Summary
The Underground Man begins his narration of events that
occurred when he was twenty-four years old. Even at that young age,
he is already depressed and antisocial. At work, he never looks
anyone in the eye, and he imagines that they look at him with disgust.
He vacillates between despising everyone he knows because they are
dull-witted and feeling intensely inferior to them. He always feels
alienated, conscious of how different he is from everyone else.
Occasionally, he grows suddenly indifferent to his problems, becomes
briefly chummy with his coworkers, and attributes his usual “intolerance and
fastidiousness” to Romanticism.
In a digression from this retrospective narrative, the
Underground Man discusses the nature of Russian Romanticism, which he
claims is not “translunary” like German or French Romanticism. Russian
Romanticism is “to see everything, and to see often incomparably
more clearly than our very most positive minds do.” Generally, the
Russian form of Romanticism is open-minded and practical, concerned
with the preservation of “the beautiful and lofty” but also with
an eye for self-preservation. The Russian Romantic does not seem
to let his Romanticism get in the way of his career: he “wouldn’t
lift a finger for his ideal” yet believes in this ideal steadfastly.
He is at once “loftily honest” and a “scoundrel.”
After this explanation, the Underground Man returns to
his earlier narrative. At the age of twenty-four, he needs external
stimulation to stifle his inner turmoil, and the only external stimulation
he can bear is reading. Sometimes he feels the need for “contradictions, contrasts,”
and he engages in timid, shameful debaucheries. Afraid of being
seen, he frequents shadowy, disreputable places.
One night, after seeing someone thrown out a tavern window
in a fight, he desires a fight himself. These attempts are thwarted,
however. Rather than fight with the Underground Man, an officer
he meets casually shoves him aside. The Underground Man does not protest,
even though he is not afraid of the physical damage that the officer
could inflict on him. Rather, he lacks the “moral courage” to challenge
the officer. The Underground Man, as a romantic, would use “literary
language” with the officer, and he understands that the people in
the tavern would humiliate him for doing so.
Rather than challenge the officer, the Underground Man becomes
obsessed with the idea of revenge. He stalks the officer and gathers
casual information about him. However, whenever the Underground
Man sees the officer walking in the park, he gives way, so that
the officer does not even notice his presence. Finally, the Underground
Man decides that his revenge will come in refusing to give way to
the officer, because then the officer will have to acknowledge his
existence.
The Underground Man spends a long time preparing for this confrontation,
resorting to borrowing money to purchase quality clothing—a hat,
gloves, a shirt, and a fur collar—so that he will look like the
officer’s social equal. Even dressed in his fine clothes, however,
the Underground Man cannot bring himself to bump into the officer.
One day, he finally succeeds in walking straight into the officer,
but the officer does not even seem to notice. At first, the Underground
Man exults that he has placed himself on equal footing with the
officer and preserved his own dignity. Three days later, however,
he feels the same shame he feels after every debauch. The Underground
Man wonders what became of the officer: “Whom does he crush now?”
