Friday, January 6, 2017
UM
The Underground Man is really aggravating. All he does is complain. He complains about romanticism, other countries, other people, even his own ailments. He says he's sick, but he won't go to the doctor or do anything to help himself. He even says he hopes his liver hurts even more. He causes a big drunken scene at dinner. All he does is embarrass himself and then wonder why he's alone. What's his problem?
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After reading some of Part II we see that throughout his life, the Underground Man has struggled for attention. He has also always been very self-critical and overthinks a lot. He may even be overthinking his illness. Also he could be playing up his illness for attention and sympathy. His spiteful nature causes him to wish for more pain and avoid going to the doctor. He is at a place in his life where he accepts his sorrow, and so it is probably more out of hate for himself than spite for doctors that he will not go take care of himself.
I believe attention is one of the major reasons that the Underground man acts contrarily to his self-interest. He wants his actions to make him stand out from the crowd, but at the same time, he would give almost anything to be just a normal person like one of his friends. He feels insignificant and does things such as go the the going away party with his school friend and also bumping into the officer on the street to try to elevate his social standing to equal all of the people around him. Instead, he only succeeds in going into further debt and achieves nothing but additional alienation from his friends. He is disillusioned to the point that he thinks he will be able to take control of the dinner party and all of the guests will follow and admire him instead of Zverkov, but he inadvertently continues the theme of going against his own self-interest. In both of these occasions, we see the need for attention, but also the deep desire for friendship and to actually have meaningful interactions with other people.
I think that Underground man doesn't know how to express himself so he expresses himself through spite and negative behavior because as Joseph said he wants attention. If he goes to the doctor and does everything right then that makes him just like everybody else and he wants to stand apart from other people. It would be against his character to just accept the things he's supposed to do and follow through with them. Underground man has no other outside influences to tell him that he should do things like go to the doctor and nobody cares for him so there's no point for him to take care of himself. Underground man is a sad lonesome person who lacks a healthy social life and as a result he is an outsider.
The underground man had a very unhealthy sense of self. He is an orphan and his distant relatives completely abandoned him. As a result, he craves attention that he will never receive and insists on putting himself in awkward situations to get attention. He spent years planning a single interaction with the officer. He then forced his way into a dinner that he didn't want to go to, with people he didn't like in order to pretend that he was equal with his classmates. If underground man would just relax, maybe he would have friends.
It seems as if Underground Man may have some sort of social disorder. This could stem from the emotional trauma he endured during his childhood being orphaned and sent off by his only family. Not only that but every single person he's ever met left him alone. He never had friends or family to learn how to interact with people. Because he was so neglected in childhood, I think he feels a craving for attention and a sense of control. As annoying as Underground man is, I don't know if I really blame him for being that way. Especially if he has a medical disorder which hinders him from comprehending how social situations work.
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