Cummings Study Guide

.......Doestoevsky divided Notes From the Underground into two parts. In Part I, the narrator (the Underground Man)—a reclusive forty-year-old—presents a portrait of himself as an embittered resident of St. Petersburg, Russia. In direct address, he speaks hostilely and sarcastically to an audience of “gentlemen.” The primary cause of his bitterness is the attempt of radical thinkers to establish ideologies and social reforms based on the view that a human is a programmed entity (like a monkey or a morning glory, lacking free will). Apparently, he regards their enterprise as a grave and dangerous offense against himself and the general populace. Implicit in his opponents' thesis is the rejection of God and morality, a position that threatens to wreck society. To refute their ideas, he recounts bizarre, capricious, and paradoxical behavior that he has engaged in—behavior that could only originate in a mind with free will. In Part II, the narrator flashes back sixteen years to present an account of himself when he was a twenty-four-year-old civil servant. Part II helps to explain the forces acting upon the narrator in Part I.

Ideas That the Narrator Attacks

Rational Egoism: Acting in oneself’s best interests (that is, acting selfishly) by selecting what appears to be the most beneficial of all the choices available. There are two types of rational egoism, which are as follows:

The rational egoists Dostoevsky criticizes—most notably Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky—maintained that one always acted in his own self-interest, as in psychological egoism, but also ought to investigate the available alternatives or options in order to make the most informed choice. However, there is a conflict here. On the one hand, psychological egoism presumes that a person has no free will. On the other hand, normative egoism implies that a person has at least a modicum of free will and, after educating himself, acts with "enlightened self-interest." Nevertheless, Chernyshevsky believed that a person had no free will regardless of how he went about making his choice.

Plot Summary

.......In a footnote at the beginning of the novel, author Dostoevsky makes the following comment about the protagonist-narrator:

.......“I am a sick man,” says the forty-year-old narrator, who retired from government service after receiving a bequest of six thousand rubles from a distant relative. He also says, “I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.”
.......However, he refuses to see a physician. Out of spite, he has never once gone to a doctor in twenty years. Although he says he does not know against whom he directs his spite, it eventually becomes clear that his target is radical thinkers attempting to reshape Russia into a godless utilitarian society that does not recognize the existence of free will. To expose the folly of their ideas, the narrator exhibits bizarre behavior designed to demonstrate that his free will and independent spirit remain active. Whereas other men would see a physician for treatment of a chronic disease, the narrator does the unpredictable, the illogical: He chooses not to see a physician as a deliberate act of his free will.
.......The narrator, or "Underground Man," also demonstrates his free will in other ways. For example, he continues to live in St. Petersburg even though the climate is bad for his health and the city itself is a "programmed" municipality. (Czar Peter the Great constructed St. Petersburg as a West European-style city between 1703 and 1712 to serve as his new capital, importing architects, artists, and thinkers to design its buildings and culture.) He also continues to live in a deplorable room on the outskirts of the city with a stupid old woman as his servant rather than move to other accommodations or hire another servant. Furthermore, he goes to the limits of illogic and absurdity by taking pleasure in pain—his own pain and the pain of others. For example, when he was a government bureaucrat—a collegiate assessor—he greatly enjoyed irritating the citizens who came to him for help. He made himself happy by making them unhappy. In addition, he learned to enjoy a toothache that throbbed for thirty days. Only a thinking man, only a man outside the pale of the ordinary and the mundane, possessed the wherewithal to recognize and appreciate the subtle benefits of pain, he thought while undergoing the pain.
.......In fact, the Underground Man considers himself highly intelligent and acutely aware of what is happening around him. Ever conscious of everything—and ever analyzing it—he realizes that certain nihilists are attempting to create a programmed society that regards humans as unthinking puppets. He particularly despises the proposal of nihilist Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889)
to reconstruct society through utilitarianism, utopianism, determinism, and atheistic materialism. (Chernyshevsky propounded his ideas in various written works, including a novel, What Is to Be Done? Though mediocre in its writing style, it became a sensation among young radicals advocating the kinds of changes he proposed.)
.......Although the Underground Man does not mention Chernyshevsky by name, he alludes to his philosophy. He is particularly outraged by Chernyshevsky's denial of the existence of free will. The Underground Man writes that Chernyshevsky holds that man

.......The narrator flashes back to a time when he is a gloomy twenty-four-year-old with no friends. Highly sensitive, he imagines that his coworkers despise him. After all, the narrator often looks upon his own appearance with loathing. Why shouldn’t others view him the same way? His self-consciousness prompts him to wonder why one of his coworkers, a man with a hideous pocked face, and another, a man with smelly clothes, do not exhibit any hint of self-consciousness about themselves.
.......He hates all his coworkers and sometimes feels inferior to them even though he knows that he is their superior and that they are all stupid “and as like one another as so many sheep.” From time to time, he worries that he is completely unlike anyone else, causing him to think, “I am alone and they are everyone.” Generally, for fear of standing out, he pretends to be conventional and ordinary, trying not to exhibit any eccentricity. Sometimes, he does not talk to anyone at all. (Remember, these moments occur years before the narrator fully develops his defiant, cynical persona as the Underground Man. As a younger man, his acute self-awareness—the very thing that affirms his free will and in later years distinguishes him from a Chernyshevsky puppet—seems a burden to him.)
.......However, there are times when his personality changes so that he talks a great deal and considers making friends with others.
.......He spends most of his spare time at home reading. When he becomes bored with this activity, he engages in “loathsome vice of the pettiest kind.” Of this activity, he says, "Already even then I had my underground world in my soul. I was fearfully afraid of being seen, of being met, of being recognised. I visited various obscure haunts.” And he was very depressed.
.......One evening, when he looks through a tavern window, he witnesses a brawl in which a man is thrown through the window. He then enters the tavern in hopes that he too will get into a fight and be thrown through the window. (His masochism may be, in part, a manifestation of a growing desire to punish himself in order to demonstrate that human beings do not always act in their own self-interest, as Chernyshevsky and his brand of rational egoism maintain.) After he deliberately blocks traffic next to the billiard table, an officer merely moves him aside in a gentlemanly way; there is no fight. Thereafter, he often sees the officer on the street. Eventually, he overhears someone speak his surname, follows him to his apartment, and learns more about him from the porter of the building. One day, he decides to write a novel about this man to “unmask his villainy.” After completing it, he submits it for publication but learns that such novels are not in fashion. He then writes a letter asking the man to apologize to him or fight a duel. But he decides not to send the letter.
.......When he sees the man on a street, he notices that he steps aside for people of high standing, like generals, but does not accord the same respect to the narrator or others. It irks the narrator that he is always the one who steps aside, so he resolves not to step aside again. (Here, the narrator continues to invite punishment. But he also exhibits the kind of defiance that motivates him in Part I.)
For their next encounter, he wishes to appear as a man who commands respect, so he buys a new hat, new gloves, and a new beaver collar for his overcoat. When he is on the street and the big moment arrives, he is so overwrought that he stumbles and falls in front of the man.
.......“He very calmly stepped over me, while I flew on one side like a ball,” the narrator recalls.
.......However, on their next encounter, the narrator refuses to yield. They bump shoulders, and the man walks on. Proud that he did not back down, the narrator returns home and croons arias from Italian operas.
.......In the following days and weeks, he dreams about poetry, heroism, and love.

.......Part I of Notes From the Underground takes place in the early 1860s in St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia between 1712 and 1918. Part II takes place in the same city in the late 1840s. The Russian czar Peter the Great began construction of the city in 1703 on the Neva River in northwestern Russia. Peter wanted to replace the current capital, Moscow, with a modern, European-style city. The main character in the novel lives in a room in a building on the outskirts of the city. Because St. Petersburg is a planned city, the narrator despises it as a symbol of the kind of artificiality that he believes characterizes Chernyshevsky's plans for society, as represented by a crystal palace he describes in his novel What Is to Be Done?

Type of Work and Year of Publication

.......Notes From the Underground is a short novel that presents the narrator's reaction to the intellectual and social environment of Russia in the 1860s. The novel first appeared in print in 1864 in Dostoevsky’s publication, Epoch, a journal. Part I was published in the January and February issues and Part 2 in the April issue. The title is sometimes translated as Notes From Underground because the Russian language has no equivalent for the English definite article the. Because the protagonist focuses his life almost entirely on demonstrating that free will is real and that he alone determines his destiny, the novel foreshadows existentialthemes in the works of twentieth-century authors. However, unlike many twentieth-century existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Dostoevsky believed firmly in God and a moral order.

Characters

Narrator (The Underground Man): A loner who lives in a shabby apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. He has acquaintances but no real friends. In his narration, he presents himself as a well-read man of superior intellect who abhors philosophical and social movements based on the belief that human beings lack free will. He declares again and again that he determines his own destiny. He sets his goals; he controls his actions; he is in charge of his life. Though the world may seem out of joint at times and though events may depress him, he takes satisfaction in knowing that he decides his fate. However, because of his superior intellect, he ruminates excessively over the choices facing him and tends to end up not doing anything and therefore becomes a "man of inertia." Persons less intelligent than he find it easy to make decisions because they do not analyze their choices as carefully and as thoughtfully as he does and thus do not understand all of the pros and cons of a particular option. Because they make decisions easily, they are "men of action," not men of inertia like him. But these men are fools, he says, because they do not think with the intensity that he does. They readily accept rules and laws without adequately questioning them; they are sheep.
The Gentlemen: Those to whom the narrator addresses his notes. They are his audience, or readers. These men are his ideological foes—determinists, utilitarians, utopians, etc.
Distant Relative: Man who left the narrator six thousand rubles in his will.
Old Woman: Narrator's servant in Part I.
Anton Antonych Setochkin: Head of the narrator's government department and, says the narrator, "the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life."
Officer in the Tavern: Man with whom the narrator attempts to pick a fight.
Porter: Doorman at the building where the officer lives.
Siminov: Classmate when the narrator was a schoolboy. The narrator says of him, "Simonov, who had in no way been distinguished at school, was of a quiet and equable disposition; but I discovered in him a certain independence of character and even honesty. I don't even suppose that he was particularly stupid. I had at one time spent some rather soulful moments with him, but these had not lasted long and had somehow been suddenly clouded over. He was evidently uncomfortable at these reminiscences, and was, I fancy, always afraid that I might take up the same tone again. I suspected that he had an aversion for me. . . ."
Zverkov: Classmate when the narrator was a schoolboy. The narrator says of him, "Zverkov was a specialist in regard to tact and the social graces. This last fact particularly infuriated me. I hated the abrupt self-confident tone of his voice, his admiration of his own witticisms, which were often frightfully stupid, though he was bold in his language; I hated his handsome, but stupid face (for which I would, however, have gladly exchanged my intelligent one), and the free-and-easy military manners in fashion in the 'forties.' I hated the way in which he used to talk of his future conquests of women (he did not venture to begin his attack upon women until he had the epaulettes of an officer."
Ferfitchkin: Classmate when the narrator was a schoolboy. He is a "Russianised German," the narrator says, "a little fellow with the face of a monkey, a blockhead who was always deriding everyone, a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the lower forms -- a vulgar, impudent, swaggering fellow, who affected a most sensitive feeling of personal honour, though, of course, he was a wretched little coward at heart. He
Trudolyubov: Classmate when the narrator was a schoolboy. The narrator describes him as "a tall young fellow, in the army, with a cold face, fairly honest, though he worshipped success of every sort, and was only capable of thinking of promotion. He was some sort of distant relation of Zverkov's, and this, foolish as it seems, gave him a certain importance among us. He always thought me of no consequence whatever; his behaviour to me, though not quite courteous, was tolerable.
Apollon: Narrator's servant in Part II.
Olympia: Prostitute at a brothel that Zverkov, Ferfitchkin, Trudolyubov, Simonov, and the narrator visit after the dinner. At the dinner, Zverkov stakes his claim for her, and no one disputes it. The narrator remembers that she once refused him when he chose her.
Liza: New prostitute at the brothel the diners visit. The narrator chooses her, noting, "There was something simple and good-natured in her face, but something strangely grave. I am sure that this stood in her way here, and no one of those fools had noticed her. She could not, however, have been called a beauty, though she was tall, strong-looking, and well built. She was very simply dressed."
Prince Kolya: Friend of Zverkov. Kolya is mentioned in a conversation but plays no active role in the story.
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.......An unidentified narrator tells the story in first-person point of view to a group of men whom he calls “gentlemen.” Though unidentified by names, these gentlemen apparently hold views with which the narrator strongly disagrees. The narrator presents his account of events as he interprets them, not necessarily as they actually happen. The author divides the novel into two parts. The first centers on the narrator as a forty-year-old retiree living in St. Petersburg on a small inheritance. The second, which flashes back sixteen years, centers on the narrator as a twenty-four-year-old eking out a living in a government office in the same city. Most of the novel unfolds as a monologue. One may compare the book to a soliloquy or a diary.

The Narrator's Job Title: Collegiate Assessor

.......When he was a government worker, the Underground Man held the rank of collegiate assessor. In all there were fourteen ranks of workers in government service in the capital, St. Petersburg. Their titles were equivalent to those of army and navy officers. For example, the title of collegiate assessor was the equivalent of a navy lieutenant captain and an army major, according to the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. For a complete listing of all civil-service job titles in nineteenth-century Russia, see the table of ranks on the web page of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia

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Free Will

.......What most concerns the Underground Man is the attempt of radicals to persuade the people that free will is an illusion. If the people adopt this idea, they will be able to do whatever they please without taking responsibility for their action. After all, how could they be responsible for a negative act such as child molestation, robbery, rape, or murder if they did not freely assent to the act? In addition, they could not take credit for a positive act such as feeding the hungry, comforting the sick, saving a life, or preventing a war, for they would merely be doing what they were programmed to do. Every act would thus be an indifferent act; there would be no morality, no guilt, no pride in accomplishment. Human beings would be no more than mobile mannequins—or, in modern terms, automatons.
.......To counteract arguments against free will, the narrator—as he recounts in his diary—repeatedly does the capricious, the irrational, the unpredictable, the bizarre. For example, on several occasions, he seeks the companionship of others in order to reject them and be alone. On many other occasions, he takes pleasure in pain. But just when he appears to be a masochist, he becomes a sadist. There is no pinning down the Underground Man. He has free will—defiant, uncompromising free will.

Ambiguity

.......The narrator continually says one thing and does another and sometimes holds opposing viewpoints at the same time. Is he a madman? A jokester? Who is he, really? What does he stand for? What motivates him? It seems that the narrator is not only and an underground man but also an ambiguous man. As the latter, he eludes analysis by the determinists, rationalists, utilitarians, utopians, and other ideologists who are attempting to pigeonhole human beings as predictable creatures who fit neatly into categories.

Defiant Rancor

.......The narrator despises or spites almost everyone with whom he comes into contact. He also detests the city of St. Petersburg, the climate, and his apartment. But he refuses to go away. He is like a fester on the world and its people—a fester that never heals. His unremitting defiance underscores the main theme: that he is utterly free to do as he wishes, even when what he does flouts logic and common sense or imperils his health and safety.

New Is Not Necessarily Better

.......The Underground Man takes a stand against ideas that gained widespread currency in nineteenth-century Russia. In so doing, he isolates himself as an obscurantist. However, in presenting his argument against new ideas, he makes the point that what is au courant is not necessarily acceptable.

Climax

.......The climax occurs when the narrator and Liza part, an event that seals him once and for all in his underground of solitary defiance against society.

Doestoevsky vs Nihilism

.......Many young Russian radicals in the early 1860s embraced nihilism, a philosophy that rejects all traditional values and all religious institutions. Some of them favored total reform of society through scientific principles, utilitarianism, and rational egoism. After Russian writer Ivan Turgenev presented a disparaging portrait of a nihilist in his 1862 novel, Fathers and Sons, Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky—a leading nihilist—responded with a novel of his own (What Is to Be Done?, 1863) that presented a vision of a utopian society springing from nihilist principles. In this book and in other published works, Chernyshevsky denied the existence of free will. In advocating communal living, he promoted sexual liberation and “espoused loveless marriage and the sharing of one’s spouse with at least one other male” (Paperno, Irena. Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism. Stanford University: Stanford University Press, 1988. Page 305.) The hero of his novel taunts opponents of Chernyshevsky’s ideas, saying,

Dostoevsky, Chernyshevsky, and the Crystal Palace

.......In London’s Hyde Park in 1851, Britain presented a spectacular event, the Great Exhibition, to showcase the technological and industrial might of the British Empire. Its centerpiece was a gigantic building of iron and glass housing exhibits of the latest machines, tools, and appliances. More than six million visitors passed through the halls of this stunning edifice, dubbed “the Crystal Palace” in a newspaper article.
.......In Chernyshevsky’s novel (see Dostoevsky vs Nihilism, above), one of the characters has a dream in which she visits a utopian society with a crystal palace that serves as the residence hall of the inhabitants. Chernyshevsky based his fictional dream palace on Britain’s Crystal Palace. He saw it as a fitting symbol of the technological and scientific advancements that his utopian society would bring.
.......Dostoevsky, on the other hand, saw Chernyshevsky’s fictional palace as a symbol of all the “isms” that would tear down society—utopianism, nihilism, rational egoism, utilitarianism, determinism, and materialism. In Notes From the Underground, his narrator ridicules all of these ideas—and the palace itself. In the following passage from Part I, he seems to be speaking directly to Chernyshevsky in upholding free will and rejecting Chernyshevsky’s thinking:

• The narrator complains about the ill treatment he received as a child and later in life. However, a man whom he does not identify left him six thousand rubles in his will. Does this bequest imply that the narrator exaggerates the maltreatment or even lies about his past?
• In addition to the nihilists of Dostoevsky's day, many modern thinkers hold that free will is severely limited or nonexistent. They argue that genetics and environmental factors are the primary determinants of human behavior. Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, do you also believe that a rapist, a murderer, or a child molester is not responsible for his crime?
• Does the Underground Man suffer from a mental disability?
• In an informative essay, trace the history of the term utopia.
• In an informative essay, trace the history of the term nihilist.
• To what extent does Dostoevsky base Notes From the Underground on his own experiences?
• Write an essay evaluating the impact of Chernyshevsky's ideas on Russian society.
• Does the novel in any way foreshadow the overthrow of Soviet communism in the 1980s?