Mice and Men

In Chapter III, the Underground Man began to talk about different kinds of people using metaphors such as a charging bull. As he begins to mention the mouse, he associates the term to a specific type of human. However, he distinguishes this type of man as a separate group alienated from the other part of the human race. He uses a mouse to describe a "man of heightened consciousness"(pg. 96). Ironically, describing a man as full of heightened consciousness is a compliment, and people in the past and present normally consider this an advantage over men who just act immediately in their actions.

 

However, according to the Underground Man, he states this ability is detrimental to a human. He states how the mouse is constantly being humiliated, but the mouse is too conscious "bound to deny the justice of [revenge]"(pg. 97). Then, according to the Underground Man, the mouse continues to question and doubt revenge against humiliation to the point where all the mouse can do is "shrug its puny shoulders and, affecting a scornful smile, scurry off ignominiously to its mousehole"(pg. 97), just as a mouse hides in its hole when it feels threatened. As he goes on, he turns around his argument, after degrading the value of a mouse, and states how the mouse suffers hope and despair on its deathbed, but the Underground Man considers this hope and despair as a strange pleasure. This pleasure defines his philosophy about the human race.