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ClassicNote on Notes from Underground

The Underground Man, as the protagonist is generally referred to, introduces himself in the opening of the first chapter. A footnote by the author informs us from the start that this protagonist is a fictional character but that people like him must exist in the present cultural setting. The footnote lays out the goal of the first part of the novel, which is to explain how such individuals come into being.

The Underground Man begins by stating that he is sick, spiteful, and unpleasant. He explains that his liver is diseased but he refuses to see a doctor out of spite even though he respects the medical profession. He is forty years old and used to work for the civil service, but was a very rude official and tortu

offended, partially because it can never bring itself to take any action in response to an offence. This is contrary to the bull, which will only stop charging if it encounters a wall. The wall is a metaphor for the impossible: the man of action will stop once he realizes that his revenge cannot be carried out because it is impossible. When something is impossible, this is always due to the laws of nature, such as two times two equals four.

The Underground Man explains that he discovered early in life that he would commit base acts while he was closest to experiencing the "beautiful and sublime," a phrase often used by Russian philosophers of the time and based on the aesthetic philosophies of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. The conceptual incompatibility of this high emotion with the low acts he committed brought the Underground Man shame, which he came to find pleasure in. This is an explicit attack on the philosophical ideas of Kant and the German Romantic movement, which insisted that an appreciation of the "beautiful and sublime" is related to a greater appreciation for morality. The Underground Man, in contrast, finds that appreciation of beauty has no correspondence with moral action and that, quite to the contrary, he would almost by necessity commit the most immoral acts just as he was appreciating the greatest extent of the sublime. The idea that the shame resulting from immorality could bring pleasure !

The road is an important metaphor in this chapter. The road represents building and striving, the things that make up life. The narrator insists that life consists of striving for something, of attempting to achieve a goal, and not of actually achieving it. The utopia that the liberals dream of would eliminate striving entirely. If every action were predetermined and known in advance, there would no longer be anythi

e pleasure in killing. As a result, while in the past bloodshed was carried out for justice, now it is carried out in a much nastier way.

The narrator begins by saying that he is joking, but quickly goes on to say that he has questions that he wants answered. One such question: why is it necessary to make human beings act according to reason? Why isn't opposing "normal interests" more advantageous? He notes that this is only an assumption made by his opponents; it is a law of logic but not a law of humanity.

First, the Underground Man tells us that though he will not see doctors out of spite, he does not know who this spite is directed against; that is, he is aware of certain predispositions in himself, but not of their purposes or origins. In fact, as he later tells us, he is not even spiteful but merely wants to be. Nor was he ever a rude official as he had previously told us. The Underground Man specifically insists that he could not become anything and that an intelligent man in the nineteenth century cannot become anything and necessarily lacks character. First of all, this is a clear attack on the culture of the nineteenth century in which intelligent men cannot make anything of themselves but only fools prosper. Second, the Underground Man attempts to point out in himself a fundamental lack of self. He cannot define himself as a scoundrel or as an insect because intelligence precludes the possibility of defining yourself as any one thing. He cannot be spiteful or rude becau!

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 29127
Approximate Pages = 117 (250 words per page double spaced)