Notes from Underground · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
The Underground Man
major
Also known as Unknown, I, me, myself
He opens his notes by addressing an imagined audience of "gentlemen" he both despises and craves, insisting he is sick, spiteful, and unattractive, yet refusing to be cured. His defining tension is that he is hyper-conscious of every base motive he acts on, and takes a perverse voluptuous pleasure in his own degradation rather than renouncing it. This voice — confessional, combative, philosophically unmoored — sets the terms for everything that follows, daring the reader to keep listening.
Liza
major
Also known as Liza, her, herself
She meets the narrator in a house of prostitution and becomes, in his imagination, a project: a "pure soul" he might rescue and thereby prove his own nobility. But his fantasy curdles into rage — he imagines crushing her, spitting at her, striking her — even as he obsessively replays the moment he struck a match and saw her tortured, distorted smile. Her possible arrival at his apartment becomes the axis of his dread, and her silence or presence will test whether his grand speeches were ever anything but vanity.
Apollon
supporting
Also known as Apollon, he, himself
Apollon works part-time as a tailor but serves the narrator with an insolence so complete it becomes a kind of art, his mouth compressed into a V, his head oiled with sunflower oil, in love with every button on his own coat. He is the one person in the narrator's life who refuses to be impressed, wounded, or moved by him, and their years of squabbling have become a fixture of mutual torment. When Liza arrives at the apartment, it is Apollon's silent, judgmental presence that makes the scene unbearable, exposing the narrator's poverty and posturing at the worst possible moment.
Zverkov
supporting
Also known as Zverkov, Monsieur Zverkov, This Zverkov
At school Zverkov got the better of the narrator with casual, good-natured jests, and after they parted he rose through the service, cut the narrator in the street, and now commands a farewell dinner in his honor. He is not cruel so much as effortlessly superior, twisting and twirling in a theatre box to ingratiate himself with a general's daughters, and the narrator both worships and hates him. The dinner becomes the stage on which the narrator's need for recognition collides with his inability to behave, and Zverkov's indifference is the wound that will not close.
Simonov
supporting
Also known as Simonov
Simonov is the practical one, the man who collects seven roubles apiece and books the Hotel de Paris, tolerating the narrator without warmth and without cruelty. After the disastrous dinner, the narrator writes him a letter full of aristocratic playfulness and lies, begging him to explain everything away, and Simonov's silence or response will determine whether the narrator can pretend the evening never happened. He matters because he is the ordinary, functioning social world against which the narrator measures his own paralysis — and finds himself wanting.
The Officer
minor
Also known as the officer, The officer
A burly officer who physically moves the Underground Man aside in a billiard hall.
Ferfitchkin
minor
Also known as Ferfitchkin, That rascal Ferfitchkin
A spiteful former schoolmate of the Underground Man at the farewell dinner.
Trudolyubov
minor
Also known as Trudolyubov, the blockhead Trudolyubov
A quiet, strong former schoolmate of the Underground Man at the dinner.
Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin
minor
Also known as Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin, Anton Antonitch, Anton
The Underground Man's former office chief, a mild-mannered bureaucrat.
