Crime and Punishment & Other Great Novels of Dostoevsky

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Genre

Classics, Fiction, Philosophy, Psychology

Contents

Notes from Underground — Part I Underground — Chapter IV

Previous: Notes from Underground — Part I Underground — Chapter III Next: Notes from Underground — Part I Underground — Chapter V

Overview

The narrator argues that even toothache yields a malignant, self-conscious pleasure. He shows how educated suffering becomes theatrical, tormenting others while savoring humiliation. This deepens his theme of perverse enjoyment in pain and culminates in his admission that heightened self-awareness destroys self-respect.

Summary

The narrator confronts an imagined listener who scoffs that he would even find enjoyment in toothache. He insists that there is pleasure in such pain, particularly in the malicious quality of the sufferer’s moans.

He explains that these moans express the humiliation of purposeless pain and the sufferer’s helpless submission to nature’s “legal system.” Lacking any enemy to punish, the sufferer recognizes his slavery to his teeth and the futility of protest, which transforms insult into a perverse, voluptuous enjoyment.

Shifting to an “educated man of the nineteenth century,” the narrator describes how cultivated consciousness corrupts simple suffering into nasty, theatrical moaning that torments both self and household. The sufferer knows the moans help no one, that the family despises and disbelieves him, yet he amplifies them to spite others and savor degradation.

He concludes that this pleasure lies in forcing others to share his discomfort and in exposing himself as “nasty,” an impostor stripped of heroism. Admitting his own bad taste and lack of self-respect, he suggests that heightened perception precludes genuine self-respect, binding him to this malignant self-awareness.

Who Appears

Unnamed narrator

Explains the malignant enjoyment found in toothache, using it to illustrate self-laceration and admits he lacks self-respect.
Educated nineteenth-century sufferer

Exemplar of theatrical, malicious moaning; likely the narrator himself generalized to illustrate perverse pleasure in suffering.
The family/audience

Imagined listeners forced to endure the sufferer’s moans, objects of his spite and instruments of his self-exposure.