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Underground as a seer of what would happen in the 20th and/or 21st centuries?

As Dostoevsky puts it, "understanding the conditions under which our society has

largely been established, the Underground Man is a representation of some persons who not

only may, but must exist in our society." As a result, the Underground man feels quite

disconnected from ordinary life. He considers himself much more "aware" and "intellectual"

than anybody else he has ever met. But he knows that his awareness usually takes the form of

a mistrust that undermines his ability to trust in his own acts. His doubts render him unable to

enjoy "life" to the fullest extent, as others do. Every emotion and idea that passes through the

Underground Man's mind is scrutinized and questioned. So, he can't choose between options

and feels helpless.

The Underground Man hates himself and feels bad about himself because he thinks he

is not as good as people who are more active or less smart. As an orphan, he has never had

normal, loving relationships with other people. This makes him feel even worse about

himself in front of other people. Since he hasn't done much in real life, he often bases his

hopes and expectations on what happens in books and movies. The Underground Man's

expectations for life, which are based on books, are often very different from the way things

are in the world he lives in. This makes him even more isolated from society. The only

feelings he can share with other people are anger, bitterness, vengeance, and shame. This is

the kind of a society that was there in the past, where people were not happy because they

had no freedom and could not lead a descent life. The Underground man can only think of

love as one person completely taking over another. So he can feel like he has done something
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in life, he often starts fights with other people and puts himself through a lot of humiliation.

Since he is the one who made this humiliation happen, it gives the Underground Man a sense

of satisfaction and power. He doesn't care if the outcome is good or bad as long as he can do

what he wants.

The Underground Man retires from the federal service at forty and moves into a

rundown apartment. From this point, he is a full-blown nihilist and hates society. In the

second part of the novel, the Underground Man represents himself as twenty-four, sixteen

years earlier. As a young man, the Underground Man is misanthropic, pompous, self-

effacing, and angry, yet he hangs onto some notions. To this point, the author is creating a

picture of what was happening in the society in the past. The Underground man needs people,

loves reading, and is admired for his brains and determination. He sometimes acts

idealistically. In the novels second half, we see how the Below Man's inability to interact

with people makes him fail at relationships and life, forcing him farther beneath.

Though we may respect and agree with The Underground Man's opinions, we despise

and disapprove of his conduct. These conflicting responses to him hint at some aspect of his

own split character. For instance, he deliberately sets himself in a situation where he cannot

avoid being offended despite the fact that he dislikes being insulted. Only the Underground

Man's views and conclusions are presented to us in Part 1; they are those of any clever man,

regardless of his age or century. On the other hand, Part 2 shows the Underground Man's

despicable and vindictive behavior against other individuals. This is an expression of the

world in the past and how novel people treated the least privileged in the society.

The falling snow at the conclusion of Part 1 causes the Underground Man to be

reminded of the narrative of Liza, and he must erase this recollection from his mind. To do

this, he must relive the incident from when he was 24 years old, an incident that has followed

him for the last 16 years. As mentioned in the comments to Part 1, most current
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psychoanalysis is based on the reliving or recounting of a painful or repressed incident from

the past. As a result, the whole of Notes from Underground may be read as a kind of

confession from a damaged personality and can be seen as a precursor to one of the major

literary tendencies of the 20th century.

In Part 2, on the other hand, we find practically every action the Underground Man

does repulsive. He was speaking intellectually against scientific rationality, so we could focus

on the arguments' viability without having to face the speaker's deformed and perverted

personality head-on. But in Part 2, we see firsthand how he is unable to contribute to his own

society as a human being. In Part 1, The Underground Man said that he had the ability to

inflate inadvertent slights into egregious insults in his dreams. In Part 2, it becomes clear that

his fractured psyche will only enable him to experience things vicariously and that his intense

dread of reality prevents him from ever making touch with the actual world.

Nihilism is the belief that conventional societal norms have no basis in nature and that

human life is ultimately pointless. The Underground Man holds this belief. The civilization in

which The Underground Man lives is abhorrent to him. In addition to having poor weather,

St. Petersburg has a bureaucratic and hypocritical culture. It is usual and commonly accepted

to accept bribes. The Underground Man is filled with resentment at all facets of society, yet

he is conscious of his lack of ability to influence it either positively or negatively. He is

incapable of even becoming a bad government servant. Instead, he attacks himself, refusing

to go to the doctor and continuing to live in a harmful environment out of spite. The

Underground Man's actions are the first indication of his masochism—his delight of his own

suffering and humiliation.

Then, (this is all of you speaking), "a new political economy will emerge, all

complete, and likewise calculated with mathematical correctness, so that all issues will

disappear in the blink of an eye, simply because all potential solutions to them will have been
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provided." The Palace of Crystal will then appear. Then…’ In conclusion, the golden era will

return. Since everything has already been planned out and tallied, it is obviously impossible

to promise that it won't be very monotonous at that point. On the other side, everything will

make perfect sense. Of course, ennui inspires every imaginable kind of creativity. After all,

people stab themselves with golden pins because of boredom, so none of this would matter.

The unfortunate part (again, I'm speaking for myself) is that, for all I know, people may then

find pleasure in even golden pins. Man is, after all, a fantastically foolish species. That is to

say, even if he is not the slightest bit foolish, he is so unappreciative that nothing more can be

expected of him. Really, I won't be the least bit surprised if, for instance, in the middle of the

future universal good sense, a man with an ignoble, or rather a derisive and reactionary air

suddenly appears, raises his arms, and says to us all, "Come on, gentlemen, why shouldn't we

get rid of all this calm reasonableness with one kick, just so that we can send all these

logarithms to the devil and be able to live our own lives That wouldn't matter either, but what

is really embarrassing is that because of the nature of males, he would undoubtedly get

adherents.

In the end, his desire for total dominance and even tyranny over any friend or person

in any connection is driven by his fear of being mocked, scorned, or rejected. Only if he can

master Zverkov, an impossible endeavor, could he become friends with Zverkov. He feels

inadequate because of his too refined sensitivity and his overly acute intellectual awareness,

which leads to the impulse to tyrannize others. The Underground Man's deliberate efforts to

enslave Liza reveal his bitter, perverted, and abhorrent character. The ultimate perspective of

this exile from mankind is that of a twisted insane person who deserves no sympathy and who

should dwell in an underground pit, even if we agree with his ideals in Part 1.

The Underground Man is shown as being extremely self-conscious and sensitive at

the introduction of this part. He thinks that others see him the same way he sees himself
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because of this acute awareness. He claims, for instance, that he detested his own looks and

thus believed that everyone else did as well. But because we know from Part 1 that only men

with acute awareness have ideas like these, we gradually realize that the Underground Man's

main flaws are his excessive sensitivity and dual nature. His actions and thoughts nearly

always reflect his dualism. He claims that he "alternated between despising [his coworkers]

and believing them superior" to himself, for instance. At the very least, he was unable to

resist the urge to avert his gaze when he saw someone gazing at him. The Sartrean existential

hero would "stare down" the other person rather than be the first to avert his eyes. In contrast,

the Underground Man's keen self-awareness has almost made him worthless in society. From

the actions expressed by the Underground man, he is depicting a group of people who

believed that they were more superior and more privileged than others.

The Underground man first interaction with Liza is kind and unlike of the lonely man.

He shares with her the painful details of his own tragic upbringing and expresses sympathy

for her troubling history. His development prompts the reader to ponder other feelings for the

cynical guy. Strangely, and maybe its inconsistencies are a sign, the Underground Man

suddenly becomes a dogmatic moralist. He informs Liza of the poverty and depravity that her

line of work often entails and compares it with the idealized view of family life (to which he

himself does not even have).In this expression, The Underground man is paintimg a picture

of a society that is living under poverty and intimidation by the class of people who were

wealthy and educated.

Invoking Christian principles, The Underground Man tells Liza that "the blessing of

God is upon it" and urges her to "judge not lest you be judged." He seemed to have a sincere

faith in God's mercy. The Underground Man's desire to "rescue" Liza makes the reader feel

pity for him. The Underground Man, however, breaks our hearts by acting selfishly once

again by being unkind to Liza as a result of his fear over her impending visit. Instead of
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celebrating her choice, he despises himself for being poor and alone. Dostoevsky says that his

acts were motivated by a desire for "power, power was what I sought," and he does not want

the reader to feel sorry for him. His oppression is meant at himself, not Liza. The

Underground Man continuously puts himself through hardships in an effort to remain trapped

there. Since she rescues herself and gets herself out of the hole, Liza is not "poor Liza."

Despite being a paradox of virtue and prostitution, Liza manages to maintain her innocence

by following the Underground Man's instructions. She gets pardoned for her past as a

prostitute since she upholds Christian morals. The Underground Man, in contrast, does

nothing to "rescue" himself from his soulless hole; instead, he only watches Liza go and

regret not pursuing her. Perhaps the author wants the reader to sympathize with "poor

Underground Man," yet despite his constant lack of affection, feelings, and action, he fails to

do so. To this point, the underground man is perceived to forecast how the life will be like in

the 20th and 21st century where morals will have lost their position in the society.

The underground man was unable to behave as he would have liked due to the

awareness that he was unique and unlike most other individuals. The same epiphany, which

liberates the romantic man from the chains of restriction, is made by Rousseau in the first

portion of his Confessions and serves as the theme and the rallying cry of romanticism.

Furthermore, despite the Underground Man's claim that Rousseau lied in his Confessions

(Part 1, Section 11), the revelation of his own singularity makes him passive rather than

liberated. Through his ability of believing that he knew everything and the feeling that he

could tell how the future of the society would be, people believed that he was foretelling of

the centuries to come.

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Reference

Jackson, Mick. The underground man. Pan Macmillan, 1998.

https://www.perlego.com/book/976493/the-underground-man-adapted-for-the-stage-pdf