When the Underground Man arrives at the brothel, where
he has been before, he finds the drawing room empty. He realizes
that the others have already gone off with various women. He paces
the room, trying to decide what to do until a young prostitute with
a kind, serious face appears in the room. She appeals to the Underground
Man, who decides to sleep with her. He notices his bedraggled appearance
in a mirror and decides that he does not care if she finds him repulsive.
In fact, he would rather she did.
Analysis: Chapters IV–V
The Underground Man’s description of his wait at the restaurant mirrors
his description of the hissing wall clock: just as he imagines that
the inanimate clock is hostile, he imagines that the waiters performing
their tasks are full of contempt for him, and he is ashamed. Every
casual occurrence, from the late arrival of his dinner companions
to the waiters setting the table, is loaded with negative meaning to
the Underground Man. We must keep in mind this tendency of the Underground
Man to exaggerate or misinterpret events through his own bitterness
and insecurity. Whenever he makes a judgment about a person or a
place, we must take his skewed perspective into account.
Beyond providing us with further examples of how the Underground
Man views other people, Chapter IV is also the first in the novel
to give us a relatively clear picture of how others might view the
Underground Man. Having been privy to his thoughts and feelings
for a long time, we have begun to understand what motivates him.
We can follow his logic to some degree, even if that logic is flawed.
We are accustomed to his ways of looking at the world and at himself.
We even begin to share his point of view. Since he worries so much
about what other people think of him, we imagine that the other
characters in the novel really do think about his behavior as much
as he thinks they do. These other characters, however, have no understanding
of the Underground Man’s motives, and therefore his behavior appears
bizarre to them. Their responses to his behavior are negative, but
not necessarily because they are cruel or unfeeling people. For
the most part, they are baffled by his rudeness.
The events of Chapter IV illustrate the Underground Man’s
masochism and indecisiveness. The fact that he remains at the dinner, pacing
hopelessly in front of the other dinner guests but refusing to speak
to them, indicates that he does indeed get a strange pleasure out
of the feeling that he has hit rock bottom. As he has described
in the “Underground” section, the Underground Man cultivates his own
humiliation, almost deliberately hrowing himself into the most painful,
inextricable situation imaginable. As he has also explained, he
can never make decisive choices because he is always too conscious
of every possibility. He thinks that if he allows himself to get deep
enough into trouble, he will arrive at a point of inevitability. Once
he reaches this point, it will be essential that he slap Zverkov’s face.
The Underground Man feels that at this point he might be able to
find some kind of confidence or certainty.
Having reached a point of inevitability with his insulting
speech to Zverkov, however, the Underground Man is still plagued
by doubts. In Chapter V, he submits alternately to his romantic
visions, his nihilistic realism, and his masochistic impulses. He
imagines scenes of noble reconciliation with Zverkov, but he also
realizes that these imagined scenes are ludicrous and have been
lifted from literature. His visions of being beaten by everyone
in the brothel are as much a masochistic fantasy as his visions
of reconciliation are a Romantic one. At the same time, though,
the Underground Man can understand the practical difficulties that
dueling would present—for one thing, he does not have a single close
friend to act as his second.
One of the major urges that drives the Underground Man
to go to the brothel and confront Zverkov is the idea that he cannot
avoid “life.” He has attended the dinner partially to feel that
he is living “life,” and he believes that slapping Zverkov will
be a “confrontation” with real life. The Underground Man seems to
equate “life” with emotionally satisfying contact with other people—but
the only emotions he can express are resentment, anger, and conflict.
Believing that the underground protects him from life and therefore
limits him, he feels that he can somehow escape his alienation through forced
participation in life. In this light, his pursuit of Zverkov is genuinely
a pursuit of freedom and dignity.
