The UM as the anti-hero?

[lotrlz]

Aspects of the Underground Man exemplify Dostoevsky's morality, but I question Dostoevsky's use of the character as an antithetical tool to demonstrate his ideas, i.e. the UM is not religious or spiritual? Does he use the character to both announce his ideas outright, and demonstrate them through what not to do/think? My best example so far is that lack of religious faith attributed to the UM. I'm a college student attempting to synthesize Chekhov (Ward No.6) and Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilych) as a moralistic progression of ideas consummating in the complexity of the Underground Man, while staying true to the discrepancies between the three, all in on 6-8 page essay. I love this literature passionately, but it's some difficult stuff to explain clearly. any help on brain-storming would be much appreciated.

[MikeK]

I'll give as brief an interpretation as I can about my thoughts about the UM.  It took me a few readings to come to this interpretation - and I think that many, many people who write about the underground man misunderstand him.

You have to appreciate the irony of the book.  The underground man NEGATIVELY illuminates faith.  It's true, as most people perceive upon reading this book, that the UM in Part I seems to be making an impassioned plea for free-will, or the spiritual life; in other words, for something more than he sees around him in his material circumstances - something higher.  But, many people mistakenly assume that his situation (the pathetic condition that he has fallen to) is a result of those ideas.  No.  His condition in the underground is a result of his materialistic/detrministic ideas that he developed and acted upon when he was younger.  Part II displays this.  The result of living that way is the underground - the state that he is in.  From there, he realizes his mistake.  He realizes the problems with living according to a scientific, materialistic, or deterministic formula; and he recognizes that there is something higher.  Let's say something spiritual.  But now it's too late.  He's stuck in the underground.  ("I can't, they won't let me be good!")

I think what trips a lot of people up when trying to understand this book is that they don't appreciate the irony.  Because of his impassioned plea for free-will in Part I people assume that that is what led him into the underground; that it was his rejection of determinism that led to the underground.  No.  As the flashback in Part II displays, it was his ACCEPTANCE of those ideas and behavior based on those ideas ("I have only carried out what you were afraid to take half way") that led to the underground.  He accpted those ideas (exceedingly so), and can now, from the underground, see the bankruptcy of those ideas, the degradation that they lead to.  That is how he ironically and negatively illuminates the need for the spiritual.

I suppose that is part of the reason why he may be called an anti-hero; but only part of the reason.  (I think the atoher part has to do with his inaction and anti-romantic strain, as opposed to the usual heroes that people were accustomed to getting from the likes of Byron and Pushkin.  Accepting the tenets of scientific determinism lead to inactivity, drain passion, and create a quite unheroic character.)

That's as brief a summary as I think I can give about my thoughts on the UM.  Hope that they might help a bit.