Luke’s Reviews > Notes from Underground > Status Update

His impassioned speech to Liza the prostitute - somewhere between manipulation and genuine longing

drunken neurotic contradictions - darkly relatable

virgin mouse of heightened intellect vs chad Zverkov

“The wretched mouse, in addition to the one original nastiness, has already managed to fence itself about with so many other nastinesses in the form of questions and doubts; it has padded out the one question with so many unresolved questions that, willy-nilly, some fatal slops have accumulated around it, some stinking filth consisting of its dubieties, anxieties, and, finally, of the spit raining on it…”-p. 12

-refuses to leave petersburg even though he hates it - often contradicts himself
-feels as if life would be easier had he been an “insect” or a less intelligent person
-finds some sort of perverse pleasure in his sadness - romanticizes it to gain a sense of superiority.