1. How does the Underground Man's language 'sound'?
The Underground Man “sounds” like he is holding an intellectual discourse with a group of gentlemen, attempting to present his ideas both in a witty and dignified if not contradictory manner, often writing as if responding to actual reactions and replies (“Well, rest assured, gentlemen, I’ve never received such a slap, although it’s really all the same to me what you think about it…But that’s enough, not another word about this subject which you find so extremely interesting” (Dostoevsky, p.9) . In addition to anticipating these types of replies, he even goes as far as to imagine entire conversations with these gentleman (“’Perhaps,’ you’ll add with a smirk, ‘even those who’ve never received a slap in the face won’t understand’” (Dostoevsky, p.9) and “’Ha, ha, ha! Why, you’ll be finding enjoyment in a toothache next!’ you cry out with a laugh. ‘Well, what of it?” (Dostoevsky, p.11)). While the Underground Man addresses the point of this “conversation” towards the end of Part I by both asking and answering his own question (“’And why do I keep calling you ‘gentleman?’ Why do I address you as if you really were my readers?’” (Dostoevsky, p.28) and “Perhaps it’s just that I’m a coward. Or perhaps it’s that I imagine an audience before me on purpose, so that I behave more decently when I’m writing things down” (Dostoevsky, p.29)), it’s hard to take what he says seriously as, up to this point, he has painted himself as an unreliable and contradictory character (“I am a spiteful man” (Dostoevsky, p.3)/“I was shamefully aware at every moment, even at the moment of my greatest bitterness, that not only was I not a spiteful man, I was not even an embittered one” (Dostoevsky, p.4)). Overall, the Underground Man sounds like he is presenting a literary ideal of what intelligent, dignified, and respected men sound like amongst themselves. Subsequently, his rambling thoughts come off more like an intellectual confession, one that he himself does not fully believe (“I don’t believe one word, not one little word of all that I’ve scribbled.” (Dostoevsky, p.27)).
2. What is the 'stone wall'?
The stone wall is a symbol for reason, fact, logical thinking, and the laws of nature. Thus, for “normal men,” this wall “possesses some kind of soothing, morally decisive definitive meaning, perhaps even something mystical” (Dostoevsky, p.8). According to the Underground Man, reason and logic hold a very concrete and real place in the world for normal men and acts as something that soothes and stops them from foolish action. On the other hand, the Underground Man views it as a divergence from truth and freewill and instead of representing the consolation and impossibility that it represents for the normal man, he himself rails against it (“Good Lord, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic when for some reason I dislike all these laws and I dislike the fact that two times two makes four?” (Dostoevsky, p.10)). By attacking the stone wall of reason in a literary manner, he asks us to question reason and our own thinking, to not allow the fashions of the time deflect our search for truth and freedom.
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3. What does the Underground Man's language and behavior (his total response) reveal about his struggle to live a moral life in the face of deterministic understandings of reality?
The Underground Man’s response to the norms of his day reveals a rather nihilistic belief that life has little meaning past the suffering and slavery inherent in human existence. This is due to a large degree to the deterministic claims of modern science and philosophy that posits that everything, including man, is predetermined and therefore is bound to certain laws and can only act in certain ways. The problem with a hard deterministic viewpoint is that it argues against the concept of free will. The implications that not only life but man is predetermined ultimately raises questions about whether moral worth and responsibility can exist without free will. Thus, the only that that science has to tell the Underground Man is that the world is determined and that humans are no longer answerable for their actions (“Consequently, we need only discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his own actions and will find it extremely easy to live…in which everything will be accurately calculated and specified so that there’ll be no more actions or adventures left on earth.” (Dostoevsky, p.18)). The fatalism that human will can be relegated to that of a “piano key” or “organ stop” is a common trend through the Underground Man’s measured ruminations that essentially causes the narrator to express a sense of mistreatment by these insufferable “laws”; laws that “you really don’t give a damn” about “but as a result of which you’re suffering nonetheless, while nature isn’t” (Dostoevsky, p.11). The fact that our Underground Man clearly believes in determinism as evidenced by his discourse on science, mathematics, and natural laws and yet rails against it at the same time ultimately leaves him in a state of inertia, unable to rationalize living a moral live nor take any responsibility for his actions (“Not only couldn’t I become spiteful, I couldn’t become anything at all: neither spiteful nor good, neither scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now I live out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything and that only a fool can become something” (Dostoevsky, p.4).
4. How important is free will ('advantageous advantage') to the Underground Man?
According to the Underground Man, free will is in direct opposition to reason and the laws of nature and in fact, threatens it (“This advantage is remarkable precisely because it destroys all our classifications and constantly demolishes all systems devised by lovers of humanity for the happiness of mankind” (Dostoevsky, p.16). In a world ruled by the laws of nature, science, and reason, the Underground Man raises the question of how free will can exist within the confines of predetermined laws and rules of fact such as science or mathematics. His discussion on how the mathematics of two times two equals four will always be true regardless of how humans feel about it shows how free will and choice cannot exist within the confines of such strict logic and, in fact, the choice inherent in “two times two makes five” is what makes it such a “charming little thing” (Dostoevsky, p.24). Subsequently, the Underground Man argues that man is willing to suffer and abandon reason all together for the sake of their own desires and free will (“People knowingly, that is, possessing full knowledge of their own true interests, have relegated them to the background…and so they stubbornly, willfully forged another way, a difficult and assured one, searching for it almost in the darkness”(Dostoevsky, p.15).
The Underground Man himself gives a practical example of this abandonment of reason in a description of his own behavior. Talking about how his liver is diseased and how he won’t see a doctor out of spite, he states “I know perfectly well that I can’t possibly ‘get even’ with doctors by refusing their treatment; I know better than anyone that all this is going to hurt me alone, and no one else. Even so, if I refuse to be treated, it’s out of spite” (Dostoevsky, p.3). Ultimately bound by the laws of nature and the powerlessness inherent in his suffering, against all reason he chooses to suffer out of spite as an exercise of his free will. While the decision is obviously irrational, it is still a decision of his conscious and free will and represents his choice. This “advantageous advantage” for the Underground Man is what makes him human and not just a “mouse,” piano key, or organ stop. This irrationality of his behavior, of “two times two equals five” represents the concept that freedom and living cannot be separated and that slavery to rational laws such as “two times two equals four” can only ever lead to the death of one’s spirit.
5. What is the Crystal Palace? What kind of utopia is it? And what does the Underground Man's response to it reveal about its influence on human persons and human community?
The crystal palace is the ultimate symbol of rationality, reason, and scientific progress. It represents the culmination of rational thought and behavior; an “eternally indestructible” ideal that creates a palace of reasoning where man has mastered his opposing desires and has learned how to “act in accordance with the dictates of reason and science” (Dostoevsky, p.17). It is a place where old, bad habits have been discarded and “common sense” and “science have completely reeducated human nature and turned it in the proper direction” (Dostoevsky, p.17). To the Underground Man, this crystal palace represents a deterministic ideal, “one at which you can never stick your tongue furtively nor make a rude gesture, even with your fist hidden away” (Dostoevsky, p.25) as doing so represents everything that the crystal palace looks to eradicate in human nature by scientifically removing man’s guaranteed “whims.” Essentially, the Underground Man shows us that while this may be an alluring ideal, it is, in fact, a dangerous one. As a general representative of “normal man,” he holds the idea that reason and the laws of nature are an inevitability of living and yet tears this inevitability down as the antithesis of free will. Thus, his response reveals the contradictory nature of humans to act against their rational nature and pursue “chaos and destruction” in an unreasonable display of their “whims” and desires and that quite frequently, what any individual human might desire may be incompatible with the fashions of one’s generation.
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