“I had a sickly dread, too, of being ridiculous, and so had a slavish passion for the conventional in everything external. I loved to fall into the common rut, and had a wholehearted terror of any kind of eccentricity in myself.”

the narrator of 'notes from underground' is nothing if not spiteful, which is something i can understand. he is so spiteful, in fact, that his spite is brought up 43 times over 150 pages. (impressive!) he's drowning in it. it seems as though his spite and bitterness to society have poisoned his entire life, and everyone else must be as miserable as himself.

he is socially anxious and self-deprecating (which manifests into the inability to make a single decision), and he often spends time ruminating on the ideals of modern society. i find him to be self-obsessed, not in a conceited way, but in a pipe-dreamer way. he yearns for love and deems himself a poet, a gentleman, someone who people would die to be with, but in reality he is a nervous wreck.

i want to bring up his self-embarrassment because i find it SO relatable. his obsession with romantics spiraling into mortification, because what if he HAD spoken that way, to what he deems, a 'normal person.' his overthinking of colors, and clothing, because society will one-hundred percent collapse if he wears yellow. though deeply flawed, the narrator is relatable (and maybe even a little lovable).

the ending to this novella was absolutely phenomenal. the constant call-outs of the narrator who spends pages and pages struggling to make decision after decision in his life, who even then– at the end of his novel, is unable to make the choice of ending it, as he is so tied up in it all. dostoevsky please... you outdid yourself. i don't think there is a single work of his that i've read and not enjoyed.