Fyodor Dostoyevsky's existentialist 1864 novel Notes from the Underground tells the tale of the Underground Man, a rambling, incoherent, and bitter civil servant in St. Petersburg. The novel's story is told from the perspective of this strange and mercurial character, in the form of monologues and diary entries that convey the man's potentially skewed perspective. While we see the world through his eyes (and therefore his morals), the Underground Man is most decidedly an anti-hero in his actions and attitudes. Unlike most virtuous heroes in fiction, an anti-hero does not fight for a greater cause, nor does he stand up for an ideal; he is typically selfish, self-aggrandizing, and often emotionally tortured or damaged in some way. The Underground Man in Notes from the Underground shows a protagonist who suffers and acts out in frustration.
The Underground Man is meant to be an alienated character; being isolated for a great portion of his life, he is separated from life, family and love, everything that makes a man potentially good. He lives in a terrible apartment that he can likely barely afford with his dead-end job, and he sees no way out of that particular situation. He has no prospects and no hope of advancement, nothing to look forward to or protect (Frank, 1961). With none of these things, he is not given any causes to work with, and toward that end he lives for nothing. He is constantly skeptical and paranoid about the future, as there is no hope for anything to get better. The Man is also not confident at all in the success of any of his actions, believing himself incapable of making any positive change in his life.
One of the biggest anti-hero characteristics of the Underground Man is his penchant for ennui and slothfulness. He is an incredibly inactive character, to the point where he cannot even enact revenge against people whom he feels wronged him. He also hates heroes: "I did not even know how to become anythingeither spiteful or good, either a blackguard or an honest man, either a hero or an insect" (Dostoevsky Chapter 1). This is said to stem from his apparent intelligence; he is incredibly "conscious" of the things that happen around him, and the nature of the world itself (Matlaw, 1958). However, in spite of that, he cannot make decisions about how to solve his problems, stuck in a perpetual mode of second guessing and helpless self-doubt. This makes him the opposite of a hero, as heroes are typically proactive, confident and dedicated in taking action to meet their goals. The Underground Man, by contrast, is a man incapable of being a hero. In fact, his own doubt and skepticism actively makes him work against the things heroes would combat (e.g. apathy) (Frank, 1961). The Man himself actually despises heroes, as well; he takes great glee in hating police officers and other good people who try to make something of themselves, feeling that their efforts are futile: "Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything" (Dostoevsky, Chapter 5). The Man hates others for doing what he is incapable of: being proactive and living their own lives.
The Underground Man's inactivity as indicated by poor health is also another sign he is an anti-hero. His toothache and his liver pain are meant to be synonymous with the lack of desire of mankind to actually address this pain, instead wishing to complain about it in order to make others suffer as well. He even takes pleasure in this toothache, as he seems to masochistically love his pain: “'Ha, ha, ha! Next you’ll be finding pleasure in a toothache!' you will exclaim, laughing. 'And why not? There is also pleasure in a toothache,' I will answer" (Dostoevsky, Chap. 4).
In the second half of the book, the Underground Man's conflicts are actually illustrated and expanded upon, demonstrating his antiheroic philosophy in the outside world to demonstrate exactly how his own feelings match up with those of society's (Matlaw, 1958). In the first segment, the Man is obsessed with an officer who silently, wordlessly, pushes him out of his way. Seeing the officer on the street, he attempts to figure out exactly how he should take his revenge, becoming seething with rage and obsessed with getting back at him. However, the best he can manage is deciding to simply bump into him. The goal is to give the officer a taste of his own medicine; however, the officer is unmoved by the event, not even noticing what had happened. Here, not only is the Underground Man actively spiteful about a brief slight and inconvenience (a slightly rude person), he is ineffectual in his ability to do something about it. A hero would do one of two things: he would either confront the officer confidently and achieve results, or he would simply turn the other cheek and attempt to move past the slight offense. That the Underground Man takes this simple event and allow it to upset him so demonstrates his inability to be a hero. His antiheroic status comes from his own need to alleviate his own insecurities, instead of working toward a greater personal or interpersonal good (Matlaw 108).
In the second segment, the Underground Man attends a dinner party with several old friends from school, one of whom (Zverkov) is leaving the city. The Underground Man sees this as an opportunity to show up and express his hatred at the others, whom he hated when they all knew each other at school. "Here it is, here it is at last, the encounter with reality. . . . All is lost now!" (Dostoevsky, Chapter 5). However, his own incompetence prevents him from enjoying even this bit of poetic justice: he ends up early and gets into a fight with only most of them but Zverkov. Here, he rails against society and how much he hates it, talking about them as though they were indicative of society as a whole. Storming off to find Zverkov, he only finds Liza, a prostitute. She and the Underground Man speak in the dark room where Zverkov was supposed to be, and the Underground Man is continually pessimistic and awful towards her. The Underground Man, cynically seeing her future as a destitute, pathetic individual, recounts how she will lose her usefulness and slowly die unwanted by everyone: " I sensed vaguely that she was going to pay dearly for it all" (Dostoevsky, Chapter 9). This scene shows the strange and dark allure of the anti-hero as a parallel to real heroes, as Liza becomes more and more enthralled by his position and starts to agree with him. The Underground Man's aggressive hatred, which allows him to feel better about his own failings, is infectious, as it spreads to Liza and allows her to succumb to that negativity as well (Frank, 1961).
In conclusion, Notes from the Underground is a work that lives or dies based on the Underground Man's status as an antihero; as opposed to virtuous heroes of the Campbellian mold, who always follow their dreams and commit themselves wholeheartedly to their journey, antiheroes do not work toward a greater good. The Underground Man is sloppy, filthy, ineffectual and emotionally stunted. He refuses to take responsibility for himself or his problems, and projects that misery onto the rest of the people around him. From police officers, to old school friends, everyone he feels has more power and agency in society than him, The final line, where Dostoevsky himself notes that "it seems that we may stop here," is indicative of the book's nature as an existentialist piece, with the Underground Man's antiheroism being symbolic of that perspective (Kaufmann 1956).
Works Cited
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground.
Frank, Joseph. "Nihilism and Notes from the Underground". The Sewanee Review 69.1: 1-33. 1961. Print.
Kaufmann, Walter (ed.). Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: The World, 1956. Print.
Matlaw, Ralph E. "Structure and Integration in Notes from the Underground." PMLA 73.1: 101- 109. 1958. Print.
