Notes from Underground
Questions
The most common questions about Notes from Underground, answered from the book.
- What is Notes from Underground, by Dostoevsky, about?Notes from Underground is about what remains of a man when he rejects reason, calculation, and utopia and has nothing to put in their place: a lucid,...
- What is the summary of Notes from Underground?Notes from Underground tells the story of a nameless former civil servant, forty years old, who writes from a room in St. Petersburg: in Part One he...
- Is Notes from Underground a good book with which to start reading Dostoevsky?It can be, with one caveat: it is short, about 140 pages, and it presents the underground man in full for the first time, but Part One is a monologue...
- How many pages does Notes from Underground have?Notes from Underground has about 140 pages in an ordinary edition, divided into two parts: "The Underground," with 11 chapters, and "Apropos of Wet...
- What is the main theme of Notes from Underground?The main theme of Notes from Underground is reason against freedom: the book argues that calculation and self-interest do not exhaust man, and it...
- Who is the underground man in Notes from Underground?The underground man is the nameless narrator: a former civil servant of forty who writes from a corner of St. Petersburg and who, before saying...
- What is the underground in Notes from Underground?The underground is the place where the narrator withdraws after being offended, and it is the name of his way of living: the life of someone who does...
- What is the Crystal Palace in Notes from Underground?The Crystal Palace is the utopia that the underground man attributes to the "gentlemen" he addresses: a rational future in which human desires have...
- What does "Twice Two Makes Four" mean in Notes from Underground?"Twice two makes four" means, in the book, the truth that is not up for debate: the necessity of the laws of nature and of mathematics, against which...
- What is the Stone Wall in Notes from Underground?The Stone Wall is the image with which the underground man names the limit that the laws of nature, the natural sciences, and mathematics place on...
- What is the Piano Key in Notes from Underground?The Piano Key is the image of a man reduced to a part of a mechanism, whose acts would be played from outside by the laws of nature. The underground...
- Who is Liza in Notes from Underground?Liza is the twenty-year-old girl whom the underground man meets in the house he goes to after dinner, and she is the only character in the book who...
- What is the significance of wet snow in Notes from Underground?Wet snow is the weather and the title of Part Two: a precipitation between snow and water, yellow and murky, which neither freezes nor runs off, only...
- Why does the underground man humiliate anyone who tries to help him?Because help exposes him and puts him in debt, and he knows how to relate to others only through power. The narrator gives the explanation himself in...
- What is the relationship between Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment?Notes from Underground, of 1864, prepares Crime and Punishment, of 1866: the man who there cries out against calculation and against twice two makes...
- Is the underground man the dreamer of White Nights?He is not the same character, but he is a close relative: both are solitary, nameless men of St. Petersburg who live on fantasy, and Notes from...