How the Narrator Use the Notes From Underground?

The immunity man believes that ethical motive and rationality are social constructions and that his superior morality and intellectualism throw in the towel him from what he finds the constraints of social norms, values, and sort.

In his essay on Notes From Underground, Barash (2003) maintains that the underground man "rails against a world in which to his salient annoyance two times two equals four" (B7). The narrator finds the morality and values that guide acceptable social behavior repellant. He believes that the essence of human nature is irrationality, that is, only by exerting our will, despite the opinions of others, do we retain any personality or individuality. As he tells us, "Man needs only nonpareil thing his own independent desire, what ever so that independence might cost and wherever it might lead" (Dostoevsky 1995, 1119). Yet the narrator is a man torn within himself, for despite such feelings he is mollified by what he believes to be other's negative opinions to the highest degree him.

Ironically, despite the narrator's beliefs that only individual will equates to personality and individuality, he longs for human strain and meaning in the world. He has bypast underground, in a sense, because he cannot find such inter affinitys or meaning. However, the main reason he cannot enter into such interpersonal relationships of any meaning is because he believes in nothing socially constructed nor can h

In the scrap half of the book, the narrator takes us back to certain experiences in his youth. He recounts several tales of trying to engage and interact with friends and a prostitute named liza. For all his efforts to be himself, the narrator is obsessed with what he believes are others' negative opinions of him. This makes him internally torn and incapable of relating to others on any kind of meaningful level.

Instead, he reverts to his defense mechanisms of transcendency and romantic illusions in order to flee from ordinary and rattling social contact. We see this most plainly in the reference of Liza. The narrator gets as close as he ever does to real human contact and a meaningful relationship with another human being in Liza. This occurs when they lie together in bed and he queries her about her feelings. In this second gear he has let down his defense mechanisms and makes real contact with another human being. However, his low opinion of himself keeps him from realizing the potential in this relationship. He admits he is putting on an act with Liza and we see his insecurity when he says, "I'll tell you dear woman, wherefore you came here. You came here because I spoke some words of benignity to you that time. Now you've softened, and want to hear more words of mercy" (Dostoevsky 1995, 1175). The narrator cannot imagine Liza's intentions are genuine mainly because none of his own is genuine. He admits that all of his feelings, thoughts, or posturing waist from romantic idealism derived from books, "I'd become so accustomed to inventing and imagining everything accordi
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