Spiteful Man

I find it interesting that the Underground Man is taking the path he is in this sequence. For a man who said he could never act, we see him taking action. He invites himself to, attends, and then basically ruins the party of his friends. He borrows money and chases them into the night. He even initiates a conversation with a whore he meets. All from the man who is now frozen in inaction, contemplating potential paths he could choose.

And yet, in another way, his actions meet exactly with his claims in part one. The underground man is fulfilling his role as a mouse, being taunted and humiliated by stronger and better people, bearing the assault in order to hold some vain hope of vengeance. He is taking pleasure in his own degradation, one of the common themes of his discussions in the first part. He is driving himself into humiliation and shame simply because he can, and seems to find some perverse pleasure in the process. When he finds his friends have left the house of ill fame, the Underground Man’s sedentary nature asserts itself in his happiness at their departure. Throughout he had wished for vengeance, but was relieved when he did not actually have to follow through.

The Underground Man is living through the terrible shame that drove him underground, and we see in his choices leading to that fall the character traits he assigns himself in part one. He is feeble, weak, and jealous. Even more than that he is a spiteful man, degrading himself and others in a pathetic attempt to revenge himself for a perceived wrong.