Summary: Chapter II
The Underground Man continues to describe himself. He
is “overly conscious,” a “developed man” who possesses far more
consciousness than is necessary for survival in the nineteenth century.
Narrow-minded, active people, in contrast, have the perfect amount
of consciousness of reality to go about their daily lives. The Underground
Man explains that he does not mean to deride these active figures
by suggesting that they are not as conscious as he is, but then he
immediately admits that he takes pride in his “sickness” of consciousness.
He describes how his consciousness, which makes him aware of “everything
beautiful and lofty,” somehow inevitably drags him into corruption
and “blight,” a blight in which he has gradually learned to take
a sick pleasure.
The end result of this consciousness is always inertia.
The Underground Man believes that degradation is inherent in his
nature and therefore impossible to change, which affords him a degree
of satisfaction. Another kind of strangled satisfaction comes from
the fact that the Underground Man, even though he despises himself,
considers himself more intelligent than everyone around him, and therefore
feels responsible for everything that happens to him. This sense
of responsibility, of course, also increases his misery, and makes
his pride in his own intelligence a source of shame.
Summary: Chapter III
The Underground Man further explains his inability to
act in any directed fashion, whether magnanimously or vengefully.
Once again, the problem is rooted in his self-consciousness. Normal
men act immediately and blindly upon their instincts. In contrast
to this kind of man, whom the Underground Man considers stupid but manly,
the highly conscious Underground Man is nothing more than a mouse.
While the normal man can perceive an act of revenge as an act of
justice, the Underground Man, when wronged, is too conscious of
the complexities of revenge to retaliate with genuine faith and
confidence. Therefore, he ends up slinking back into his underground
hole to dwell on whatever wrong has been done to him until it has
almost consumed him.
A man of action follows his desire to act only until he
is faced with definite impossibility, at which point he is reassured
by the fact that further action will be useless. The Underground
Man, however, claims that conscious men refuse to be reconciled
with the laws of nature, science, and mathematics that other men
take for granted. Even though the Underground Man is conscious of
the reality of these laws, he refuses to agree with them if he does
not like them.
Summary: Chapter IV
“Next you’ll be finding pleasure in a
toothache!” you will exclaim, laughing.
“And why not? There is also pleasure in a toothache,”
I will answer.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
The Underground Man continues to illustrate the aesthetics
of misery, demonstrating how the educated, conscious man of the
nineteenth century can find pleasure even in a toothache. This pleasure comes
from the unnecessary, almost artistically embellished moans and
groans that the man uses to signal to his family and friends that he
has a toothache, as well as from his awareness that his family is disgusted
and irritated with his displays of agony. After making this argument,
the Underground Man responds to the laughter that he imagines he
has elicited from his audience, and explains that his jokes are
in bad tone because he does not respect himself: “[H]ow can a man
of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself?”
Analysis: Chapters II–IV
When the Underground Man implies that his great intelligence
and heightened consciousness prevent him from being an “active man,” saying
that active people are always “disingenuous,” he is rationalizing
his inability to act. However, the fact that the Underground Man
deludes himself about the source of his alienation does not mean
that Dostoevsky necessarily wants to glorify the “man of action.”
Indeed, the novel criticizes equally those people who spend too
much time contemplating the “beautiful and lofty” and those people
who act decisively but blindly.
