It doesn't offer any easy answers or an obvious paradigm. He is a contrarian against everything, even himself.Īs previously mentioned, the beauty of this novel comes from the many various thoughts it can give birth to. You want to hate him, because he is hateful and a burden on humanity. You want to feel sorry for him, because he's pitiful and full of pain. He lives in great poverty he has manic spurts, dreams, and visions of megalomania.

He is an individual, unaffected by people, choosing to live by himself - He is hypersensitive to what others think, to the point of being paranoid. At the next moment, wavering doubt and uncertainty. At one moment he has what seems to be great conviction and inner strength. He stands for great unequivocal moral virtue, then cowers further in his morally rotten state. He is emotionally tough, then emotionally sensitive and fragile. He is an educated and intelligent man.īoth his thoughts and actions are paradoxical. A paranoid, ridiculous, introspective, analytical, abrasive, laughable, vengeful, antisocial, extreme, hypersensitive, pathological, delicate, hilarious, bottom-dwelling, pathetic, indecisive, crazy, loner of a man. The second half, humiliating stories from when he was 24 (he is now 40). The first half, his ramblings, thoughts and philosophies of life, via monologue. It's narrated by a guy living underground, in poverty. I have 'should' italicized in that first sentence for a reason: If you don't give yourself time to think - if just skim through the book quickly - then you won't get anything out of it. And not about trivial shit either, but about big, important conditions of life and how best to view and react to them. In the excerpt above, he's beginning to share his story-and we can tell from the moment he opens his mouth that this is one complicated guy.More than anything, this book should make you think. The narrator of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, Notes from Underground, is one twisted dude. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I have been going on like that for a long time-twenty years.

But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. Of course, I can't explain who it is I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else.

No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have respect for medicine and doctors. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.

Fyodor dostoevsky underground man