Notes From The Underground
By, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Well, of course, the laws of nature or the conclusions of natural sciences or of mathematics. When it is proved, for example, that you are descended from an ape, it’s no use scowling about it – accept it as a fact. Or it is demonstrated that half an ounce of your own fat ought essentially to be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow creatures, and that this demonstration finally disposes of all so-called good deeds, duties, and lunacies and prejudices, simply accept it; there’s nothing to be done about it, because twice two is mathematics. Just try to argue!”-pg 23
This Existential story could have been written in any time other than 1864. The search for one’s self of who he is, wants to be and all within the rigid confines of the Laws of Nature and his social class. His trials gave him strength and he faced his fears, but he found that breaking through himself was most difficult struggle he ever knew. As one reads this book they are instantly struck by the cold chill that seems to permeate the script. The cold reality of the unforgiving Russian winter was never yielding for a single breath that wasn’t frozen. The complex shock of the icy vapors did not impede the unnamed protagonist from describing his state of affairs with an unmoved rambling style. For he did not ramble to hear himself talk, but he had valid points that shed light on everything that perplexed, scared and denied him victory.
He understood the Laws of Nature and how it was the prison for his seeking personality, it’s mere mention left him wanting more from life as a whole. Yet he felt the Laws and knew that he was a part of them and could do nothing but grind his teeth as he knowing and unknowingly stepped in front of them just to be rolled over by them again. He found that within his boredom to be more that he theorized brilliant, yet ill-conceived fantasies. Once he saw a man get thrown out of a tavern window and thought that he would like to be that man. He began a wonderful daydream of seeing himself confront that rowdy chap and he too would be another violent through the window refugee, so he mustered his courage to the point to the point of madness, but as soon as he entered he saw something else confront him and he exited out the door, his cowardice. As he walked by the unconscious man that had the strength to have this victory he is left to go home with his own internal rowdy chap to humiliate him more.
All the people he met from his past seemed to see that yellow stripe down his back and treated him accordingly. His schoolmates from years gone by told him of their party that was going to held and that he was invited. He went back to his poor flat and dressed himself up in his best uniform; though ratty and torn as it was, it was his best and exited to finally have his victory over his struggle. He theorized great things that would happen upon arrival; he would be brought into the upper class inner circle and everything that people said about him would be cast off as if it was a double. He looked at his pocket watch and felt a surge of pride that he and arrived first and the others were late. The hours clicked by and the invitation was a lie. His schoolmates made it were no matter where they were that they didn’t desire him to be where they were. He got drunk and saw them after the party had concluded and told them what he really thought about them, but they didn’t seem to notice or care; for they had the social upper hand. His confrontation only led him to seek them out again to apologize for his words and he continued his inner self-respect seeking conflict yet again.
His confrontations with a creature called cowardice seemed to roar into everything that he did. It followed him like a bane, a shadow that beckoned his past and future defeats and it gained strength to conquer his present as well. Upon meeting a woman named Liza he saw a promising woman that he could love and grow affectionate towards, so much that he asked about her family and life. She was a prostitute that had no family and no friends. He saw within himself the same vulnerability that looked ugly, child-like, and shameful; he couldn’t help but hate her. He berated her for her inferiority, and how when she died that no one will be at her funeral and no will ever come to her grave. His words bit true for them both, but he was looking for her to crack like a nut and he saw that come to pass. His anger that had became down right mean was a victory for his emotions and a defeat for his decency. He felt that he had won as he passed his address across the table to her. He wondered if she would come…
Patience was a difficult virtue that he did not possess, especially when his roommate was so disorderly. Apollon was something of an intimidating man that dictated his rule with a staring down contest. He would shoot from his room with one of his hands behind his back and stare at his roommate fixedly like a man possessed. The protagnist with all of his daydreams, fears and wonders about Liza coming to his poverty stricken flat was tolerating this on his last nerve. Before he could see Apollon coming to start this sick game once again he jumped up and started yelling at this old fool, ‘How dare you come in here without my permission and stare at me like that? Answer me!’ The man could do nothing but shrink back into his room, but his angry roommate followed in tow, ‘Stop! Stay where you are! That’s it! Now answer me why do you come in my room and stare at me?’ Apollon could not answer even after his roommate seized his shoulder, but before he committed an act of physical violence there was a knock at the door, it was Liza.
After all the time he waited for her to arrive she had finally fulfilled her end of the appreciation. He hustled Apollon out of his house for tea and there he sat down with a woman that he thought he could love. He knew all of his flaws and his suffering trumped his strength, but he thought if she could drop her jeweller’s loop and see him for what he wanted her to be then everything would be perfect. Yet the Laws of Nature do not have what a man wants to see in its bag of tricks, and simply they are what they are. This lesson he had struggled with his whole life to this point and beyond. He wanted her to not see his poverty sticken flat, his dirty torn shirt, and his dysfinctional rude roommate. All he had to do is clean his body and his living condition up a bit and everything would fall into place.
Indeed, the Laws of Nature had their own plan when in the end she insulted him and he reveals he had ulterior motives beyond what emotional sentiment he had giving her his address, for he got what he wanted. His deceptive words of anger, revenge seeking and above all power hunger is why he lowered his guard to play this game with her. He wanted to see her humiliated and to repeat the cycle of abuse that his lack of assertive fortitude had left on him. He got spit on and forgotten in the tavern waiting on his friends to arrive in his best uniform; he approached a ranked official and every time he stepped out his way instead of the opposite; and he was stared at incessantly by his torturer roommate. He broke down and realized that everything he said to his woman was what he told himself. All his vile words and broken heart blues he spilled out of his mind and into another person and he began to sob. She took him into her arms and tried to ease his broken, awakened and for once alive soul. He had laid it vulnerable, writhing and escaped from the prison of his melancholy mind. He had nothing left but the vessel of his insecurities.
He had confront his rowdy chap of cowardice that gave him discontentment. He had opened himself bare to a woman that he wanted to love, but could not keep her. As she fled the room, he gave her a note for her trouble and she was never seen again. She may have been a temporary valuable vase for delicate and ugly flowers to rest his soul in, but she was always a prostitute and he didn’t forget. Thus he had disrespected her for the last time and his anti-hero status was still embossed suffocating his conscience when the book was finished, for it was a snapshot of 123 pages of this man’s life. Yet, there is no mystery that the man that loved to suffer didn’t conclude his expedition at the darkest realms of the human psyche at the mere end of its telling, but he found other demons that needed to be indulged in and driven away from him. It is not known how many years he lived, yet I believe he lived long enough to feel every emotion for all our given days.
Venturing to say, one must look to the stars in the sky reading this novel and think of some of the frivolous needs of this man. His victory seeking to have a man of higher social class to peel out of his way as if to say, “I stood my ground, sir, and now what is your next action?” Leaving the reader to think this man is quite simple, yet don’t we all share in this Absurd? Don’t we all need for the opposite sex to look at us in that small moment in a crowded airport and smile? Don’t we all have tests and trials that bend us to our core to get the outcome we need to go forward? Don’t we all want to make a child laugh when we could just as well give he or she indifference? For it is these simple things that build us as a people giving us a foundation of on one hand: the Absurd, but also understanding the Laws of Nature that goes beyond simple animalistic needs that surpass our consciousness of survival and lends to us something far more human. It is these simple Absurd moments that makes us feel most connected with the state of things and empathy for our fellow man.
-“perhaps prosperity isn’t the only thing that pleases mankind, perhaps he is just as attracted to suffering.”-pg 41
