Notes from Underground

The Underground Man paints a devastating picture of Liza’s life going forward. He says that he saw a woman from another “brothel” who was kicked out into the cold one night “because she had been crying so much” (88). The next morning, she was drunk, bruised, and bleeding; men had beaten her, and they were standing around, jeering. The owner will make Liza work until she dies of consumption, and the gravediggers will place her coffin sideways in her grave because they will be in such a hurry to be done with her.

By this point, Liza is lying facedown on the bed, gripping the pillow, and sobbing. The Underground Man knows he is “turning her soul upside down and rending her heart” (90), and he is glad his words are having an impact, but her emotional outburst makes him uncomfortable, and he gets dressed to leave. When he strikes a match to light a candle, he is unsettled to see that Liza has a “half insane smile” (90) on her face. He apologizes for upsetting her and tells her to visit him at his address. She says she will come.

Before he can leave, Liza shows him a love letter that a medical student wrote to her about a week prior: They met at a dance and discovered that they knew each other as children in Riga. The young man does not know that Liza is a sex worker. The Underground Man realizes that she wants to prove she is worthy of sincere love, the kind the Underground Man said she will never have. He does not reply and leaves.

The next morning, the Underground Man regrets giving Liza his address: He feels he acted in an “attack of womanish hysteria” (93). He is more concerned with righting the situation with Simonov and Zverkov. He borrows 15 rubles from Anton Antonitch and writes a letter to Simonov apologizing for his behavior the previous night. In the letter, he lies and says that he was already drunk by the time they arrived, and drunkenness is responsible for his outbursts. He includes the six rubles he owes Simonov and has Apollon deliver the letter.

That evening, the Underground Man is worried about Liza coming to visit: He is convinced she will arrive at seven o’clock. He remembers the “distorted” (95) smile she had on her face, which haunts him to the present day. Then, he thinks about how easy it was to influence her thoughts, and he fantasizes about becoming Liza’s mentor and savior and having her fall in love with him. At first, he will reject her advances, but finally, he will accept her, saying, “You are my creation, […] you are my noble wife” (96).

Two days pass, and he considers that the “brothel” will probably not allow her to visit someone in the evening. However, he remains convinced and worried that she will still come.

The Underground Man complains about his servant, Apollon, who is an “elderly, dignified man” (97) and an inextricable part of his life. He is convinced Apollon looks down on him, and the Underground Man decides to withhold Apollon’s wages just to make him beg for them. When Apollon refuses, the Underground Man gets into a physical altercation with him. At that moment, Liza arrives and witnesses the scene. The Underground Man runs to his room, but Apollon knocks on his door and escorts her in. The Underground Man yells at Apollon to go away, and the clock strikes seven.

Liza sits down at the table, and the Underground Man goes to Apollon’s room, gives him his wages, and tells him to go out and buy tea and rusks. The Underground Man returns, and the situation is awkward: He is ashamed of his poverty and does not know what to do now that Liza is in his home. He begins a tirade about Apollon and suddenly bursts into tears.

After Apollon brings the tea, they sit in awkward silence. Finally, Liza admits that she wants to get away from the “brothel.” This makes the Underground Man angry, and he tells her that he was not serious about helping her the other night: His friends humiliated him, so he wanted to humiliate someone else. He lashes out at her, blaming her for his misery and for seeing him in his shameful, impoverished state. At first, Liza is horrified and confused, but then she feels pity: “She understood from all this what a woman understands first of all, if she feels genuine love, […] that I was myself unhappy” (106). She throws her arms around him, and they both sob. He goes to the couch, and she follows him; he cries in her arms “in genuine hysterics” (107) for about 15 minutes. During this time, he realizes that the power dynamics shifted, and she is now his savior. When he calms down, he looks at her with desire, and she embraces him passionately.

After he has sexual intercourse with Liza, the Underground Man wishes she would leave. She sits on the floor with her head lying on the bed, and he paces outside the room. He admits to himself that he is incapable of loving her because he cannot “imagine love except as a struggle” (109). As she is leaving, he gives her money, but she throws it back on the table. He does not realize this until later. After she leaves, he has a pang of regret and calls after her. He goes outside, but she is already gone. He thinks that her resenting him is a good thing: “[I]t is purification; it is a most stinging and painful consciousness!” (111). He returns home and never sees Liza again.

The Underground Man ends his notes, stating that the work he wrote is not literature, because “a novel needs a hero” (112), but he created a portrait of an antihero. He characterizes himself and his readership as “divorced from life” (112), living more in books than in real life, not willing to do the work of living independently. He concludes the text with the claim that he will not write anymore from “Underground” (113), though the author notes that the Underground Man continued writing. However, the author decided this was a good place to end.