As for why he writes at all, the Underground Man finds
writing to be a cathartic experience, allowing him some relief from
his nagging memories. It also relieves his boredom and makes him
feel like he is doing something productive. He then introduces the
next part of Notes from Underground: the dull,
wet snow he sees falling outside his window reminds him of an anecdote
from his past that he cannot forget, so he decides to tell his story
“apropos of the wet snow.”
Analysis: Chapters IX–XI
The Underground Man’s discussion of the creative and destructive instincts
of humankind is closely related to the nature of the society in
which he lives. During the time the Underground Man was a civil servant
in St. Petersburg, he faced a burdensome, pointless bureaucracy
in his day-to-day existence. Furthermore, in various parts of the
novel he has commented on the city’s artificiality. In this regard, Notes
from Underground is the forerunner of a slew of literary works
about the human condition in the modern era, many of them expressing
similar concerns about the alienating effect modern bureaucratic
existence has on the common man. Whereas preindustrial man engaged
in a constant physical struggle to stay alive, producing tools that
were directly related to his survival, postindustrial man does work
that has no direct connection to his daily physical needs. He does
not see the results of his labor and feels alienated him from his
work. Advances in technology only assure that there will be less
for man to do and achieve. As a result, the boredom of modern life
makes suffering into a kind of diversion or release. Dostoevsky was
fully aware of this sense of alienation in postindustrial man, and he
supported a somewhat conservative movement that emphasized the importance
of community, religion, and personal responsibility in combating
this alienation. The name of this conservative movement translates
as “Back to the Soil,” implying a rejection of the postindustrial
society to which the Underground Man belongs.
The crystal palace was an important symbol for the progressive thinkers
and utilitarians of the 1860s. Chernyshevsky
imagined a crystal palace as an ideal living space for his utopian
society, basing its structure on the real-life Crystal Palace that
was shown in London at the Great Exhibition of 1851,
which Dostoevsky saw during a trip to Europe. The Crystal Palace
at the Exhibition, built entirely of glass and cast iron, represented
the height of modern building technology. Clear as crystal, made
with modern methods, and constructed entirely with modern materials,
the Palace embodied the values of rational egoism, liberal socialism,
and utilitarianism that the Underground Man derides in the later
chapters of “Underground.” When the Underground Man says that he
despises anything at which he cannot stick out his tongue, he is
imagining the physical embodiment of progressive and utopian theories.
If the imaginary crystal palace represents the triumph of reason
over disorder, sticking out his tongue represents the Underground
Man’s determination to prevent reason from overcoming his obstinate
free will.
Even though the Underground Man begins Chapter X by deriding
the utilitarians’ crystal palace, he suddenly insinuates that the palace
represents everything he desires but can never have. This odd twist
can be explained by the fact that the chapter was severely censored
before it was published. Dostoevsky later claimed that the omitted
passages expressed an idea central to the entire novel—the need
for religion and faith. Indeed, in the second half of Chapter X, the
Underground Man speaks with more feeling and conviction than he
uses elsewhere, suddenly clinging to an idealism that he says he
will never abandon. These passages suggest that he rejects Chernyshevsky’s
crystal palace not because of its perfection but because it tries
to pass off something banal, ordinary, and limiting (such as a chicken
coop) as a palace. Chernyshevsky’s philosophy is flawed because
it neglects the freedom of the human will. The Underground Man will
only accept a utopia that offers man all of the “advantages” he
needs, even though such a utopia is impossible to imagine. Inevitably,
though, the Underground Man rejects this idealism at the end of
the chapter. At the beginning of Chapter XI, the Underground Man
recovers his bitter and contradictory nature, saying, “[L]ong live
the underground!” and then immediately revising that comment to
“Devil take the underground!” We see yet again that he refuses to
make a genuine ideological statement.
At the end of “Underground,” the Underground Man offers
a reasonably in-depth analysis of his own psyche and the motives
that are compelling him to write. He also addresses his need to
behave as though he has an audience of judges even though he plans
never to publish his manuscript. This somewhat convoluted and tangled analysis
is ahead of its time. Though Dostoevsky wrote long before Freud, Notes
from Underground tackles the psychological complexity of
its main character with an awareness and depth previously unknown
in nineteenth-century literature. Now that we have such a deep sense
of the Underground Man’s character, as “Apropos of the Wet Snow”
opens we are given the opportunity to see how those character traits
work in the social world.
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