Character Of 'Antihero In The Underground Man'

1684 Words7 Pages

Debbie Lee
Professor Edgar Muniz
English 1C
1 February 2018
Antihero
An antihero is a person whose traits and actions are in opposition to a person who is a hero. Someone who is heroic may be celebrated for their positive traits including courage or achievements. While a selected heroic figure may be very rare and unrelatable, an antihero is someone who is unheroic and not looked upon. However, they can be easily be represented as the common and ordinary because they are not perfect, which makes it easier for us to connect in one way or another. No matter how cynical or irrational their ideas might appear to be, we can comprehend their thoughts depending on whether or not we agree with those ideas. Instead, of having the traditional qualities …show more content…

Occasionally, he would have dreams of himself as a hero and experiencing happiness. In one scene, after waking up in a brothel, he meets a prostitute named Liza and sees an opportunity to fulfill the role of a hero. The Underground Man does see something in her that he envies, but he does not understand what he sees precisely because it is so opposed to his own way of life. He realizes, “ The Underground Man does see something in her that he envies, but he does not understand what he sees precisely because it is so opposed to his own way of life. He realizes, “The thought, too, came into my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely changed, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed and humiliated creature as she had been before me that night—four days before” (159). He attempts to redeem the poor and dejected prostitute by convincing to leave the brothel with his understanding and reasoning of how to correctly live life through literary subjects. However, she realizes that he unable to deal with the real world, which hurts his pride. The Underground Man decides to dominate her in order to force her to regards him with respect. In the next scene when Liza visits the man in his home, he realizes that their roles have been reversed like a mirror. The Underground Man was ashamed that earlier he had looked like a hero to her, but now she …show more content…

Works Cited
Brombert, Victor. Dostoevsky 's Underground Man: Portrait of the Paradoxalist." Raritan, vol.
15, no. 1, Summer95, p. 67. EBSCOhost, libris.mtsac.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h &AN=9509145498&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes from the Underground. www.planetebook.com/ebooks/Notes-from-the-Underground.pdf. Scanlan, James P. “The Case against Rational Egoism in Dostoevsky 's ‘Notes from
Underground.’” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 60, no. 3, 1999, pp. 549–567.
JSTOR, JSTOR,