Notes from Underground

Notes from Underground (sometimes translated as Notes from the Underground) is an 1864 novella by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was a novelist, journalist, and short story author. His novels are deeply rooted in philosophy and politics and explore the experiences and repercussions of his 19th-century Russian sociopolitical context. Dostoevsky is also the author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. His writing influenced many other writers and philosophers, including existentialists and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

This guide uses the 2020 eBook version (Pharos Books) of Constance Garnett’s translation.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide reference sex trafficking.

Plot Summary

Notes from Underground is split into two parts. Part 1 takes place in the 1860s, when the Underground Man is 40 years old, and is a philosophical, diaristic reflection on life. Part 2 goes back in time about 15 years and describes some of the interactions the Underground Man had with various people in his life, including his coworkers, his former classmates, and a woman named Liza. This work defines the antihero and the idea of the unreliable narrator, a character who cannot be trusted to accurately relay events.

Part 1, “Underground,” is a diary kept by the Underground Man describing his life, primarily as a kind of philosophical monologue about how much he hates everything in the world.

The Underground Man writes about becoming disenchanted with the world because he was alienated by others. For him, the only true philosophy of living is one of determinism: Humans have no control over their fates, and life is just a series of humiliations and pains that cannot be controlled and eventually ends in death.

The Underground Man uses a number of analogies to make his philosophy about the laws of nature clear in his writing. He first uses the idea of a toothache to explain his ideas about determinism and his hatred of the laws of nature. A toothache, he explains, is something over which a person has no control and which causes extreme pain. Because there is no way to stop a toothache, people are powerless over it. The only true response to that kind of powerlessness in the face of pain is spite. For this reason, the Underground Man explains, most people are spiteful, needy, and ridiculous. The Underground Man explains that he has no respect for himself because no one, when faced with powerlessness over nature, could ever have or maintain self-respect.

The Underground Man also spends a considerable amount of time in Part 1 discussing the idea of utopians and listing the many reasons why he doesn’t believe in an idealistic or romantic view of life. He says that utopians, who believe that people act poorly only because they don’t realize that behaving well is in their best interest, are naive about the true reasons why people act the way they do: humiliation and a sense of powerlessness. Ultimately, the Underground Man believes that suffering is the root of all life, and humanity is too afraid to renounce suffering, even if given an ideal world in which to live.

In Part 2, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” the Underground Man goes back 15 years to his early adulthood. This section is meant to illuminate some of the real events that led the Underground Man to embrace his deterministic, nihilistic philosophy of life. In this section, the Underground Man describes feeling alienated by his coworkers; he feels both superior to and rejected by them.

The Underground Man escapes his fantasies about a better world by visiting some classmates whom he hates and who also hate him. He invites himself to their going-away party, borrowing money because he cannot afford to attend it. These classmates, Simonov and Zverkov, get into an argument with the Underground Man when they ignore him at the dinner. The Underground Man tries to avenge himself by following them to the “brothel,” but by the time he gets there, the men have split off into private rooms. Instead, the Underground Man sleeps with a young sex worker named Liza, whom he tries to convince to leave the “brothel.” He gives Liza his address, but he is appalled and humiliated when she visits him and sees his poverty. She says she loves him, but he takes advantage of her and then throws money at her. She flees, and he immediately feels guilty—but not guilty enough to apologize or seek out her forgiveness.