What It Is
The mouse is the figure with which the underground man describes the man of hypertrophied consciousness: born of a retort and not from the bosom of nature, he yields before the man of action to the point of considering himself a mouse. Offended, he wants revenge, but his consciousness denies that there is any justice in it, and he slips away into his little crack, where he plunges into a cold, venomous, and eternal rage. Alongside the mouse runs a series of small creatures that the text applies to the narrator himself: the insect, the fly.
Where It Appears
In chapter I of Part One the series begins with negation: he has not managed to become either wicked or good, either a hero or an insect.
Я не только злым, но даже и ничем не сумел сделаться: ни злым, ни добрым, ни подлецом, ни честным, ни героем, ни насекомым., I have not been able to become not merely wicked, but not even anything at all: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor honest, neither a hero nor an insect.
In chapter III of Part One the mouse takes the scene. The trait the narrator emphasizes is that no one asks him to be one.
И, главное, он сам, сам ведь считает себя за мышь; его об этом никто не просит; а это важный пункт., And, above all, he himself, he himself considers himself a mouse; no one asks him to; and this is an important point.
Down there, in the underground, the mouse gnaws at the offense for forty years, adding even worse details, and it is in this living burial that the narrator sees the juice of the strange pleasure he spoke of.
Там, в своем мерзком, вонючем подполье, наша обиженная, прибитая и осмеянная мышь немедленно погружается в холодную, ядовитую и, главное, вековечную злость., There, in his disgusting, stinking underground, our offended, beaten, and mocked mouse plunges at once into a cold, venomous, and above all eternal rage.
In chapter I of Part Two the creature changes species. The officer moves it out of the way in the billiard room, as one shifts a piece of furniture, and later, on Nevsky Prospect, the narrator takes up the portrait: a nasty, useless fly, more intelligent and more noble than all, but a fly that yields constantly.
что я муха, перед всем этим светом, гадкая, непотребная муха, — всех умнее, всех развитее, всех благороднее, — это уж само собою, — но беспрерывно всем уступающая муха, всеми униженная и всеми оскорбленная, that I am a fly before all this world, a nasty, useless fly, more intelligent, more developed, and more noble than all, that goes without saying, but a fly that gives way to everyone the whole time, humiliated by all and insulted by all.
In chapter III of Part Two his schoolmates, at Simonov's house, treat him as the most common of flies, as they never did even at school. In chapter IV of Part Two Zverkov looks at him in silence, as at an insect.
What It Means
The series goes from a chosen degradation to an imposed one. The mouse is the title he gives himself before anyone gives it to him, and this is a form of control: whoever calls himself a mouse takes the other's phrase, in the same gesture as the opening, calling himself wicked before the others do. In Part Two the word passes out of his mouth. The insect that he said he had not managed to become reappears as Zverkov's stare, and the fly that he assumed with a sign of superiority is what his colleagues actually see. Two readings: the small animal is the lucidity of a man who knows the place he occupies, or it is the defense of someone who prefers a chosen degradation to an imposed one. The mouse's crack, where he broods, is also the underground of the title. The figure joins Pride, because degradation is a way of not being surprised, and Suffering, because the cold rage is the pleasure he says he feels.
Relationships
- Themes: Pride, Suffering.
- Characters: the underground man, Zverkov.
- Related symbols: the stone wall, before which the mouse yields and slips into its crack, and the clothes and the beaver collar, with which he tries, in Part Two, to stop being a fly.