Notes from Underground

“I don’t consult a doctor for [my liver], and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. […] No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite.”

Dostoevsky establishes the narrative voice and characterization of the Underground Man from the very beginning lines: He is contrary and knowingly acts against his own interests. The drive to act in a way that is not beneficial to oneself is the main area of psychological exploration in the novella.

“Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature. That is my conviction of forty years.”

The narrative is not only concerned with the character of the Underground Man but also with the nature of the typical educated man of 19th-century Russia. The Underground Man explains that being too conscious of the contradictions in the society in which one lives results in an inability to act, so it is better to act, rather than think.

“I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment!”

The Underground Man exemplifies the paradox of taking pleasure in one’s own suffering and in perpetuating knowingly immoral behavior. At the same time, the narrator is not reliable because, despite his assertions that he enjoys his dissolute life, he is profoundly miserable and lonely.