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In his short 1864 book, Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of a man who is “too conscious.” The man, whose name we never learn is so aware of his own thoughts and feelings as to cause him to be indecisive and overly self-critical.

The point the Underground Man makes is that individuals will ultimately always rebel against a collectively imposed idea of paradise; a utopian image such as The Crystal Palace will always fail because of the underlying irrationality of humanity.

While Notes from Underground can be seen as a critique of the progressive view of history, government, and human perfectibility in general, the text is also a direct satire of the Russian novel What Is to Be Done by Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

The underground man (the title, in Russian, literally means “notes from under the floorboards”) addresses an imaginary audience whom he refers to as “you” or “ladies and gentlemen”—presumably a representative group of educated, Westernized Russians. He alternately teases, insults, and abases himself before them.

On the surface, Notes from the Underground is a set of notes written from underground. (As you'll read in "Symbols, Imagery, and Allegory," the "underground" hovel is likely metaphorical. This guy is "underground" in the "I'm anti-social and hate the whole world" sort of way.)

Dostoevsky's point is that man's actions are not predictable. There are even some men who enjoy suffering and are only happy when they suffer.

Dostoevsky may have been prompted to write Notes from Underground in response to a revolutionary novel called What Is to Be Done? (1863), written by the “rational egoist” N. G. Chernyshevsky. Rational egoism held that life could be perfected solely through the application of reason and enlightened self-interest.

1. The Brother's Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.