The account of the Underground Man’s time at school helps
to explain his bitterness. An orphan who was always too sensitive
and antisocial to win much love or affection at school, the Underground Man
has gone through life unloved. His relationship with his one friend
at school shows us that, even as a young person, he had no idea
how to conduct a real relationship. He does not understand love
or faith, only domination and submission. He craves power because
all his life he has had to stand by in impotent rage and submit
to the will of stronger and more powerful people.
Two manifestations of the Underground Man’s masochism appear
in this chapter. We learn that the Underground Man quit his lucrative
and prestigious career in civil service simply out of spite, just
as he now refuses to go to the doctor out of spite. Moreover, the Underground
Man decides to go to the dinner for Zverkov even though he clearly
is not wanted, partially because of an inexplicable desire to plunge
himself into uncomfortable situations. The Underground Man imagines
that these situations are the only way for him to experience real
life. Indeed, as we have noticed, his only emotional interchanges
with others involve anger, hate, and discomfort. He believes these
uncomfortable sensations to be strongly tied to any kind of social
behavior.
The Underground Man continues to be obsessed with external appearances,
just as he was when he plotted his revenge on the officer. The Underground
Man frets because of the shabby condition of his clothes, particularly
his stained pair of trousers, imagining that the four friends at
the restaurant will look down on him because of his slovenly appearance.
Though this concern is not wholly unfounded, it reveals that the
Underground Man sees the world—not just the readers of his memoirs—as
a panel of judges. For the Underground Man, external appearances
and the meanings they conceal are often one and the same. At the
end of the chapter, the wall clock “hisse[s]” five o’clock. The
Underground Man’s use of such a negative word to describe the sounds
of a clock indicates that he projects his discontent onto the world
around him. These word choices remind us that we should be careful
about accepting any information the Underground Man gives us—he
likely observes all people and objects with the same distorted hatred
he applies to the wall clock.
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