full title Notes from Underground or Zapiski
iz podpol’ya
author Fyodor Dostoevsky
type of work Novel
genre Satire; social critique; fictional memoir; existential
novel; psychological study
language Russian
time and place written 1863; St. Petersburg
date of first publication January–April 1864
publisher Epoch magazine
narrator The anonymous narrator of Notes from Underground is
also the novel’s protagonist. The Underground Man is a bitter, reclusive forty-year-old
civil servant speaking from his St. Petersburg apartment in the 1860s,
though he spends the second section of the novel describing his
life as a younger man in the 1840s.
point of view The narrator speaks in the first person, describing
his own thoughts and feelings and narrating events that occurred
sixteen years earlier in his life.
tone The Underground Man is a prime example of an unreliable narrator.
Because the whole novel is told through his skewed and irrational
perspective, we cannot take his depictions of events and characters
at face value. We also cannot assume that the Underground Man’s
perspective is the same as Dostoevsky’s. The author maintains a
considerable distance between his view and the narrator’s. Often,
we see Dostoevsky satirizing an event that the Underground Man sees
as very serious.
tense The first section of the novel is told in the present
tense. In the second half, the Underground Man narrates a long story
from his past, telling this story in past tense with occasional
present-tense commentary.
setting (time) Approximately 1863 in “Underground”
and 1847 in “Apropos of the Wet Snow”
setting (place) St. Petersburg
protagonist The protagonist is the same as the narrator, the Underground Man.
major conflict The Underground Man rejects many of the values and assumptions
of the society in which he lives, and this conflict often manifests
itself in smaller, resentful conflicts between the Underground Man
and other people who represent the problems he has with society.
rising action The Underground Man’s various attempts to interact
with society, including his attempt to fight a duel, his bungled
dinner with four of his school acquaintances, and his attempts to
rescue a prostitute, Liza, from her life of sin
climax Liza’s positive response to the Underground Man, quickly followed
by his cruel and resentful rejection of her because of his inexperience
with love and kindness; Liza’s departure, signifying the loss of
the Underground Man’s last chance to escape the underground with
her
falling action The Underground Man’s increased distancing of himself
from society and further slinking into the “underground”; his resignation
from his civil service job; his self-imposed isolation in his apartment;
his abandonment of his youthful idealism and his desires to participate
in the social world
themes The fallacies of rationalism and utopianism; the artificiality
of Russian culture; the paralysis of the conscious man in modern society
motifs The wet snow; l’homme de la nature et de la
vérité; the redeemed prostitute
symbols The underground; St. Petersburg; the Crystal Palace;
money
foreshadowing The Underground Man’s declaration that his idea of
love is the total domination of another person foreshadows his inability
to forge a relationship with Liza. The Underground Man’s mention of
a vague desire to make Liza pay for seeing him in a humiliating situation
foreshadows his later attempts to humiliate her. (In a sense, the
entire first section of the novel foreshadows the second by giving
us tools to understand the Underground Man’s behavior. However,
the first section does not hint at the events of the second section
specifically enough to be considered true foreshadowing.)
