Everywhere is Underground

Everywhere is Underground

Imagine a life that isn’t life, a love that isn’t love, and a man so conflicted in his own head that he thinks himself into being less than a man. These images paint the picture of the main character in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. The main character, an unnamed man referred to here as Underground Man, is the narrator of this story, which basically serves as his memoir to an unknown audience known only as “gentlemen.” The narration contains a collection of events from his life lived in a dark corner he calls “the Underground” and his own thoughts about these events. He uses a disjointed and inconsistent voice in his discourses which portrays his constant shifting sentiments, nonetheless, some raw moments in the narrative can be spotted, and these raw moments allow a glimpse into his mind and heart. Underground Man possesses a raging struggle within himself because he constantly overthinks, this internal struggle causes him to struggle with others, and all of his struggles and conflicts combine to form a beautiful and ugly representation of humanity.

The very first line of the book opens with the narrator’s declaration, “I am a sick man… I am a wicked man” (Dostoevsky 3). Immediately after this startling confession, he says that he thinks his liver hurts, but refuses to get treated for it “out of wickedness” (4). He possesses a self-destructive and contradictory tendency which can be seen more and more as the Notes proceed. Soon after, he claims that he was a wicked official and took pleasure in it, but then almost immediately backtracks by claiming, “I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official. I lied out of wickedness” (Dostoevsky 4). These inconsistent claims stem from an intense internal struggle with himself, which becomes clearer when he makes the statement,

... as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked. I was conscious every moment of so very many elements in myself most opposite to that. I felt them simply swarming in me… I knew they had been swarming in me all my life, asking to be let go out of me, but I would not let them... (Dostoevsky 5)

His internal struggle between his wicked elements and his good ones is associated with and enhanced by the fact that he views himself as “more intelligent than everyone” around him (Dostoevsky 9). He believes “ordinary humans” to have “a half, a quarter of the portion” that falls to him (Dostoevsky 6), and he views this elevated consciousness as “a real, thorough sickness” (Dostoevsky 6). He is always overthinking and cross-analyzing every thought or feeling he has, as well as every event that he experiences, to the point that he becomes unable to do anything (Dostoevsky 9) or even decide conclusively what he thinks anymore. This stagnation of thought only worsens his inner turmoil, driving him to “convulsions” (Dostoevsky 5), causing him to view himself as a “mouse” (Dostoevsky 5), a “coward and a slave” (Dostoevsky 44), and bringing him to hate himself (Dostoevsky 44).

In addition to affecting his view of himself, his intense inner struggle also seeps into his interactions with everyone around him. When describing his coworkers he says, “I hated them all in our office, from first to last… but at the same time I was also as if afraid of them” (Dostoevsky 44). His loud inner dialogue creates a feeling of isolation and difference between him and others, and he believes that “no one else” is like him (Dostoevsky 45). This rift pushes him even more to “fall to thinking” (Dostoevsky 45) and he consoles and reproaches himself with spells of intense idealistic romanticising in which he creates unrealistic scenarios for his life and is then disappointed when they do not come to any fruition (Dostoevsky 56). He spends so much effort living in his fantasies that he is torn between the worlds of imagination and reality, and this disjunction causes him to ruin every potential relationship he could have because it perverts his view of love into a falsely ideal, romantic form conjured up in his imagination. He comes to this realization close to the end of the story after he intentionally hurt Liza, the only character in the story who tries to offer him a real love. He says, “I was no longer able to love, because… for me to love meant to tyrannize and to preponderize morally” (Dostoevsky 125). His self-convinced inability to love and to “live life” (Dostoevsky 125) leads him to spurn any chance of happiness he could have with himself and others.

The ruminating state of isolation the narrator lives in is the stinking place known as the Underground (Dostoevsky 37), and he spent so much time there that he began “bearing the underground in [his] soul” (Dostoevsky 48). Nevertheless, in the last few pages when Underground Man has his most honest and vulnerable moments, despite claiming to want to be wicked, deep down in his heart, it is seen that Underground Man has a longing to be good, to be the hero like in his fantasies. However, during a moment with Liza when he is ranting about his internal struggle, his elevated consciousness, and how messed up he is, he breaks into sobs and barely articulates, “They won’t let me… I can’t be… good!” (Dostoevsky 123). He believes that his conflicting thoughts, his conflicting self, will not allow him to be good. The real kicker of the story, however, comes in Underground Man’s closing remarks right before he ends his writing when he is directly addressing his audience. He makes the statement, “As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway…” (Dostoevsky 130). It is revealed here that the narrator is a representation of humanity and its crazy, self-destructive tendencies. The Underground Man is not an individual with a mental disorder at all, he is a characterization of an “ordinary human” when these tendencies and their internal struggle is carried to its fruition. The Underground is not one place where this narrator lives, it is the ruminating sickness that infects all of humanity when we get too far up in our own heads and grow “unaccustomed to living life” (Dostoevsky 125). It is the ugly self in ourselves when we reject real love and life.

The narrator of Notes from Underground appears at times to be crazy. He creates innumerable problems for himself and constantly contradicts his own statements. He is so absorbed in his own head and his own romanticisms that he misses out on reality, and he unhealthily isolates himself because he is afraid and ashamed to love and to live. However, the narrator is not a single deranged individual grown unaccustomed to living life in the Underground, he is a representative that typifies all of mankind in its confusion, contradiction, and conflict. The point of the story is not that Underground Man is crazy, but that humanity is crazy, and Underground Man gives the reader an outside look at their own craziness through an inside look at his.