Notes from Underground

The narrator is forty, retired, and living in a shabby room on the edge of Petersburg, and he opens by announcing that he is a sick man and a spiteful one. Then he picks a fight with his whole century: with science, with progress, with the idea that people always act in their own interest, and with the dream of a palace of crystal. He insists that people would go mad on purpose just to prove they are not piano keys. In the second half he stops arguing and starts remembering, and the memories are worse: a farewell dinner where he makes a fool of himself, and a young woman named Liza whom he moves to tears and then humiliates. The book is short, uncomfortable, and darkly comic, and it keeps asking what people really want if it is not their own advantage.

What happens in Notes from Underground

The nameless narrator, a retired official of forty, writes from his corner, a wretched room on the outskirts of Petersburg. In Part One he addresses imagined gentlemen. He calls himself sick and spiteful, then admits he could never become anything at all, not even an insect. Too much consciousness, he argues, is a disease: it leads to inertia and to a shameful pleasure in one’s own humiliation, like an educated man’s malicious moans over toothache. Men of action charge ahead until they meet a stone wall, the laws of nature and the rule that twice two makes four, and they accept it. He refuses to be reconciled to the wall. He attacks the belief that people do wrong only because they misunderstand their interests, and the dream of a palace of crystal where science has tabulated every choice and a man is no more than a piano key. What people want most, he says, is independent choice, even when it harms them. He ends Part One by admitting he believes none of it and turning to a memory revived by the wet snow. Part Two goes back to when he was twenty-four and a clerk. An officer in a tavern moves him aside without noticing him, and he nurses the insult for years before bumping shoulders with him on the Nevsky. Visiting his schoolfellow Simonov, he invites himself to a farewell dinner for Zverkov, a schoolmate now in the army. No one tells him the dinner has moved to six, so he waits an hour. He insults Zverkov with a sarcastic toast, challenges Ferfitchkin to a duel, and paces the room for three hours while the others ignore him. He extracts six roubles from Simonov and follows the party to a brothel to slap Zverkov, but they have gone. There he meets Liza, a twenty-year-old from Riga. Waking beside her in the night, he describes the misery awaiting her until she sobs, and he gives her his address. Days later she arrives while he is screaming at his servant Apollon. Ashamed, he tells her he was only playing with her. She sees that he is unhappy and embraces him, but his passion is a kind of revenge, and afterward he presses money into her hand. She leaves the crumpled note on his table and goes. He runs after her into the snow, stops, and never sees her again.

Where and when Notes from Underground happens

Chapter by chapter summary + why it matters

1. 1

   Part One: A Sick and Spiteful Man

   The narrator introduces himself: forty, a retired collegiate assessor, spiteful and yet unable to become anything, neither a hero nor an insect. He argues that too much consciousness is a disease that breeds inertia and a shameful pleasure in humiliation, and he pictures the conscious man as an insulted mouse nursing its spite in its hole for forty years. Men of action charge like bulls until they hit the stone wall of natural law and twice two makes four, but he refuses to accept that wall just because he cannot knock it down. He ends with the toothache, whose educated sufferer moans out of malice and takes pleasure in it.

   Why it mattersDostoevsky’s footnote says the writer and his notes are imaginary, but that such people must exist in Russian society. The narrator’s habit of taking back what he has just said warns us from the first page not to read him at face value.

2. 2

   Reason, Advantage, and the Piano Key

   He explains that he cannot act because every cause leads back to another, so even his anger dissolves and only inertia is left; he would respect himself if he were at least lazy. He then attacks the idea that people do wrong only because they misunderstand their own interests, citing the bloodshed of his civilized century against Buckle’s claim that civilization makes people gentler. Science promises to tabulate every choice, turn man into a piano key, and build a palace of crystal, but he insists that the most advantageous advantage is free choice, even a stupid one. People, he says, would go mad on purpose to prove they are men and not piano keys.

   Why it mattersThe narrator does not reject reason; he calls it an excellent thing that satisfies only one part of human nature. These chapters argue with the confident rationalism of Russian radicals in the 1860s, including Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done?

3. 3

   Hurrah for Underground

   He asks how reformers know that people need reforming and suggests that humans love building roads more than arriving, unlike ants content with their ant-heap, and may love suffering and chaos as well. Certainty as positive as twice two makes four is, he says, the beginning of death, and he rejects a palace of crystal at which no one may even stick out a tongue. He cries hurrah for underground, then admits he is lying, imagines his readers calling it all lies, and confesses he invented their words too. Claiming to write only for himself, he turns to a memory that the falling wet snow has brought back.

   Why it mattersPart One ends by undercutting its own argument: the narrator can defend freedom but cannot live it. The turn to the snow ties his theories to the shameful memories that follow.

4. 4

   Part Two: The Officer on the Nevsky

   The section opens with lines from Nekrassov about a speaker whose passionate words rescue a soul from vice. At twenty-four the narrator is a lonely clerk who despises and fears his colleagues and slips out at night into petty vice. When an officer in a tavern moves him aside without noticing him, he broods for years, borrows from his superior Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin to help buy a beaver collar, and at last bumps the officer shoulder to shoulder on the Nevsky. Between bouts of dissipation he dreams of heroic glory, and when solitude grows unbearable he visits Anton Antonitch on Tuesdays or, one Thursday, his old schoolfellow Simonov.

   Why it mattersThe bump shows how much energy he spends on a victory the officer barely notices. The epigraph sets up a rescue story that the rest of Part Two turns upside down.

5. 5

   The Farewell Dinner

   At Simonov’s he finds Ferfitchkin and Trudolyubov planning a dinner for Zverkov, a swaggering schoolmate turned officer, and he invites himself, though he owes Simonov fifteen roubles and can pay only by holding back his servant Apollon’s wages. That night he relives his miserable school years, and the next day nobody has told him the dinner moved from five to six, so he waits an hour at the Hotel de Paris. Drunk and furious, he makes an insulting toast, challenges Ferfitchkin to a duel, and paces from the table to the stove for three hours while the others ignore him. When they leave for another place, he begs Simonov for six roubles to follow them.

   Why it mattersThe dinner is a comedy of humiliation in which the narrator causes most of his own suffering. His plea for Zverkov’s friendship right after insulting everyone shows the swing between pride and need that rules him.

6. 6

   Liza

   Racing by sledge through the wet snow, he imagines slapping Zverkov, a duel, and Siberia, then recognizes the fantasy as borrowed from Pushkin and Lermontov. At the brothel the others have already gone, and he meets Liza, a twenty-year-old from Riga. Waking beside her at two in the morning, he tells her about a coffin carried out of a basement and describes the decline and lonely death awaiting her until she sobs into her pillow. He gives her his address, and before he leaves she proudly shows him a respectful love letter from a student.

   Why it mattersHe admits that the exercise of his power over her attracts him even as he feels what he says. Liza’s remark that he speaks like a book is more accurate than he wants to admit.

7. 7

   The Five-Rouble Note

   He smooths things over with Simonov in a lying letter, then dreads that Liza will come and see his poverty and Apollon’s rudeness. She arrives just as he is screaming at Apollon over withheld wages, and in his shame he tells her he was only laughing at her and wanted power. She sees that he is unhappy and embraces him, but his passion is revenge, and when she leaves he presses money into her hand; she leaves the crumpled five-rouble note on his table. He runs after her into the snow, stops, and never sees her again, and after his closing reflections a bracketed note says the paradoxalist kept writing but this seems a good place to stop.

   Why it mattersThe ending reverses the Nekrassov epigraph: the would-be rescuer is the one who needs rescue, and he cannot accept a love he does not control.

Characters and how they connect

Character Relationships who connects to whom, and the themes that bind them

Themes in Notes from Underground what the novel is really about

Symbols & motifs

Important quotes

The ending of Notes from Underground, explained

Notes from Underground ends twice, once in the story and once in the frame. In the story, Liza comes to the narrator’s shabby flat four days after their night together and finds him screaming at his servant. Ashamed to be seen in his torn dressing-gown, he tells her that the speech which moved her was a game: he had been humiliated at dinner and wanted to humiliate someone. Liza hears something else in his words, that he is unhappy, and she embraces him. For a moment the rescue story of the Nekrassov epigraph runs in reverse, with the young woman comforting the man. The narrator cannot bear it. His sudden passion is, as Liza soon understands, a form of revenge, and when she leaves he presses money into her hand to turn what happened into a transaction. She leaves the crumpled blue five-rouble note on his table. He runs after her into the snow, stops at the crossroads, and asks himself whether he would only hate and torture her tomorrow. At home he consoles himself with the thought that her resentment will purify her, and he asks whether cheap happiness or exalted suffering is better. He never sees her again. In the frame, he calls his notes a corrective punishment rather than literature, says he has gathered all the traits of an anti-hero, and claims that his readers are just as divorced from real life as he is, only better at deceiving themselves. A bracketed note then says the paradoxalist kept writing but that this is a good place to stop. Readers disagree about what it all means. Many see Liza as the book’s moral center, so that her love is the real answer to the arguments of Part One and his refusal of it is his tragedy. Others read the novel as a diagnosis of a type, as Dostoevsky’s footnote suggests, with no cure offered. Many twentieth-century readers treated the narrator as an early existentialist voice whose defense of free choice deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms.

Common misreadings

Test yourself

Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know

A lonely, grumpy man of forty writes down his thoughts in a small room in the Russian city of Petersburg. First he argues that thinking too much makes it hard to act. He also says people will never behave like machines, because they want to choose for themselves, even when their choices are bad. Then he remembers something shameful from when he was twenty-four: he pushed his way into a dinner with old classmates who did not want him there and made a fool of himself. Afterward he met a young woman named Liza, talked to her about her sad future, and gave her his address. When she came to see him and offered him kindness, he was cruel to her because he felt ashamed, and she left for good. The book asks why people sometimes hurt themselves and others on purpose.

Compare & connect the story universe

Discussion & essay prompts for class, or your next paper

Key questions students ask

• Who is the Underground Man in Notes from Underground
• What does the crystal palace symbolize in Notes from Underground
• What does twice two makes four mean in Notes from Underground
• Why does the narrator give Liza money at the end of Notes from Underground
• How are Part One and Part Two of Notes from Underground connected
• Why does the narrator call consciousness a disease in Notes from Underground