Numb

         The Underground Man, in the book Notes from Underground, justifies his spite as a result of years of becoming numb to wrongdoing. He sees the beauty in the world, not as an inspiration to the good of the world, but as something that highlights the evil in the world. As we grow up, the Underground Man explains that we might initially feel guilt gnawing on our insides after we utter our first curse word, or tell our first lie, but eventually that feeling goes away. We keep committing the same evil until it becomes a habit and that awful feeling goes away. It gets to the point where we are so accustom to committing these wrong doings, that eventually we derive pleasure from them. We take pleasure out of tricking our parents because of a lie, or think we are cool because we can curse without our body repulsing from the action. Because the Underground Man had endured this process over the years, he has become the cynical and spiteful man that he is now. He is pleased when people get angry with him, because he makes people mad for fun. He enjoys their emotional outbursts, and although he doesn’t consider himself a spiteful man, he likes being one.