When the Underground Man arrives at the brothel, where he has been before, he finds

the drawing room empty. He realizes that the others have already gone off with
various women. He paces the room, trying to decide what to do until a young
prostitute with a kind, serious face appears in the room. She appeals to the
Underground Man, who decides to sleep with her. He notices his bedraggled
appearance in a mirror and decides that he does not care if she finds him
repulsive. In fact, he would rather she did.

Analysis: Chapters IV�V

The Underground Man�s description of his wait at the restaurant mirrors his
description of the hissing wall clock: just as he imagines that the inanimate clock
is hostile, he imagines that the waiters performing their tasks are full of
contempt for him, and he is ashamed. Every casual occurrence, from the late arrival
of his dinner companions to the waiters setting the table, is loaded with negative
meaning to the Underground Man. We must keep in mind this tendency of the
Underground Man to exaggerate or misinterpret events through his own bitterness and
insecurity. Whenever he makes a judgment about a person or a place, we must take
his skewed perspective into account.

Beyond providing us with further examples of how the Underground Man views other
people, Chapter IV is also the first in the novel to give us a relatively clear
picture of how others might view the Underground Man. Having been privy to his
thoughts and feelings for a long time, we have begun to understand what motivates
him. We can follow his logic to some degree, even if that logic is flawed. We are
accustomed to his ways of looking at the world and at himself. We even begin to
share his point of view. Since he worries so much about what other people think of
him, we imagine that the other characters in the novel really do think about his
behavior as much as he thinks they do. These other characters, however, have no
understanding of the Underground Man�s motives, and therefore his behavior appears
bizarre to them. Their responses to his behavior are negative, but not necessarily
because they are cruel or unfeeling people. For the most part, they are baffled by
his rudeness.

The events of Chapter IV illustrate the Underground Man�s masochism and

indecisiveness. The fact that he remains at the dinner, pacing hopelessly in front
of the other dinner guests but refusing to speak to them, indicates that he does
indeed get a strange pleasure out of the feeling that he has hit rock bottom. As he
has described in the �Underground� section, the Underground Man cultivates his own
humiliation, almost deliberately hrowing himself into the most painful,
inextricable situation imaginable. As he has also explained, he can never make
decisive choices because he is always too conscious of every possibility. He thinks
that if he allows himself to get deep enough into trouble, he will arrive at a
point of inevitability. Once he reaches this point, it will be essential that he
slap Zverkov�s face. The Underground Man feels that at this point he might be able
to find some kind of confidence or certainty.

Having reached a point of inevitability with his insulting speech to Zverkov,

however, the Underground Man is still plagued by doubts. In Chapter V, he submits
alternately to his romantic visions, his nihilistic realism, and his masochistic
impulses. He imagines scenes of noble reconciliation with Zverkov, but he also
realizes that these imagined scenes are ludicrous and have been lifted from
literature. His visions of being beaten by everyone in the brothel are as much a
masochistic fantasy as his visions of reconciliation are a Romantic one. At the
same time, though, the Underground Man can understand the practical difficulties
that dueling would present�for one thing, he does not have a single close friend to
act as his second.

One of the major urges that drives the Underground Man to go to the brothel and
confront Zverkov is the idea that he cannot avoid �life.� He has attended the
dinner partially to feel that he is living �life,� and he believes that slapping
Zverkov will be a �confrontation� with real life. The Underground Man seems to
equate �life� with emotionally satisfying contact with other people�but the only
emotions he can express are resentment, anger, and conflict. Believing that the
underground protects him from life and therefore limits him, he feels that he can
somehow escape his alienation through forced participation in life. In this light,
his pursuit of Zverkov is genuinely a pursuit of freedom and dignity.