Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Fallacies of Rationalism and Utopianism
Throughout the novel, the Underground Man makes a convincing case
against the “rational egoists” and utopian socialists of his era, who
claimed that the application of reason alone could perfect the world.
Believing that destructive behavior results from a misguided sense
of profit, these theorists thought that if everyone in the world understood
what was really in their best interests, they would never do anything
irrational or destructive. If the natural laws that governed human
behavior could be understood, through reason, utopia would indeed
be attainable.
The Underground Man opposes such a view because he believes that
it underestimates the human desire for free will. He argues that humans
value the ability to exert their own will—even if it runs contrary
to their best interests—more than they value reason. The Underground
Man’s masochistic tendencies illustrate this theory. Rather than
submit to the “law of reason” that dictates that only doctors and
dentists can cure liver disease and toothaches, the Underground
Man prefers to suffer his ailments in silence, even though this
decision only brings him more pain. This example is absurd, almost
parodic, but it emphasizes the Underground Man’s point about human
nature. Dostoevsky himself was highly suspicious of utopian socialists,
worrying that their desire to codify rational human behavior ignored
the complex nature of human beings. The freedom these utopian socialists
preached could too easily lead to total uniformity—a uniformity
that could lead to totalitarianism.
The Artificiality of Russian Culture
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Russian social
and intellectual elite had been imitating western European culture
for decades. A nineteenth-century Russian man was considered “developed”
and “educated” if he was familiar with the literary and philosophical
traditions of Germany, France, and England. The Underground Man,
with his intelligence, consciousness, and sense of the “beautiful
and lofty” (a term borrowed from European philosophers Edmund Burke
and Immanuel Kant), considers himself a “developed man of the nineteenth
century.” He tells us that, in his youth, he tried rather earnestly
to live by the ideals he found in European literature and philosophy.
Though Dostoevsky may have shared this fascination with European
culture in his own youth, by the time he wrote Notes from
Underground, he had decided that such pervasive European
influence on Russia was destructive. Captivated by the West, Russian
intellectuals had lost touch with the true Russian way of life the
peasants and lower-class workers still practiced. To restore national
unity and harmony, Dostoevsky called for a “return to the soil,”
emphasizing Russian values of family, religion, personal responsibility,
and brotherly love over European “enlightenment,” scientific progressivism,
and utopianism. The Underground Man’s European influences are partially
responsible for driving him “underground,” as his attempts to live
by a foreign set of values meet with failure and frustration.
Paralysis of the Conscious Man in Modern Society
Throughout the novel we see that the Underground Man is
unable to make decisions or take action with confidence. He explains
that this inability is due to his intense degree of consciousness.
The Underground Man is able to imagine the variety of consequences that
every action could have, he is aware of the possible arguments that
can be made against every statement, and he is conscious of the multiplicity
of different motives that inform every decision he makes. As a result,
the Underground Man sees that every choice a person makes is more
complicated than it may seem on the surface. This complexity throws
every decision into doubt. Action becomes impossible because it
is impossible to determine the best course of action to take.
In earlier times, when religious and moral imperatives
existed, people allayed any doubts about action and decision by
following these imperatives in absolute confidence. In the modern
era, however, most of these absolutes have dissolved. The only people
who can act with confidence, according to the Underground Man, are narrow-minded
people who are too stupid to question themselves. The one remaining
absolute, according to the Underground Man, is reason. Even educated
men pursue the laws of science and reason without questioning them.
The Underground Man—along with Dostoevsky himself—believes that
such mindless adherence to the laws of reason is misguided. Dostoevsky
does not necessarily believe, however, that total inaction is the
best strategy for conscious people. He does believe, though, that
an active person with a totally fixed mind—one that is not open
to different possibilities—is more dangerous than an inactive person
whose mind moves and changes.
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