I found this book depressing but it seemed SO familiar. The main character, the underground man himself with his self-pity and his determination for self-sabotage was someone I felt I had read about before. Maybe it's just a Russian archetype. He was quite frustrating but Dosteyevsky wrote it all so beautifully: what he thought and felt, how he appeared to others, his opportunities for redemption and how he would throw it away. I actually thought he might allow things to work out with Liza and get out of his funk but he was determined to keep himself down. I loved the character of Appollon, so passive-aggressive, he must have driven the neurotic underground man crazy.
On pg 31, he is thinking back on his younger days and how he has come to be where he is now. he scoffs at Romanticism "We Russians, speaking generally, have never had those foolish transcendental "romantics" -- German, and still more French -- on whom nothing produces any effect; if there were an earthquake, if all France perished at the barricades, they would still be the same, they would not even have the decency to affect a change, but would still go on singing their transcendental songs to the hour of their death, because they are fools." He goes on to describe what the Russian 'romantic' is and it's quite a humorous description as he describes quite pragmatic romantics, always with an eye out for advantage.
"That is why there are so many 'broad natures' among us who never lose their ideal even in the depths of degradation; and though they never stir a finger for their ideal,..., yet they tearfully cherish their first ideal and are extraordinarily honest at heart." pg 32
He really is a sad character and though he is pitiful, there is something of his insecurity in many of us. He says pg 31 "Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike everyone else. 'I am alone and they are everyone'.
He describes himself as pitiful, loathsome, hysterical etc. He is very untrustworthy as a narrator and he tells us so frequently (pg 33, pg 26, pg 27, pg 22, pg 25)
After he tries to pick a fight and get thrown out of a window [he is unsuccessful in his defenestration attempt], he says "I never have been a coward at heart, though I have always been a coward in action." pg 34
He starts to stalk an officer he has become obsessed with. He refers to himself several times as a fly (pg 34 "I had been treated like a fly"; pg 36 "that I was a mere fly in the eyes of all this world, a nasty, disgusting fly -- more intelligent, more highly developed, more refined in feeling than any of them, of course -- but a fly that was continually making way for everyone, insulted and injured by everyone."; "All of them took scarcely any notice of my entrance, which was strange, for I had not met them for years. Evidently they looked upon me as something on the level of a common fly." pg 42)
The underground man indulges in fantasies about how life could be where he was admired and loved. "Everyone would kiss me and weep (what idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against the obscurantists. pg 40
He runs into old school friends and they are planning a party for Zverkov, a rich friend (who came in for an estate of 200 serfs while still a school). The underground man hates him because of his advantages, what he calls being "favoured by the gifts of nature."
He didn't do well at school. He was intelligent and knew the material but couldn't get along. "Once indeed I did have a friend. But I was already a tyrant at heart; I wanted to exercise unbounded sway over him..." pg 47 He is so insecure about everything combined with false bravado about his superiority. He invites himself along to a get-together. He wants everything to go perfectly, to be able to redeem himself in their eyes. He sneaks away from work 2 hours early to be able to get ready "The great thing, I thought, is not to be the first to arrive, or they will think I am overjoyed at coming. But there were 1000 of such great points to consider , and they all agitated and overwhelmed me." pg 47.
He overthinks and obsesses about everything.
Of course it all goes terribly wrong, and where he can make it worse he does. It's horrifying to observe him sabotage himself with absolutely everyone he encounters.
It was interesting to think about what Dostoyevsky would have been thinking and feeling as he was about the same age as his protagonist when he wrote this. It's very dark but then I find so many Russian stories have this same dark fatalism.
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