40 pages • 1 hour read
Fyodor DostoevskyNotes from Underground
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1864A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Underground
The underground is an important metaphorical space that symbolizes the opposite of 19th-century Russia’s high ideals of rationalism and utopianism. The Underground Man does not literally live underground: He lives in a “corner” (6), a small apartment on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg. He refers to his “underground hole” (33) metaphorically to indicate that he is a misanthrope, shut off from society. He refers to “underground folk” (33) like himself as people who opt out of the established social system’s values and are disruptors: They challenge conventional wisdom through satire and nonconformity. The Underground Man uses a mouse as a metaphor to paint a vivid picture of the underground and his negative state of mind: “There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite” (12).
The opposite of the underground is the Crystal Palace, the utopian ideal promoted by Russian writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky in the novel What is to be Done? (1983), which the Underground Man references in Part 1, Chapters 7-10. The Crystal Palace is the culmination of enlightened self-interest: By doing what is good for themselves, people will do what is good for society, and everyone will live in harmony. The Underground Man scoffs at this idea because he knows that people behave irrationally and against their own self-interest; he is the prime example of this and provides many other examples from history of similar behavior. Therefore, the underground is a philosophical rebuttal to rational Enlightenment ideals that demonstrates that acting irrationally is an integral part of human nature.
The Wet Snow
The motif of wet snow that appears in the title of Part 2 and serves as the backdrop for the Underground Man’s story about Liza represents the oppressiveness of memory. At the end of Part 1, Chapter 11, the Underground Man notes that the falling snow is “yellow and dingy” (36). Whereas white snow can denote purity, this snowfall’s color implies that it is tainted before it even hits the ground. Like everything about the Underground Man, the snow that frames his memory is essentially unsavory and corrupt.
Using Nekrasov’s poem “When from dark error’s subjugation” as the epigraph for Part 2 establishes the link between the wet snow and the theme of vice and disgrace that characterizes the Underground Man’s entanglement with Liza and the other events of the section. Wet snow is falling on the evening that the Underground Man meets Simonov and his friends at the Hotel de Paris (59) and when he follows them to the “brothel” afterward (73). When he first meets Liza, he remarks that the snow is “disgusting” (76), and it is “nasty” (77) to be buried in such weather. The Underground Man elaborates on this image when he describes Liza’s grave as containing “sleet, filth, [and] wet snow” (89) from the foul weather that will make the gravediggers rush through her burial in a final act of disrespect to her.
The snow’s symbolism shifts at the end of the novella. After Liza’s departure, the Underground Man runs outside, where the snow is “coming down in masses and falling almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as though with a pillow” (111). Here, the snow no longer evokes disgust; rather, its description evokes an image of quiet and softness. It signals the story’s denouement; Liza is gone, the affair is over, and the Underground Man returns to his solitude.
Liza’s Letter
Liza’s love letter from the medical student symbolizes the life she could live if she were able to escape the “brothel.” She received it from a young man she knew from her childhood in Riga and met at a dance shortly after she arrived in Saint Petersburg. Liza’s position is critical because she has been at the “brothel” for only about two weeks and still has time to leave and maintain her respectability, provided that her short time there remains a secret. Liza hopes that she can salvage her life: “She had only come here so lately and it had all happened…and she hadn’t made up her mind to stay and was certainly going away as soon as she had paid her debt...” (91-92).
The Underground Man knows that without someone to rescue her, Liza will be bound to a life of suffering. To him, the letter symbolizes Liza’s lost hope for a happy life. He refers to the letter as her “only treasure,” which she uses to show that “she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved” (91). The Underground Man finds her gesture of showing him the letter naive because he knows that Liza will never reunite with the student and will never again attend a party in a respectable home. The letter highlights Liza’s tragic position by juxtaposing her innocent childhood with the reality of her life enslaved through sex trafficking; she will likely be trapped at the “brothel” for many years and never succeed in paying off her debt.
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By Fyodor Dostoevsky
