: BOOKER'S SEVEN BASIC PLOTS ANALYSIS
Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures:
Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop
explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderellas slipper.

Plot Type : Rebirth

The Shadow of the Dark Power

Almost all of Notes from the Underground

The shadow here is so many thingsthe Underground Man's

isolation, his need for suffering, his enjoyment of suffering, his
hyper-consciousness, the wall that is the laws of nature, his poverty,
etc.
The Shadow Recedes

The Underground Man reaches out to Liza

The shadow of self-imposed isolation and insular hyper-

consciousness starts to recede when the Underground Man breaks
through his crusty exterior to reach out to Liza. Unfortunately, his
version of "reaching out" is a lecture on how she will likely get a
disease and die without ever being loved or remembered (but we can
give him points for trying).
The Shadow Recedes Some More

Liza actually shows up to the Underground Man's apartment; he talks

about his feelings, and they have sex

Things seem the most hopeful for the Underground Man when he
breaks down crying and confesses everything to Liza. She comforts
him and they have sex, and we have to wonder for a moment if,
perhaps, there isn't some Miraculous Redemption coming soon.
Miraculous Redemption (Or Not)

Liza leaves forever.

Unfortunately, while there was potential for a Miraculous

Redemption, the Underground Man messes this up royally. Far from
redeeming him, Liza's exit condemns our narrator to a lifetime of
solitude and suffering.
ANALYSIS: THREE ACT PLOT ANALYSIS
For a three-act plot analysis, put on your screenwriters hat. Moviemakers know the formula well: at the end of
Act One, the main character is drawn in completely to a conflict. During Act Two, she is farthest away from her
goals. At the end of Act Three, the story is resolved.

Act I

The three act plot analysis best applies only to Part II of Notes from
the Underground, since this is when we have action instead of
philosophizing. You can see the elements of the three-act structure
most clearly in the story about Zverkov's dinner. Act I lasts up until
the Underground Man invites himself to the dinner and then
obstinately declares to his reader that, no matter what, he is going.
He's set up the dominoes, and there's no turning back now.
Act II

And it's only downhill from there. Matters continue to get worse and
worse all through dinner as the Underground Man gets further and
further from ever being accepted by Simonov and his friends. We
think the all-time low-point is when the Underground Man begs
Simonov to lend him even more money so he can tag along to the
brothel, even though he is very clearly not wanted.
Act III

Act III takes us all the way through the Underground Man's tryst with
Liza. He resolves the Simonov issue by sending an apology letter, but
we're pretty sure that's isn't going to do the trick. He's likely to be a
social outcast for the rest of eternity, or at least until he dies. When
Liza slams the door and leaves the Underground Man alone, we're in
conclusion land; the Underground Man is right back in the inert
stagnancy he started in.
ANALYSIS: TRIVIA
Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge

As you've probably heard by now, Dostoevsky wrote Notes from the

Underground in part as a response to Nikolai Chernyshevsky's
novel What Is to Be Done?. Of course, Nikolai wrote his novel in
response to Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, which is also
referenced in Notes from the Underground. Oh, and Vladimir
Lenin was so inspired by Chernyshevsky that he wrote a political
pamphlet called What Is to Be Done?
Dostoevsky's tombstone reads: "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it
die, it bringeth forth much fruit." This is a biblical passage from the
Gospel of John as well as the epigraph of his final novel, The
Brothers Karamazov.
Dostoevsky has a streak of poverty in his later life (due to a gambling
addiction) and wrote some of his most famous work as quickly as
possible simply for the paycheck. Example? Crime and Punishment.
THE UNDERGROUND MAN
Character Analysis

The Underground Man goes through a ton of arguments in Notes,

each one building on the last. It can get confusing. We're going to give
you the quick and dirty here in what we hope to be a delightful 60-
seconds of reading. But if you're good with the basic tenets and want
to jump right to the analysis, feel free. Key terms are italicized, and
definitions in parentheses.

Ready? First, the Underground Man is hyper-conscious. (This means

he's too aware and too analytical.) This leads to inertia (the inability
to act or change). Why? Because there are no primary causes (no
basic motives he can justify). The result? He can't be or become
anything. Next, we hear about his attacks of the sublime and
beautiful (the aesthetic pleasures and awe-inspiring elements of our
world) which lead him to misery. Once he's in the mire of suffering,
he alternates between being a hero and being miserable. If he's very
conscious of his misery, then it's pleasurable.

Next comes the subject of romanticism. According to the

Underground Man, Russian romantics are better than the French and
German for their grounding in reality and traditional values. We also
learn that the Underground Man sometimes fakes living because he
doesn't know how else to be a person; he has "phases" of wanting
friends, but these are short-lived. We also get an attack on
Chernyshevsky and the Crystal Palace.Rational egoism (the theory
that man will always act according to his best interests) is wrong
because it ignores free will. To prove free will, man will intentionally
cause destruction and harm. Oh, lastly, the Underground Man has no
readers.
But we beg to differ.

Let's start with the Underground Man's early claim that he has never
been able to act. His reasoning is that there is no justification for any
action so he remains inert (taking no action). He's so paralyzed by
having to choose what to do that his decision is to not choose. OK,
but this isn't really an option. If he can't justify going outside, he ends
up staying in he's still deciding to stay in, though. If he's sitting
around and brooding all the time, why doesn't he try to justify said
brooding? He claims all a man like he can do is babble what's the
primary cause (motive) for babbling?

Then you've got the claim that he's hyper-conscious, acutely aware.
Check out the passage when he walks the Nevsky, debating how best
to get revenge on the officer, only to pass by the officer before he's
realized what happened. Does this sound like someone who is acutely
conscious of his surroundings?

And what about his disdain for rational egoism? He rejects the idea
that man will act according to his own self-interest, but in many ways
he is the epitome of an egoist. "The world may go to pot," he says, "so
long as I always get my tea." On top of that, he condemns the
"frippery" of French and German romanticism, but he can be quite
the romantic himself. He lives in a world of his own idealistic making
look at the "Lake Como" passage in Part II, Chapter One. His
fantasies are all something out of a cheesy novel. Come to think of it,
most of his life is out of a cheesy novel. The whole idea of the older
man redeeming the young and corrupted prostitute is a major theme
in Russian literature. His obsession with revenge is right out of The
Count of Monte Cristo.

But the most interesting contradiction has to do with freedom. The

Underground Man is Mr. Free Will. He's so free, in fact, that he's
going to bash his head against the wall of reason just because he
won't resign himself to the fact that 2+2=4. All his suffering, all his
self-inflicted pain is supposed to prove his freedom. Except in his
masochism, he's constricted himself to an underground prison.
Prison = freedom? We don't think so. Next, look at the way that the
Underground Man explains his actions to us.

He justifies them with a series of logical arguments. He is, in fact,

beholden to rationality. In condemning the laws of reason, he uses
reason. And what about living according to books? Isn't this just
another system of rules he must follow? "Leave us alone without
books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not
know what to [do]," he says.

And look at the only time the word "fate" is used in the entire novel,
at the end of Part II, Chapter V, when he decides "It's fate" for him to
go slap Zverkov in the face. If he's not freely determining his own
actions, how could he possibly have free will? Lastly, check out the
line at the end of the Underground Man's hysterical Liza-induced
breakdown: "They won't let meI can't be good!" That doesn't sound
like free will, either.

Of course, this is only one approach to Notes from the Underground.

Many critics hack away at the Underground Man's reasoning, but you
have to admit that he makes some compelling arguments. Check out
his discussion on the toothache and imagine that, instead of talking
about a toothache, he's talking about the three tests, two quizzes, and
term paper you have to deal with during midterms. Do you suffer in
silence? The Underground man takes it to the extreme by claiming
that, actually, all this complaining is enjoyable. What do you think?
Yes? No? It's certainly something to think about.

The big 2+2=5 argument is also rather compelling. Look at it this

way: someone tells you that you're fated to eat pancakes tomorrow
morning. No doubt about it, you will eat pancakes. Not only that, but
you are physically incapable of desiring anything other than
pancakes. Are you going to go along with that? Every day for the rest
of your life? What if you want cornflakes who are they to tell you
what you want! You'll want whatever you please! We don't know
about you, but that certainly makes sense to us.

Still, it's hard to get too caught up in the Underground Man's logic.
Part of the reason he seems so different from us is that he's suffering
from a major case of extremism. He's either a hero, or he's groveling
in the mud. And he knows as much. "There was nothing in between,"
he says, "[and] that was my ruin." He's either living in a dirty hovel,
or he's soaring on flights of "sublime and beautiful" fantasy. In a way,
we want to condemn him for this absurd flip-flopping. But the
Underground Man challenges us in this: "I have only in my life
carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway." So
perhaps he's a crazy man for living in the extremities of emotion and
opinion. But then again, perhaps we're copping out by living in the
middle ground.

LIZA
Character Analysis

Liza is a prostitute. If you're only going to know one thing about Liza,
this should be it especially because, in the Underground Man's
eyes, this is her defining quality.

Other than that, she can seem a bit hard to pin down. She attracts the
Underground Man without being particularly pretty. She is young,
but with the "grave" nature of someone older. At first, Liza callously
rejects the Underground Man's attempts to make it clear that, really,
her life is awful and, in fact, is only going to get worse. "What's it to
you?" she wants to know.

Of course it's not long before she's weeping into her pillow, so the
Underground Man clearly got to her. (A horrific vision of your future
would probably do the same to you.) But it's not until Liza comes to
the Underground Man's home that we start to get some real insight
into her character. She's nice. Wicked nice, in fact. We'll even go so
far as to call her 'tremendously compassionate.' The Underground
Man yells at her, tells her she's worth nothing, berates her life and
choices, predicts her miserable death, and claims to have been
mocking since they met. And yet, when he breaks down crying, Liza
comforts him.
Now the interesting question when thinking about Liza actually has
more to do with the Underground Man than it as to do with her. Why
does he treat her this way?

Glad you asked! We (and the world of scholarly criticism) have a few
theories.
Reason: There is no reason

Shock Factor: -2

We're not surprised by this one. The Underground Man claims that
he can't find primary reasons for any action. If we ask why he treats
Liza so badly, we can't really expect him to whip out a stellar
justification. The answer would probably be inertia; he's going along
with the status quo flow, and the river has been running in the
direction of hurtfulness for as long as he can remember.
Reason: The Underground Man is selfish

Shock Factor: -3

This would be even less surprising, considering how he says that "the
world may go to pot [] so long as [he] always get[s his] tea." The
Underground Man has made it quite clear that he loves pain and
suffering, and that inflicting it on others (think of the toothache guy)
is enjoyable. So if he's making Liza miserable, it's only becausehe
likes to make people miserable.
Reason: He really is trying to save her, because he's deluded and lives in a world of books

Shock Factor: 1

Again, this makes sense based on what we've seen. The idea of a wise
older cultured man saving a prostitute is popular storyline in Russian
Lit. (Just think Pretty Woman and you'll get the picture.) If you need
proof, just look at the epigraph Nekrasov's poem is about this sort
of relationship. So the Underground Man is acting out one of his
literary fantasies just like he tried to do with the officer on the
Nevsky (that fantasy was about revenge, not prostitutes, but it's
another example of a romantic literary scene). If so, then what
appears to be unabashed cruelty is really just tough love. The
Underground Man posits this theory himself after Liza leaves:
"Resentment why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and painful
consciousness! Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and have
exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never die in
her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her the feeling
of insult will elevate and purify her ... by hatred."
Reason: He's actually in love with Liza

Shock Factor: 10

Yes, that's right it's possible that the Underground Man really is in
love with Liza. Who knows maybe love is about suffering. Maybe to
love means to tyrannize, to subjugate, towait a second. This is all
sounding very familiar. See the following:

"With me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral

superiority. [] Love really consists in the right freely given by the
beloved object to tyrannise over her. [] I did not imagine love
except as a struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with
moral subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the
subjugated object."

Cut to the picture of Liza huddled up crying on the floor after their
second time in bed. The Underground Man is flipping out because he
feels "oppressed" by her presence and doesn't really know what to do
with her. (Her = the subjugated objectsee where we're going?
ZVERKOV

Character Analysis
The Underground Man hates Zverkov for so many reasons, it's almost
hard to know where to be begin.

For one, Zverkov is constantly talking about his sexual exploits, and
as a feudal lord he exercises his right to sleep with the virgin brides
before their husbands get to. The guy is pompous, arrogant, vain, and
Mr. Social Butterfly. Well, at least according to the Underground
Man.
Oh, right. This raises a good point: everything we know about
Zverkov we know through our narrator. Either he really is a jerk or
the Underground Man is just jealous of the fact that Zverkov has
what he doesn't. Check this out: "I hated his handsome, but stupid
face (for which I would, however, have gladly exchanged my
intelligent one)." Interesting
APOLLON
Character Analysis

Apollon, like all the minor characters in the book, is filtered through
our not-so-impartial narrator. He's either as much of a jerk as the
Underground Man claims, or he's been unfairly made the victim of
our narrator's unflinching hate for everyone who breathes and even
some who don't. It's hard to think that Apollon is as awful as the
Underground Man makes him out to be; how can a servant be
superior, pedantic, and condescending? On top of that, the
Underground Man seems to hate him for things like reading
psalms.On the other hand, though, Apollon does seem like a jerk
when Liza shows up, but again we can't be sure that the way his
actions are portrayed is how they actually went down.

The interesting question with Apollon is why doesn't the

Underground Man just get rid of him? Here's our narrator's
explanation: "But at that time I could not get rid of him, it was as
though he were chemically combined with my existence. Besides,
nothing would have induced him to consent to leave me. I could not
live in furnished lodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, my
shell, my cave, in which I concealed myself from all mankind, and
Apollon seemed to me, for some reason, an integral part of that flat,
and for seven years I could not turn him away."

Looking over this, the word "inertia" comes to mind. Apollon is a part
of the flat, sure, but more importantly he's part of the routine, the
way things are. The Underground Man has a hard time changing
anything because his hyper-consciousness prevents him from acting.
This is why, he explains, he's bogged down in "inertia" (remember, a
resistance to change) and we can see that playing out here with his
servant.