Underground Man Essay

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The Search For Foolishness The Underground Man’s logic is complex and often it is contradictory. He concludes that there is no reason seen in the universe. Man has the freedom to fight against anything and everything. The Underground Man’s isolation shows his existentialist notion and separates him from reality, he acts against reason to prove his free will and argues that reason is what stops man from gaining his free will and enslaves him to the laws of nature; therefore he acts irrationally to preserve his independence. The Underground Man is a hermit. He is always alone which is a sign for existentialism because he argues that every man is in constant isolation. Man is born alone and he will also die alone. He is away from his fellow human beings. The Underground Man makes his unchanging character known within this quote; “I did not, of course, maintain friendly relations with my comrades and soon was at loggerheads with them and in my youth and inexperience I even gave up bowing to them, as though I had cut off all relations. That, however, only happened to me once. As a rule, I was always alone” (Part Two Chapter One). The reader is aware that The Underground Man has always had intentions of moving himself underground. It is discovered that instead of having a reason for his departure into isolation because of a certain event in his life, the solitary confinement is due to his character. His unwillingness to change his ways and always follow the rules he sets out for himself shows the reader he is set in his ways. The Underground Man does however crave emergence into society every so often, as seen with his quote, “I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society” (Part Two Chapter Two). He tries to convince himself that he is content with life underground but he shows his

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