Notes from the Underground

About the Book

In Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground our nameless protagonist is a vile man. A former bureaucrat, about 40 years of age, and well educated.

"I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased."

Let's call him the Underground Man.

The book is made of two parts: the first being a confession of sorts, where our Underground Man accounts for his nihilistic theories about society and why he acts like he does. The second part consists of scenes where we get to observe how his spiteful behavior manifests itself in his life.

• He is a contradictory and indecisive fellow.
• He claims his liver hurts, but refuses to see a doctor.
• He knows his spiteful behavior towards others only hurts himself in the end, but he doesn't change.
• He obsesses over what other people think of him, over-analyzes social interactions to the point of absurdity, and finds masochistic satisfaction in his own pain.

He is self-obsessed, self-loathing and self-conscious. The Underground Man is in contempt toward the utilitarianism of his era (1860s) and the idea that everything can be explained with numbers, rationality and formulas. As a way of spiting society — and to prove the existence of Free Will — he goes against his own interests. He refuses to visit the doctor out of spite, just because he can choose not to.

Notes

"I've never been a coward at heart, although I've always been a coward in action."

The best definition of man: "The ungrateful biped"

"My liver is bad. Well, let it get worse!"

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