With the writer based the story on another subject and size, for the first time, the inner becomes the focal point of the story, which shall not include any objective social connotation.
The narrator begins by presenting a man as rude, irascible, who grinds his teeth to the petitioners when they occur in the dark office where he works. After claiming to be a bad employee, withdrew that statement and says he's not even that:
"Not only did I could not be bad, but I could not be anything at all: neither good nor bad, neither villain nor an honest man, neither hero nor insect. " [1]
The next theme is the human consciousness, emotions (the awareness, not consciousness)," after every disgusting act that made crawling back into his lair and begins to enjoy the pleasures of the detestable shame, remorse, the pleasure of their baseness, degradation "(ibid., pag.153). It is a pleasure complex. The man-mouse is filling the life of not having to fake emotions real, then the main character, or his creator, is a set of ideas that revolve around the word 'benefit', they are all talk nonsense, of course, and as the man-mouse was unable to explain the joys of the degradation and suffering, so we do not even explain the benefits of the handicap. The man-mouse evokes the image of a future universal prosperity, a crystal palace for everyone, and here is what is revealed in the mysterious advantage: its free and independent choice, his whim, even insane. In other words, the man does not aspire to a rational self-interest, but simply to choose for themselves-anything-even if it chooses to destroy the structures of logic, statistics, harmony and order. Then he takes up the theme of destruction, "perhaps, he says, man prefers to destroy than create. Perhaps, he says, the man preferred to destroy than create. Perhaps it is the achievement of a goal that appeals to him but the process that leads to it. Perhaps, says the man, mouse, man is afraid to succeed. Maybe he likes pain. Perhaps suffering is the only source of awareness. Perhaps the man, so to speak, becomes a human being when it begins to be aware of his awareness of suffering. "(Ibid., p.. 156).
Social relations will no longer feature the objective representation, but will be a projection, a reflection of the inner dimension. The Underground Man is an exception, a outcast, someone who lives far away, outside of collective life.
As the ambiguous figure of interiority, the 'underground' trace the horizon of human loneliness and tragic as it is inaccessible place in which subjectivity is locked, the Underground Man is not a hero in a romantic sense, is rather a loser, an anti-hero, and the basement is the place of exile and atonement of sin. Thus, the isolation, withdrawing into themselves and exclusive interviews with his inner they take the value of a collective affront to the law, a violation against the human world. The inner
represents the whole universe of man, so that there is no difference between the external and internal world:
"My house was my retreat, my shell, my case, in which I hide all the 'humanity. "
The inner life creates situations spontaneously and directs the action in the dimension of the fantastic, but the reality is of course different. For some individuals this ability to fantasize about future circumstances becomes an ever more important in mental life, the point of being decisive in the relationship with reality. Life then takes on an unreal and you can open a rift exists between the inner world and the world outside, where the inner life expands to become the true existential condition of the individual:
"In general I was always alone. At home, in the first place, and largely read. I wanted to stifle with external sensations all that was boiling inside me incessantly. Among the sensations in my appearance was part of only the reading ability. "(Ibid., p. 59)..
[1] Dostoevsky (1864), Notes from Underground, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, 1987, p.7.