The Underground Man's Desire for Misery

Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground depicts a man who is deeply rooted in a lifestyle of misanthropy and bitterness. He is highly governed by his own burdensome philosophies. The Underground Man (as he will subsequently be referred) lives by the precedent of his own conceptions on how life should be lived. His understanding of the way people should interact socially and how individuals should be engaged emotionally has been thought through thoroughly. He is highly contradictory in his rationalization of his own practices, but appears to rather revile in his own self-pity. The Underground man has a penchant for feeling sorry for himself and rather than take part in society naturally, he forcibly places himself in encounters that will undoubtedly cause him angst or bodily harm. If he were to find himself in the position of Joseph K. in Kafka's The Trial, he would likely be contentedly miserable. He would not be "happy" as such, but the misery would feel familiarly comfortable to him. The Underground Man would respond to the corrupt trial by finding it as an outlet for him to exercise his self-loathing misery that he feels is the ideal state for all conscious and educated men.

In chapter VIII of "Underground" the Underground Man asks of his imaginary audience, "Who wants to want according to a little table?" He is alluding to a popular stream of thought at the time that one might statistically draw out the natural desires and actions of man in full consideration of the basics needs of survival and satiation of entertainment. The Underground man is very highly obsessed with free will. It is his habit to apparently exercise his free will simply for the sake of taking advantage of free will. He decides to go to the dinn...

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...tion at his ability to influence their lives. It is not likely that the Underground Man would have wanted to whip them himself. He does not have the nerves. He would, however, gain a certain satisfaction from knowing that he held a small of power in his corner.

The personality of the Underground Man seems to be somewhat contradictory to what many readers might view as logical and reasonable. Yet, in his mind, he is justified in his inane behavior. He is contradictory because he is more intelligent than most men, and he is miserable because he is more conscious that most men. He takes pride in his perceived intelligence and consciousness and in the misery that proves it. Put in the position that Joseph K occupies, he would be all the more miserable at being a constituent to such a corrupt system and he would revel that misery as proof of his superiority.