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This module does not contain a lecture because we want you get you thinking and force you to wrestle with a literary text on its own terms. Some of the answers, therefore, have been constructed in order to give you any additional background information that you might need.

Please read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short Notes from the Underground in its entirety, and make extensive notes on what you think is significant before attempting to answer the questions that follow. Since Dostoyevsky is talking about a distinctly modern type of individual, you will find lots of parallels to and touchstones in your own experience. Feel free to consider how Dostoyevsky’s descriptions/analyses fit the people you know (including your professors!).

Bear one overall consideration in mind. If Dostoyevsky’s analysis is correct, modern society and modern people are highly unstable. For Dostoyevsky, the common peons to individual freedom, social mobility, human progress and scientific are misplaced, even dangerous. Do you agree with him? If not, how would you counter his insights?

Questions to Consider

1. What does the first paragraph of Notes from the Underground tell you about the analytical approach Dostoyevsky will adopt?

2. What does the first paragraph of Notes from the Underground suggest about Dostoyevsky’s social and political vision?

3. Besides being spiteful, what character flaws does this aware underground man have?

4. How do modern men and women refute the philosophers who argue that the human condition is progressing towards greater happiness?

5. Why are spite and envy self and socially destructive?

6. What is the “way” of the underground man?

7. How do we know that the underground man is self-obsessed?

8. How do we know that the underground man has lost touch with religion (i.e. Christianity)?

9. How is intelligence defined with respect to this modern underground man?

10. What is the difference between this modern individual and people living in the past?

11. How does Dostoyevsky let his readers know that underground or many modern men and women lack the capacity for decent social interaction?

12. How does Dostoyevsky portray the tendency of modern men or women towards nihilism?

13. How does Dostoyevsky describe a “normal man”?

14. Why are modern men and women so incapable of “direct action”?

15. What “refined enjoyment” partially compensates from the underground man’s spiteful and bitter retreat from engagement with life?

16. What does Dostoyevsky mean by the “voluptuousness” of indulging in one’s inner emotions?

17. Why is this self-indulgence negative for the individual?

18. How does the underground man typically assess his emotions?

19. What is the predominant emotional state of the underground man, at least when he is not writhing in spite and bitterness?

20. How does the ennui of the underground man differ from the laziness of a less intelligent person?

21. What is the characteristic arrogance of the underground man?

22. What message does the underground man take from his observations on life?

23. While Dostoyevsky would never agree with the conclusions of the underground man, he does share a similar critique of the tendency of scientific analysis. What is that tendency?

24. How does the scientific impulse (similarly described by Nietzsche) undermine the claims of reason?

25. Where does widespread education lead?

26. If you give people a great deal of choice, if you encourage them to develop their free will, what will be the result?

27. What is the underground man’s Palace of Crystal?

28. Why is the underground man’s dream of a Palace of Crystal so horrifying for Dostoyevsky?

29. What does Dostoyevsky mean when he suggests that, while the underground man may have suffered, he has no respect for his own suffering?

30. What is the only form of history that makes any sense to the underground man?

31. What is the primary characteristic of underground culture; what scholarly discipline reflects this characteristic?

32. How can one spot a developing underground type?

33. What is the connection between romanticism and the underground man?

34. How does the concept of resentful retreat from social engagement reflect the true character of the underground man and differentiate him/her from a genuine romantic?

35. Besides his self-indulgence, what social goal does the underground man secretly pursue?

36. What does the envy and status seeking of the underground man invariably result in?

37. How do underground men and women relate to their past?

38. What kinds of people do underground men and women hate most?

39. How do the arguments of underground types differ from those of normal people?

40. What is the attitude of the underground man to social rank?

41. Why, according to Dostoyevsky, is the underground man without honour?

42. What does the episode in the brothel reveal about the true nature of the underground man?

43. What is the significance of the underground man’s discussion of sentimental love with Liza? What does this reveal about his character?

44. What is ironical about the underground man, as described in his antics with Liza and Appolon?

45. What do the final scenes from Notes from the Underground demonstrate?

46. Despite all of his faults, what makes the protagonist an anti-hero for the modern age?

Possible Answers

1. Dostoyevsky is going to portray and dissect the internal thoughts of a contemporary and very alienated individual and, in order to that, he will take the path interior. Adopting an approach that we might label psychological realism, Dostoyevsky’s fundamental argument will be that humans are irrational individuals propelled by their emotions. A corollary of this argument is that science and democracy can never produce a rational, orderly and happy society.

2. Don’t let his psychological realism fool you. While the characterization is fascinating and the intelligence of the underground man indisputable, Dostoyevsky is describing a modern type that he finds not merely spiteful but, ultimately, nihilistic. Dostoyevsky is a modern writer, but a political conservative, who believes that democracy and individualism will simply allow human spite and envy to corrode the values of a society and the benefits of civilization. He believes that tradition, religion and stratification must control the irrational impulses of individuals.

3. He is totally critical, self-absorbed yet full of self-loathing. He is not comfortable in his own skin or in his relationships with others.

4. Modern men and women are intensely competitive with one another, and any happiness that they have is predicated on feeling superior to others and making anyone weaker than themselves unhappy. The underground man feels “extreme enjoyment when I succeeded in making anybody unhappy.” The only thing that gives the modern man and woman any happiness at all is talking about themselves.

5. These characteristics rarely achieve their purpose and any satisfaction that comes from their exercise is transitory. Here you might want to think about the ways that many of your classmates destroy their own chance of happiness and fulfilling relationships by being competitive, petty, suspicious, and jealous. You may also want to consider that many very intelligent and potentially decent people continually try to bring others down to their level.

6. The underground man continually moves from bitterness to shame. He is commonly paralyzed or tortured — twisting up inside himself. The path interior gives him no satisfaction. While he feels many “positive elements” inside himself, but his approach to life and relationships does not nurture those characteristics.

7. Because, ultimately, he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

8. He is completely incapable of giving or receiving forgiveness.

9. Intelligence is defined as not being able to take anything seriously or even at face value.

10. Modern man is characterless. This lack of capacity for developing character inclines modern men and women to disrespect their elders (in the words of Pete Townsend of the Who — “I hope I die before I get old).

11. They are incapable of happiness and mirth. They don’t even have the capacity for amusement.

12. He shows how, while much irritates the underground man, nothing really matters for him. He writes, “Why, it is absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.”

13. A normal man sees the goal he desires and attempts to achieve it. The underground man regards such a person as innately stupid because he/she is acting simply on instinct — like an insect seeking a mate.

14. Modern men and women understand the complexity of life and reflect on what it is that they are doing. As a result, doubts and many unsettled questions beset them. They commonly retreat from this “fatal brew” of “doubts and emotions” to their “nasty, stinking, underground home.” They will continually brood on every imagined hurt. Despite being spiteful, they are, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, incapable of exacting revenge on their supposed enemies. In Dostoyevsky’s language, they continually turn their “unsatisfied desires” inward and suffer from a “fever of oscillations”.

15. These individuals are compensated by their self-indulgence in their own emotions. They also are smug because they think they understand the complexities of life so much better than stupid and insipid people do. Finally, they are conceited because they know that their understanding makes them superior to the laws of nature that require animals to act according to their instincts.

16. He means that educated self-indulgence is a refined pleasure that separates the individual from nature and human nature (”divorced from the soil and the national elements”). This voluptuous pleasure often takes the form of constant whining.

17. Whining and self-indulgence do not contribute one iota to self-respect. The underground man is full of self-loathing?

18. The underground man knows that his emotions “lie”. They are meaningless and transitory “antics” that turn human beings into clowns or even puppets. The underground man, therefore, is urbane, blasé and highly cynical. He is detached from most emotions.

19. Ennui or boredom and inertia. The underground man understands that there is no foundation for action, no ultimate significance to human life. But, unlike a stupid person, the underground man is not deceived by the illusions surrounding feeling and action. He is a highly “intelligent man” who has never been able to “begin nor finish anything.”

20. The underground man is constantly working mentally, to dissect anything that might be naively “sublime and beautiful” into “the nastiest, unquestionable trash”.

21. He thinks that he deserves everyone’s respect for being unique, insightful and above both nature and conventional wisdom. He wants everyone to know that he acts “in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason, honour, peace, prosperity. He prides himself on understanding that all the so-called noble deeds of men are really just “the pursuit of his own advantage.”

22. All of life, including all of the so-called values of civilization, is a mirage. Human beings (and here Dostoyevsky might agree) are propelled by their illusory emotions.

23. Ultimately, what science teaches man is that he is a bundle of senses or organs subject to the whims of his own and external nature. As such, men and women have no inherent meaning, no free will, and no responsibility for their actions. Eventually, all human actions will be explained by statistical tabulations.

24. Rationalism has nothing whatsoever to do with human behaviour. All those who develop systems and who try to create foundations for actions are simply fools. The only thing that has any reality is individual choice wherever that may lead. Ultimately, Dostoyevsky thinks that this unlimited freedom will lead to nihilism.

25. Learning leads to the cult of personality. It reveals only that people are really out for themselves. Dostoyevsky is saying here that, if you give people universal access to education, the net result will be a lot of nasty bitter but conceited people who curse their lot in life. Too much education for the individual leads to nihilism; too much education in society leads to anarchy.

26. For Dostoyevsky, the result will be that many will chose the wrong thing. The underground man, for example, is often more addicted to suffering than anything else. He will embrace and his suffering, his irritability, as the most vital component in his life.

27. The complete negation of human life and human civilization. All that remains is individual consciousness within a chaotic universe.

28. Once firmly established, the Crystal Palace will be unassailable; the underground man will be the only role model for man. Once underground men and women have built that edifice, they can no longer be forced back into their underground holes. Their standards and values will be the social standard. Civilization as we know it will cease.

29. In the literary cultures of the past, a certain dignity resulted from suffering. That dignity was embodied in Attic tragedy (see earlier lecture on Nietzsche). The suffering of the underground man only has the result of making him feel alive and superior to others. Nothing, not even life itself, is sacred to the underground man.

30. Autobiography, particularly in the form of the true confession. Here Dostoyevsky is suggesting that the culture of the underground man is incapable of communicating anything significant. It lacks stable form, is devoid of structure, and has limited significance, unless it is to encourage the cult of the self. The quintessential underground writer composes to reveal and entertain himself.

31. Self-consciousness. Psychology emerged as a corollary of this preoccupation with the consciousness of the self.

32. The underground type has difficulty dealing with others in society. He or she is “morbidly sensitive” because of his/her preoccupation with self. The underground type avoids eye contact, and is obsessed with his or her image in the eyes of others. Underneath what might be mistaken for shyness, is envy that leads quickly to hatred. But the underground type is always petty because he/she lacks the will for direct action. He or she will snipe at others from the sidelines, mainly in the form of gossip and innuendo.

33. The underground man often imagines himself to be a romantic who is more aware and sensitive than others. He despises his work and his colleagues because they are mundane. He deploys romanticism as a defense of his self-obsession and his social ineptness. But his real motives become clear when one witnesses the underground man’s self-loathing and deep envy of the sociability and success of others.

34. The underground man is not a romantic or a recluse by informed choice, but is a self-important coward. This cowardice is not physical fear, which would be commonplace, but a concern about being mocked or embarrassed, which would puncture the underground man’s balloon of self-importance. That’s why the underground man’s characteristic cowardice is exhibited in situations that are so trivial and petty.

35. Invariably, the underground man is attuned to the status and power of others and wants to possess it for himself. On occasion, they will fake or usurp a status that does not belong to them. In such cases, they become happily inflated for short periods, until their insecurities beset them again.

36. Periodically, the underground man will “plunge into society”, perspiring heavily. This will be followed by retreat and social paralysis.

37. They invariably reject their past because they feel that they were unappreciated or hard done by. Their real chagrin, however, stems from the fact that they feel that they have not been successful in their lives. Today, high school reunions are social events that bring out similar insecurities and character types.

38. They despise those who are confident in themselves and relaxed in society. Yet they are often willing to cozy up to such people in order to bask in reflected glory and to increase their own status through association.

39. They are characterized by malice. An astute normal person can see through the underground type and will avoid getting involved in an exchange. This drives the underground type crazy because “he knew me through and through.”

40. The underground man believes that the status attached to social rank is unfair. They believe themselves to be highly intelligent and that status should be attached to them. Thus, they dislike the social order and seek to overturn it (in cowardly ways) whenever and wherever they can? The underground man may seem to be a democrat or a seeker of justice, but he is always a “tyrant” at heart.

41. The common characteristics of the underground man are: lying, sneakiness, pettiness, neediness, cowardice and a total lack of compassion or generosity (as the protagonist’s dealing with Apollon demonstrate).

42. The desire for power or to be the master, in this case over a person who was much weaker and in a vulnerable position. It turns out, however, that the prostitute is a much more complete character, dignified and humane individual than the underground man is.

43. All of the underground man’s sentimental cliches are taken from books. He lacks authenticity, identity and a heart.

44. Despite his obsession with self, the underground man has no personality of his own. He can only take up roles and play them rather than be himself. Appolon and Liza, on the other hand, have genuine character and self-awareness, despite being the ones that are most vulnerable economically and sexually.

45. The final scenes show that the underground man is not merely despicable but also that everything about him is out of touch with “real life”. He is incapable of being a good master, a good husband or a friend. He is “completely a product of the brain”.

46. The underground man occasionally demonstrates awareness of his own pain and despicableness. He is in genuine pain, as Liza notices, and that attracts the reader’s compassion. More important, perhaps, in modern life there are elements of the underground man in all of us. The modern age is one that lacks moral meaning, clear rules, and dignified roles. “Real life” is no longer natural, but requires remarkable effort because we no longer know who we are and we are no longer in control of what we do. The underground man merely carries to an extreme what is felt and done by most people at least some of the time. In some ways, being human has become a heavy burden.