40 pages • 1 hour read
Fyodor DostoevskyNotes from Underground
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1864A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 6-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Underground”
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
The Underground Man bemoans his inability to devote his life to that which cultural connoisseurs consider “sublime and beautiful” (19). He sees this lifestyle as a form of laziness, even gluttony. However, he affirms that people who live in this way are confident in themselves, have society’s respect, and die peacefully, knowing their life was well-lived. He has regrets about his life both because he is 40, which he considers old age, and because he resents those who think “the nastiest, unquestionable trash” (19) has artistic value.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
The Underground Man further attacks the notion that the civilized individual is truly enlightened. His argument rests on the fact that, even with access to knowledge that teaches them how to act advantageously, people still knowingly act contrary to their own interests. He notes that society thinks of advantage in the terms that reflect its values: “Your advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace—and so on, and so on” (21), but he asserts that the most important advantage—choice—is left out of this formula. The freedom to knowingly act against one’s best interests is more valuable to a person than the ability to act in a way that is beneficial. He uses the example of his “friend” (22), who speaks about the virtue of acting rationally but then acts “in direct opposition to what he has just been saying about himself, in opposition to the laws of reason, in opposition to his own advantage, in fact in opposition to everything...” (22). The Underground Man believes this is symptomatic of 19th-century thinking that prizes science, philosophy, and social theory but disregards the contradictions of human nature.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
The Underground Man continues his discussion of choice and humanity’s desire to assert itself by acting outside its rational interests. He argues against the notion that science and mathematics can predict human decisions; in his view, even if “a formula for all our desires and caprices” (25) were discovered, people would intentionally cease to feel desire, simply to prove the formula wrong. He believes that rather than proving humanity’s stupidity, this impulse toward caprice helps people retain their individuality, paradoxically making it humanity’s most important advantage. He uses history as his proof: “[O]ne may say anything about the history of the world—anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational” (27). Even if people were given a utopia, he argues, they would destroy it to prove they have free will. The Underground Man anticipates the counterargument that free will naturally coincides with reason, but he points out that if free will were truly rational, like mathematics, it would cease to be free will because its outcome would be determined by natural laws.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
The Underground Man proposes that people enjoy the process of creating more than they enjoy having the finished product. Even if a road leads nowhere, the “practical man” (29) will build it for the possibility that it could lead somewhere.
Not only do people like to create, but they also like to destroy. This is because they are afraid of attaining their final object. If they build a perfect society, they will no longer have a goal for which to strive: “[P]erhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of les animaux domestiques—such as the ants, the sheep, and so on” (29-30). He contrasts humanity’s self-contradictory urges with the single-minded purpose of ants that create their society in an orderly, rational manner.
The Underground Man asserts that humans love suffering more than they love their well-being because consciousness is born out of suffering. There is no suffering in the utopian “Palace of Crystal” (30); thus, there can be no consciousness there.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
In this chapter, the Underground Man rejects the Palace of Crystal—the theoretical edifice that represents rational idealism—because it is impervious to mockery: “[O]ne cannot put one’s tongue out at it even on the sly” (32). Even so, it is still better than Petersburg’s affordable housing projects, which he states are too easily ridiculed. Rather, The Underground Man prefers to live in his “underground hole” (32).
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary
The Underground Man presents his project of writing about his life: He wants to find out if he can excise the memories that bother him by writing them down, and he wants to discover whether he can be totally honest with himself about his life, which he doubts. He insists that he does not write for an audience and uses his addresses to the reader—“gentlemen” (35)—only as a way to facilitate his writing. He notes that snow is falling, and it reminds him of an event that happened in the distant past, “that incident which I cannot shake off now” (36).
Part 1, Chapters 6-11 Analysis
The second half of Part 1 introduces the theme of Rationality Versus Irrationality as the Foundation of Choice, which is one of the main themes of the text. The Underground Man argues that, despite the benefits of acting rationally, humans will always—or often—act against their self-interest to maintain their personal autonomy. In Chapter 10, he critiques the notion of the Crystal Palace, the theoretical building that represents enlightened self-interest and mathematical certainty. People, the Underground Man argues, do not operate according to the mandates of science. Rather, he states that irrationality is a fact of human nature, just as two plus two equals four.
In Chapter 9, the Underground Man notes that creativity and destruction should not be seen as opposites. Rather, they represent two sides of the same impulse: the desire to assert one’s personality. This is a continuation of the discussion of choice and caprice that he begins in Chapters 7 and 8, but it is important to note that this section is not a debate regarding free will. In Russian, will is volya while the word Dostoevsky uses for choice is khoten’e. This is an important distinction because the question of free will, which is a central concept of much of Dostoevsky’s writing, is a philosophical one about the existence of God and whether human behavior is foreordained. In Notes from Underground, the Underground Man believes in scientific determinism, meaning there is no free will. Individual choice, then, is all the more important because humans have no control over the greater scheme.
Chapter 11 transitions from argument to narrative when the Underground Man describes his project of writing about his memories. He introduces the theme of Confessional Writing and Narrative Reliability when he says, “Such confessions as I intend to make are never printed nor given to other people to read” (35). This is the central conceit of the novella, as the Russian word zapiski, which is translated in the title as “notes,” can also mean “memoirs.” The Underground Man insists his writing style is a smokescreen: “I write only for myself, […] and for all that if I write as though I were addressing readers, that is simply because it is easier for me to write in that form. It is a form, an empty form—I shall never have readers” (35-36). He considers his writing therapeutic as well as stylistic, implying that he feels guilt or shame about the events that he is going to relate. He sets the scene for the narrative with his reference in Chapter 11 to one of the novella’s main symbols, the falling snow, which continues through the rest of Part 2.
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