NovelGuide: Notes from the Underground: Novel Summary: Part 1 Chapter 5-Part 1 Chapter 6

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Part 1 Chapter 5-Part 1 Chapter 6

Part 1 Chapter 5: Here we delve deeper into the mind of this deeply disturbed individual.  The UM, explaining what it was like to grow up, says that he could never find any virtue or justice in his world, and therefore could only use spite or conscious deception to find reasons to act.
Part 1 Chapter 6: Here, the Underground Man sidetracks himself, explaining how if he were a sluggard then he would truly respect himself.  He muses about how his life would be different if only he could call himself a lazy drunk who devoted his life to the "beautiful and sublime." In fact, he mentions and quotes the words "beautiful and sublime" so often in this chapter that the words quickly become a sardonic attack on the utopian ideals Dostoevsky and his UM so despised.