Notes from Underground Lesson Plan

What is the connection between the poem that begins Part 2 and Part 2 itself?

The poem that begins Part 2 demonstrates the ideals of Russian romantics. Part 2 works to criticize those ideals. Students may argue that the poem works as a kind of foreshadowing. The Underground Man might be the “fallen soul…filled with deepest torment” (42). Part 2 is a demonstration of that torment. However, this section of the poem ends with “In trembling hands, and filled with horror/filled with shame, dissolved in tears,/Indignant as you were, and shaken.” Students may question whether the Underground Man is filled with shame and horror at his actions and “vice.” Instead, he seems to...