Amy Barone

Dr.Paffenroth

Crazy. That is how Dostoevsky’s man from the underground is referred to as he writes his notes-- his paradox on life. Is he crazy? Are his ramblings only the cries of a madman? Many would like to think so and our narrator would probably agree that they are only normal in thinking that. They are "decent" people. And yet, maybe there is a bit of truth in these notes. Perhaps we are all crazy. No? Ok, we are all decent people who function effectively in society. But what if there were hidden secrets behind the surface of this decency? Dostoevsky uses his narrator to reveal those unseen depths of the human mind. His "craziness" is merely an amplification of what all people have inside of them. This man from the underground attempts to break these chains, but he too is human, and can never completely escape. He tries to uncover our eyes to a cycle to which humans are forever subject.

Knowing of their contempt for him, our narrator follows his old schoolmates to a brothel wanting to prove that he is unconquerable. He follows to undermine the superiority that he knows they feel over him. It is from this spiteful drive that the man from the underground finds his way to Liza, his closest experience to genuine happiness. Instead of being faced with another round of proving himself, he finds that they had all "gone their separate ways". It is her face that catches his attention when she comes in the room: "There was something simple and kind in that face, but oddly serious" (p.101). The next morning he lies next to her and begins a conversation. This awkward conversation continued to be strange, yet somehow relaxed. The narrator speaks to Liza distantly at first, but soon begins spinning stories and painting pictures as though he took it right out of a book. It is easy for a person to slip into conformity, speaking of things existentially related to oneself. Entertaining ideas unrelated to oneself is much more comfortable than acknowledging those that are close to the heart. In a debate, we are trained to say what is expected to be heard. To take a unique angle or stand is frightening for it opens the door to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is an emotion that humans strive to avoid, yet it is opening up that allows for growth: it allows for love. When a person is vulnerable, one lets another person or idea enter into one’s reality. The narrator begins to do this with Liza, but he has been trained for so long that he does not know how: "That’s how I’ll get to you, I thought, with just such pictures, although, I swear, I spoke with feeling" (p114). Even when he thinks he is being truthful, he is only reciting lines that are not truly unique. He cannot remove his mask that has been painted on for so long. All humans have this tendency to mask vulnerability. Love is not about saving someone else, but letting someone save you. What a unique thought. We are taught that we are strong individuals who do not need anyone else; we are taught we are perfectly capable of total independence. We are self-reliant. Look out for number one. We are taught to fend for ourselves and hide emotion. To let anyone see that emotion would be going too far: it would open secrets allowing for hurt and rejection. Opening that door leaves one vulnerable.

When Liza seeks our narrator at his home days later, he almost allows himself to experience this rush. She comes to him as pure as a girl on to a stage. It looks very different from this angle-- bigger, brighter, realer. The piano strikes the opening chords and her hands shake a little knowing that it is time. She opens her mouth and at that moment, she is vulnerable. Her voice opens her to rejection, to hurt, to her soul. With every note, her audience can see into another piece of her. It is not the rejection that she fears entirely, but more the transparency she feels on that stage, as though she’s naked. It is as though she allows the audience to know her at her most intimate level. She must let go of the consciousness that holds her to this life and become immersed in passion, forgetting that she is just a girl on a stage that thousands of others have performed on. For a maximum experience, she must allow herself to be vulnerable. In doing that, she surpasses a height of human emotion. Liza comes with that vulnerability and understanding: "And what happened was this: Liza, insulted and humiliated by me understood much more than I imagined…She understood that I myself was unhappy" (p.145). Somehow he cannot meet her at the same point. She comes to him wanting to be saved and wanting to save him, but he is not ready to be saved. His need for tyrannizing power is still such a focal point that he can not give in to vulnerability. I believe he sincerely wants to love Liza and to live happily ever after, but he recognizes the impossibility of this in himself. He knows love as nothing more than a struggle; therefore, he avoids love and refuses to be loved: "Even in my underground dreams I have never conceived of love as anything but a struggle" (p.147). To be vulnerable would mean giving up the power and moral superiority that he feels. He could not do that, thus he can not love.

In locking the door that opens one to vulnerability, one locks the door to oneself. By denying oneself to the world, one begins to deceive oneself. The repetitiveness of denial leads only to making this perception permanent. There are only so many times you can tell a lie to the world before you yourself begin to believe it, to accept it, to live it even. "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive." That web becomes a strangling net, a straight jacket. It wraps itself around the mind, then the thoughts, next to the heart, and finally the soul, where the lie intertwines and deceives even the deepest, most unconscious level of our being. Actions become reflections of the falsities that one tries so hard to make the world believe. To know oneself involves opening that bolted door and allow for vulnerability. In doing that, the soul, mind, and body are seen in their purest forms. The skin is shed and the most intimate parts of oneself are left wide open to be hit full force—perhaps to be burnt, or maybe to be glorified. The tangible world that we live in is so comfortable and familiar that it is frightening to venture into a world of mystery, to unlock the secrets of oneself. So we hide behind a mask of conformity, lying to ourselves and to the world.

Throughout the book, Dostoevsky makes this deception very apparent in his narrator. In every sentence he speaks there is suspicion of the truth behind his words. Right from the beginning he indicates he is not a man to be trusted at face value: "I lied just now when I said that I had been a mean official. I lied out of sheer spite" (p.3). There is constant contradiction in his thoughts page after page. His tone is very genuine and from the first line. He is likeable, one can relate to him. He is much like Holden in Catcher in the Rye in that he takes a sarcastic view, a spiteful view, yet something makes you want to read more. You like him. You like him because he reminds you of someone-- yourself perhaps? Every person has some of that sarcastic cynicism deep somewhere and this narrator amplifies it. It surfaces when hiding from oneself. One makes so much of an effort to ignore and disguise the hidden components of the spirit that something must surface to conceal the effort: sarcasm? cynicism? lies?

When our narrator is lying in bed with Liza, she gives him his first awakening that he has become a reflection of the things that surround him. He has become buried beneath this piece of art that his environment has created for him to be. After moments of broken conversation and unusual small talk, he philosophizes, to her explaining what life is "really like," what it’s all about. He rambles on, and on reciting beautiful lines and painting descriptive images of what love is and how husband and wife should live together and why people do things the way they do. He finally reaches an end to his speech only to be met by her silence. Liza begins to say something and our narrator immediately takes her soft tone to indicate agreement or enlightenment. The continuation of what she says was what stunned him: "You somehow… it’s like out of a book"(p.115). Liza has seen through his subconscious deceptiveness and presents it to him as no one had ever done before. Feeling attacked, insulted even, he assumes her comment to have been made out of sheer mockery of him. He feels that she is hiding behind a timid, shy mask, while behind it lie rude, mocking words. He feels she is merely masking her true feelings about his ramblings behind that innocent face, only to stab him with her soft words. Ironically, it is he who is hiding behind a mask; Liza only reveals it to him, giving him a glimpse of what he has become. Her expression of honesty matches her words, yet he is too defensive and in denial of himself to recognize this.

Once this outer shell, this crust that has build up from forbidding vulnerability, has solidified, it is hard to break. It is so much like the crust of others that it can be difficult to recognize it as only an outer covering: "And what’s more, you’ve regarded our cowardice as prudence, and found comfort in deceiving yourselves"(p.152). In submitting to the idea that "same is better," the uniqueness of the human race is lost. One person is merely a carbon copy of the next. At the end of this section of his paradox, the narrator acknowledges that as a whole, we are filled by what books tell us. He asks us to question ourselves about how we would act should no one tell us what to do. In whom would you believe? Would two times two equal four? Would you think and create on your own, or would you merely exist?

He steps back from his notes to identify all humanity in the stories he has told. He believes his readers think him crazy, but he is only an amplification of those hidden parts. By hiding these from the true self, one can no longer be distinguished from any other soul. One becomes what our narrator refers to as "generalhumanness." Millions of masked souls conform to each other, creating an enormous lump of sameness. Although variations arise, people accept common philosophies and theories to be absolute truths; there are no other possible explanations. These truths are comfortable and familiar. It takes a minimal effort to live life by these standards. To reject these standards would require one to open oneself to vulnerability, for one would surely be attacked for not conforming. One’s words could be considered absurd and he would soon be ostracized by society. The man from the underground is that ostracized man; he is underground, for it is only there that his ideas are recognized for any value. The common person hears his words and somehow feels insulted, for one knows there is some truth to them. But society teaches him to deny these truths and conform to traditional thought: "He is a coward and a slave"(p.51). Our narrator identifies even himself as both a coward and a slave. Although his ideology goes beyond the surface, he too is human. He is not exempt from human qualities, but rather, recognizes them to uncover our eyes. He says that any decent man is nothing more than a coward and a slave: these are normal conditions. He is a coward. He is a coward in that he has an instinctual tendency to follow "the path most taken." It is easier, it is expected. A decent gentleman is one who causes no commotion and is, on the whole, fairly passive. Should he begin to raise issues conflicting with the norm, he will only fight for so long before he backs down to keep his "dignity." That is how a respectable gentleman will act. Our narrator says that this is normal: it is a law of nature. The decent man is a slave. He is a slave to this law of nature. To be recognized as decent, he must succumb to the will of society. Free will? This man believes everything he does is out of free will, but in fact nothing he does is by his own will. He is bound by the chains that he puts on himself. He could be brave and free anytime he wishes, but it is more preferable to stay bound, to be normal and decent: "Just try and give us, for example, more independence;…Why, I assure you we shall immediately beg to be placed under tutelage again"(p.152). Breaking these chains would leave one open to vulnerability but to be vulnerable is frightening. To be different is frightening. To recognize the secrets locked inside, well, that could be simply horrifying. One locks oneself in the security of chains of normalcy, therefore preventing vulnerability. In not allowing vulnerability, one becomes a figure of deception to the world and to oneself. This mask allows one to blend in with the decent person and one in turn succumbs to being a coward and a slave. Neither a coward nor a slave can break the chains that hold him back from knowing himself, from being vulnerable. Thus, it is a cycle. It is a cycle that humans as a race spend lifetimes completing. There is no way to break the cycle, only to view it from another angle perhaps.

It is a human tendency to be reserved, allowing for no one to see them in a vulnerable state. This in turn forces one to mask oneself, deceiving the world as to who lies deep within. This deceptiveness festers until one can no longer be distinguished from any other. He conforms to the "generalhumanness." He becomes a slave to society and loses the courage to break the chains that keep him from being vulnerable. This cycle makes him normal. He is what is expected.