“Notes from Underground” by Fyodor Dostoevsky is about a man who many would recognize instantly as having an existential crisis; he is a bitter, cynical, spiteful former civil servant. At the beginning of his journal, he assures the reader that his motive in writing is not to entertain them. He tells of his exploits as a spiteful civil servant, his skill at making people unhappy and his reason for staying at a job he despised and hated. Once he has made his cheerlessness and lack of mirth clear, he proceeds to expound on his situation, as well as the philosophy by which he lives. His convictions and opinions, though perverse, are ones that most people have felt at some point.
The “Underground Man”, as he is popularly dubbed, appears to work hard to show the reader how loathsome he is. He states his unattractiveness, his cruelty as a civil servant for enjoyment, and has self-defeating behavior, such as not consulting a doctor due to his allegedly sick liver. He reveals later that he was indeed not a spiteful officer; he could not be anything. He seems to blame his depressed state and inertia on “being too conscious”. The Underground Man is of the opinion that people express their pain in order to gain pleasure from the discomfort of others, taking the analogy of a man moaning due to a toothache.
The Underground Man thinks of himself as highly intelligent, capable of academic and philosophical thought. He romanticizes situations in which he finds himself and draws on the fantasy that follows, showing he is introverted. His scatter-minded and hesitant way of expressing his thoughts may simply be the product of a convoluted intellect. He seems to be unaware of other people’s perspective and his impression on them, and constantly speculates on how others perceive him. “The Underground” could be a metaphor for the self, cut off from the external world, taking a cue from “But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognized and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of oscillations”.
Although many people would identify with the Underground Man, at least at some point or on some things, he is very different from most people, a point which is mostly apparent via his awkward, stressful and painful interactions with others, his solitude, and his puzzlement at social behavior whose purpose he does not seem to understand. He relates his strange adventures with a tall officer against who he held a grudge for two years, after he went into a bar seeking to be involved in a brawl and thrown out, like a man he had seen go through a window. Instead of getting thrown out, he gets simply “displaced” to move out of the way, which causes him much anger.
People seem to notice that he is different, perhaps by some distinctive behavioral characteristic, and profile him away. He puzzles over this but does not appear to get an answer. He thinks the others at the office loathe him, although he hates and despises them himself. He expresses loneliness and a desire for friendship and companionship through the company of Simonov and his friends, Liza and the tall officer, but does not seem to know how to go about fulfilling his needs. In addition to this, he is quick to perceive malicious intent in others and is a little paranoid. His deep introspection and his introverted nature cause him to be awkward socially.
Works Cited
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from underground. Enoch, 1864.
