Read about Notes from Underground
Class Discussion Questions:
Part I
- We know the man is writing, literally, but to whom is he writing? How does the man feel about his audience? Do you feel like a member of his audience?
- In what way, according to the man, is consciousness a disease? That is, what are the symptoms of this illness? How does this idea challenge Wordsworth's confidence in reflection and the "philosophic mind"?
- How is a man of action different from a man overwhelmed by his own consciousness? How is the "direct" person able to act with confidence?
- What is the one "advantage" that the scientists and statisticians cannot take into account, the one that "upsets everything"?
- What is the irony of trying to figure out the formula for our desires and advantages so that we can, ultimately, reach moral perfection?
- Why are the man's questions near the end of section 5 and the beginning of section 9 significant? How do these questions make us think about "negative capability"?
- Which is better for the man underground: "conscious inertia" or moral perfection? Why?
- Does the man believe he has an audience? Why does he write? Were we meant to read this narrative? If not, what does it mean that we are reading it?
Part II
- How does the officer offend the underground man so deeply? What is the nature of his offense?
- Why does the man write a satirical novel about the officer? What becomes of this novel?
- What is the underground man's method of revenge on the "disrespectful" officer?
- What seems to be the man's primary urge in his dealings with other people? What does he want most to do?
- After hearing his tirades against Liza, do we look at the underground man's words in the first part differently? What motivates his use of words?
- Does the man experience an epiphany? If so, what is it, and what is the result of it?
- What is love to the man?
- Why are we repeatedly made to think about the difference between books and real life? Why would the man's words sound as if they come from a book? Why is the man's ultimate act of cruelty described as being a product "of books"?
- "And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?"
- Why should these "Notes" perhaps never have been written, according to the man? what is wrong with the novel he has written?
- Nevertheless, what does the underground man hope that his "audience" will look into "more carefully"? What is it that we continue to deny? What direction are we heading because of this denial?
- How does Part II shed light on Part I? Why doesn't Part I come after Part II in the narrative? That is, why did Dostoevsky arrange the events the way he did?
