Notes from Underground

When someone asks me what my favourite genre is, I get lost within the intermingled thoughts weaving knots in my mind, pondering over the formation of an articulate term to convey the type of literary works that gnaw at my very soul. The only connecting thread is that all literary works centre around hyper-intellectual, eccentric characters, embarking upon quests fuelled by their idiosyncrasies, which are inexplicable and unfathomable for the common folk. The archetype for this literary niche is none other than the ‘Underground Man’, whose narrative voice Fyodor Dostoevsky writes from in ‘Notes from Underground’. 

‘Notes from Underground’, is a limited omniscient novella written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, centring around the narrative perspective of an anti-hero, with the moniker, the ‘Underground Man’, his true identity being anonymous. While the narrator never explicitly reveals his name, the lack of a proper name emphasizes his disconnect from personal identity and his self-imposed exile from the social world. Furthermore, the title, ‘Notes from Underground’, is not only reflective of Dostoevsky’s recent solitude in prison for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas I, but also a motif that symbolises the narrator’s societal isolation as he sinks further into an abyss, becoming a bitter, misanthropic, and highly intelligent former civil servant living in St. Petersburg. He is inundated with a self-imposed societal exile, alienated from his surroundings, and he spends his time writing a scathing critique of the outer-world in the form of ‘notes’. This ‘Underground Man’, is a complex and contradictory character, simultaneously self-loathing and arrogant, acutely aware of his flaws yet unable to change. He lives a paradoxical existence wherein he simultaneously believes himself as superior to others, while also feeling humiliated and inferior. ‘Notes from Underground’ are the ramblings of a miserable, bitter, hyper-intellectual man, whose egoism ironically clashes with crumbling self-loathing due to the antithetical phenomenon of his self-appointed intellectual superiority being divested at every turn in his life. He embodies a rebellion against rationalism and determinism, arguing that humans need free will, even if it leads to irrational and self-destructive behaviour. 

The novella begins with a declarative asyndeton. “I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.” This introductory tricolon foreshadows his juxtaposed character. Despite his admittance to being a ‘spiteful man’, he contradicted himself shortly by claiming that, “I was shamelessly aware that I was not spiteful at all. I lied when I said I was a mean official. I lied out of sheer spite. Because ‘an intelligent man cannot become anything’  morally bound to be an essentially limited creature.”  The narrator’s convoluted self-analysis and brutal self-examination are a subtle implicit connotation of the stark disparities between the man the narrator wishes he were, and the true persona he embodies. The man does nothing but thinks everything. He wishes all sorts of spiteful things but barely lifts a finger, being all bark and no bite. The world encompasses two kinds of people, people who act and people who think. The narrative voice has an overwhelming envy for people who act, are virile, and active, for he only thinks. His mind whips up ideals of grandeur, lofty and beautiful ideas that he concocts within the imaginative realm, but is chained by his stifling inability to act upon his visions. This failure, these cuffs of his that hold him back, eat at him, eroding his self-respect. His chipped away dignity is evident in the ease with which he abandons his plans, even though they hold paramount importance in his life. For instance, he had declared that slapping Zverkov would be the only thing that would restore his pride. However, the minuscule obstacle of Zverkov not initially being in the location wherein the narrator guessed he would be found, resulted in the narrator deserting his quest entirely. He holds himself in contempt to the extent that he no longer cares if his self-respect is avenged, as the shameful realisation of being unable to act upon his ambitions makes him perceive the man in the mirror with deepest resentment.

The iconoclasm of the anti-hero is mirrored by Diogenes’ cynicism, as they both lived in isolation from the world, being ‘underground men’ in varying ways. The antihero of the novella is a misanthropic, alienated former civil servant who has retreated into self-imposed isolation, which he calls the "underground". Similarly, Diogenes lived in a similar underground, as he resided in a tub or a pithos, as an abode. He was once famously visited by Alexander the Great, who asked Diogenes if he could do anything for him, to which the cynic replied, “Stop blocking my sunlight”. However, despite the characteristic underground nature of these two men, the similarities are only surface-level. Diogenes lived in the underground because of his emphasis on virtue and self-sufficiency, as he believed happiness comes from living in accordance with nature and rejecting materialistic desires. On the other hand, the anti-hero of the novella lived underground out of rebellion against the natural laws that governed the world. The anti-hero is bitter about everything, including that 2+2=4. He hates the natural laws that govern the world and surpass all of humanity, a stark reminder of the ephemerality of humans in the face of the vastness of the universe. The narrator resents being a pawn in a world order that is inexplicable, having to accept that various events unfold because that is just how it is. His animosity with Mother Nature unfolds in his rebellion as well. Believing that he has to feel pain because nature demands it, he forces himself to enjoy pain. Thus, transfiguring his hatred into enjoyment as a silent rebellion, the only kind possible against a force that transcends all earthly power. This is evident in his declaration that “There is pleasure in a toothache too. People don't nurse their anger silently, they moan aloud, with cunning malice. These moans express your awareness of the whole humiliating purposelessness of your pain. They express your realization that there is no enemy to blame, yet there is pain, despite all Wagenheims there is pain. You are in total slavery to your teeth, that someone only needs to wish your toothache to stop and it will, and if he doesn't wish it, the ache will go on for another three months.”

The Underground Man is nothing if not a nihilist, arguably somewhat concealed by his ramblings. However, despite his best efforts to narrate tales in order to distract the audience from his nihilist philosophic inclinage, it is unveiled in the statement, “I say let the world go to hell but I should always have my tea”. This concise yet powerful admission insinuates that the narrator is happy to see humanity burn as long as he continues to possess his personal pleasures. The root cause of the nihilistic drive is that the narrative voice has metamorphosed into a demon due to his belief of having no commonality with other individuals, as he only sees society as an amalgamation of potential threats, and enemies. His refusal to connect with people is born from his fear of emotional attachment, as having a friend would mean that he cares about another being. He refuses to let himself care about others because, in his view, an educated position on ethics is that human connections are a danger to oneself. This inevitably leads to conflict, as his lack of goodwill for the world and self-centric notions harm him more than the world that surrounds him. This ironical manifestation shadows on Nietzsche’s philosophy which highlights that a lack of goodwill for humanity has greater consequences for the bitter man, than the world he holds in contempt. This is evident in the narrator’s life, as he is tormented by his demons born from his scathing malice. For example, he is routinely jolted awake in the middle of the night, haunted by the piercing memories of people who jabbed at his rapidly depleting pride. This is exemplified by the raging anger he felt towards the officer who bumped into him on the street. He was so rattled by being bumped into by an unnoticing official, that he spent months tracking him down just to bump into him as an act of desperate revenge to salvage some measure of dignity and self-respect. However, while the narrator obsessively tracked the officer down for months, wholly focused on humiliating him as a token of vengeance, the officer wasn't even aware of the narrator’s existence. This dramatic irony of the audience being aware of the narrator’s actions’s tragic futility underscores the boomerang effect that unfolds as a result of the narrator’s animosity towards humanity. Being spiteful to the world ironically became poisonous to the narrator and no one else, as it resulted in his complete alienation, as he was ostracised and shut off from the world, becoming a harmful cyclic effect that continuously striped off his place in the world, submerging him deeper and deeper within the self-imposed underground. The irony here is beautifully tragic, as the key cause of his choice to adopt an underground existence, resulted in him becoming even more trapped within the abyss he created for himself. 

In defying the natural order, the Underground Man descends into the shadows as an act of radical will, but the deeper he burrows into isolation, the more tightly he is shackled to the very world he longs to escape, his rebellion forging the chains of his own entrapment.

The symbol of rebellion inadvertently becoming one’s shackles echoes throughout this novella, ringing pertinent to the world order presently as well. The mistakes and missteps of the Underground Man should pave our paths and remind us not to become blinded by our ambitions, as if we navigate through the world akin to a horse charging ahead with blinkers adorned, we will inevitably crash into prisons of our own design.