Where Am I to Get a Second? I Have No Friends.

In Part One, the underground man explains that he is a man of acute consciousness. He overthinks and overplans and usually ends up just making people angry because the decisions he ultimately chooses are poor ones. He decides to go to the dinner party where no one likes him and ends up insulted and low. After the dinner party, he is consumed by thoughts of revenge and plans out a whole encounter in his head. “I’ll pull Olympia’s hair, pull Zverkov’s ears!” the underground man declares. Such feelings mirror what he felt after his encounter with the officer. Just like with the officer, the underground man lets the dinner party eat at him and depress him. However, because of his acute consciousness, nothing really can be done. He stews and envisions violence but cannot act on his thoughts because he is not a man of action. Instead of facing Zverkov and his friends, the underground man visits a brothel and has an odd conversation about love, marriage, and children with a prostitute. The underground man thinks that one can be happy in marriage, especially if the marriage is born from love. He also states that he would be jealous of any man a daughter of his married. “I should be jealous, I really should. To think that she should kiss anyone else!” His thoughts on marriage surprise me; the note about daughters does not. From what he had written about in Part One, I would not have thought that the underground man was one who believed in happiness from love. He seems to only believe in pain. Because of his vanity, though, it would make sense that he would be jealous of his daughters’ husbands. He wants to think that someone can only love him, and no one else.