He uses her as box where he can lock away all of his problems and feelings. Lisa’s appearance in Notes from Underground makes it evident that she is the Underground Man’s tool to escape reality. However, the underground man resorts to self-justification by noting that he abused Lisa for her own good. At this point, a hero would have looked for ways to reconcile with Lisa. However, in confusion, the man runs after Lisa to seek forgiveness only to realise that she is gone forever. Therefore, when Lisa shows up at his apartment, he resorts to chauvinistic tirade where he abuses her both physically and verbally. Unfortunately, the man cannot sustain even ‘purchased’ romance as after giving Lisa his address, he laments that decision. In other words, the Underground Man cannot sustain a romantic relationship and thus he decides to buy love by engaging Lisa. He simply thinks about what his friends have done to him, and so he uses Lisa to escape each pain in his heart. When he sleeps with her, he has no feelings at that moment. Therefore, he selects a desperate woman, Lisa, because he thinks that he can escape from real life with her. There he asks for someone with whom he can have special time together, but in essence, he is looking for an individual to take him away from reality. The Underground Man starts a journey to escape from reality when he visits the brothel. All of these qualities are those of an antihero. He has no experiences that give him hope and expectation. He even doubts his version of intelligence by saying, “perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything” (Dostoevsky 15). However, this view is hypocritical as his ‘intelligence’ leads to inactivity, as opposed to the ‘lack of intelligence’ as portrayed by his friends. In addition, the Underground Man regards himself highly as opposed to all other people. Even though he gathers the courage to move into the tavern and confront the person responsible, once he sees the officer he cringes and fails to confront him due to lack of ‘moral courage’. In addition, he is so inactive that he cannot even those in need like the boy thrown out of window in a club. He lives with a liver disease, but he cannot make the decision to visit a doctor for treatment because to him, doctors should not exist. For instance, he only remains in the civil service job just to pay the bills. The Underground Man is embroiled in a life full of shame and loathing. A hero mends differences in a bid to espouse admirable characters, but there is nothing to admire in the Underground Man. For instance, when he follows his friends to a club rand realises that no one cares about him, he resorts to abusing his friends openly, which forces them to leave in a huff. However, the Underground Man does not have any normal loving relationships with other people. In addition, heroes overcome their situations and personal differences to establish working relationships in their lives. Therefore, this form of confusion, which leads to indecision and inertia paint the Underground Man as an anti-hero as heroes take charge of their lives and circumstances to direct the plot of a story or movie. In addition, the man knows that the only reason he cannot execute any task is personal doubts, which emerge from over analysis of everything. His over analysis of every situation makes him hypocritical of every situation and thus he does not know what to do.įor example, when he says, “for the most part I preferred being alone not trying to justify… no that’s a lie…” (Dostoevsky 42), it becomes clear that he is very confused about himself. He is so paralysed by having to select what to do that his decision is not to choose. He is looking for a path to enable him to live in peace unfortunately, his inactivity and indecision cannot yield the desired results. From these sentiments, we can see a hopeless man who does not have any goals. The book, just like the movie, starts with main character’s words, “I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man…I was uncivil” (Dostoevsky 1). This paper highlights how the main character in the movie and book, Notes from the Underground, exemplifies antihero. However, the Underground Man’s inactivity and indecision disqualifies him from becoming a hero. A hero stands out by making and executing heroic decisions. In both the movie and book, Notes from Underground, the main character fails to portray the attributes of a hero.
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