Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Individual
Group Discount
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews December 8, 2023 December 1, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan - Group Discount
Qty: 00
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
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.)
Please wait while we process your payment