Crime and Punishment & Other Great Novels of Dostoevsky
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Contents
Notes from Underground — Part I Underground — Chapter II
Overview
The narrator argues that excessive consciousness is a crippling illness that breeds inertia and perverse self-torment. He describes savoring shame as “enjoyment,” believing change is impossible and responsibility futile. Convinced he is clever yet powerless, he rejects both revenge and magnanimity as meaningless before unyielding “laws of nature.”
Summary
The narrator insists he could not even “become an insect,” claiming that excessive consciousness is a true illness. He contrasts himself with “men of action,” suggesting that ordinary, limited awareness would suffice for life, while hyperawareness paralyzes him.
He confesses that at moments of heightened feeling for the “sublime and beautiful,” he commits ugly acts, then returns to his corner to relish the shame. This perverse enjoyment arises from realizing he is degraded, cannot change, and perhaps would not change even if he could.
The narrator argues that over-acute consciousness leads to inertia: recognizing the mechanisms of his behavior convinces him he “can do absolutely nothing,” removing both blame and consolation. He vows to explain this enjoyment fully as his reason for writing.
Turning to pride and humiliation, he admits extreme amour propre and imagines even finding despairing “enjoyment” in being slapped. He concludes he is always most to blame—by nature and by being “cleverer” than others—yet action eludes him. Magnanimity would be useless, revenge impossible, and neither forgiveness nor forgetting matters before impersonal “laws of nature.”
Who Appears
- Unnamed narrator (former civil servant)Proclaims overconsciousness a crippling illness; revels in shame; asserts blame without agency; rejects revenge and magnanimity as futile.