![]() ![]() They bumped into each other, and even though the officer pretended not to notice, the Underground Man knew better. He closed his eyes and did not budge an inch. Then, one day, unexpectedly, the officer was three feet from him. Afterwards he would be feverish and delirious. Again and again, his courage failed at the last minute, and the officer simply stepped over him. ![]() Having made all the preparations, he went to the Nevsky and, before he knew it, he encountered the officer. Still, however, he didn't have enough and had to borrow from his superior (Anton Antonich Syetochkin) in order to buy a new beaver fur collar for his overcoat. That would be no easy matter he was forced to get an advance on his salary. First, he would have to be dressed as a person of dignity. But to accomplish this required great preparations. To get revenge, then, the Underground Man decided to force the officer to step aside for him. But when he met people less well dressed and of lesser rank, he would walk indifferently past them, forcing them to move out of his way. ![]() Like the narrator, the officer would also step aside for people of higher rank. He hated himself for doing so, but was overly-conscious about the shabbiness of his clothes. While strolling, the Underground Man would always step aside to make way for any important personage or well-dressed stroller. Petersburg and had frequently seen the officer strolling there also. Then suddenly he conceived a plan whereby to gain revenge: he often strolled along the Nevsky, the main street of St. Two years after the insult, the Underground Man composed a splendid letter, asking for an apology and hinting rather plainly at a duel. Instead, for several years, he stared spitefully at the officer and even wrote a satire on him. His resentment over this insult built until he wanted to return to the tavern and begin a quarrel except that it would be necessary to use literary language and he realized that as soon as he began speaking in literary terms, the other people would begin laughing. It was an "unbounded vanity" that drove him away it was not a lack of physical courage but a lack of moral courage. He says that he has never been a coward at heart, only in action. He wanted to start a quarrel but instead sneaked away. He was in such a strange mood that he envied the man being thrown out.Įntering the tavern, he stood by a billiard table and became highly incensed when an officer "moved me from where I was standing and passed by as though he had not noticed me." This slight nagged at his very existence, since the officer ignored the Underground Man's humanness and treated him as an object. While returning one night from one of his visits, as he passed a tavern, he saw a man being thrown out of a window. To compensate, he "indulged in filthy vice" and frequented various obscene haunts. Having no friends, he spent most of his time reading, but he was often so bored that he longed for some type of adventure or excitement. When he saw one of them staring at him, he would try to stare back, but "was always the first to drop my eyes." He was morbidly sensitive but concluded that "every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave." In turn, however, he hated his fellow clerks, yet was also afraid of them. In fact, he hated his own face and was convinced that the other clerks also hated it. Even workers who had pock-marked faces or who wore dirty, disgusting clothes never seemed disturbed, but he was constantly aware of his own shortcomings. At the office where he worked, he constantly imagined that his colleagues looked upon him "with a sort of loathing." He could never understand why the other workers were so oblivious to their appearance while he was always so self-conscious about his own. Even at age twenty-four, the Underground Man says, he lived a gloomy and solitary existence with no friends or companions. ![]()
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