1. Recall a few very general features of heroic conduct as that is defined by the tradition.

2. Cultural heroes--from history or fiction--as we have encountered them so far, have virtually all had a few qualities in common. 

3. First and foremost is their ability to act in the world, to make decisions, carry those out, and deal with the consequences.
The key element is their ability to initiate action or respond to the actions around them. 
4. A desire to act on those feelings, and a sense of themselves, an identity, which prompts them to action in the service of something they believe. 

5. What makes these people heroes is that sense of taking charge, in action, of their lives, based on some faith in their own capabilities and often in some wider context of belief.

6. Dostoevsky's narrator at once announces to us how different he is from such traditional notions of heroism.

7. He does not live in the world where actions matter.

8. He is forty years old, well educated, literate, and financially independent.
These details are important because they indicate that, whatever is troubling Underground Man, it has nothing to do with an oppressive work situation, lack of money, or an absence of opportunities for social interaction. He has time, money, and opportunity. And he is surrounded by a complex social environment. In that sense, he has, on the surface at least, achieved two of the most important ideals of the Enlightenment: he is free and independent.

9. His problem, we quickly learn, has nothing to do with his external circumstances and everything to do with what's going on inside him. 
In fact, the entire first part of the story is an invitation to us to explore the specific emotional symptoms characteristic of this invalid.
However, his malaise does not stem from the intellectual inadequacy of science, but from his sense that it doesn't meet the demands of his spirit. Such rational constructions (the Crystal Palace) always leave something out of account, the desire to defy them. 

10. So he's not repudiating science;

11. Deterministic science can never satisfy those feelings, simply because Underground Man senses that there is always a residual desire, what he calls a whim, the desire to affirm that two and two equals five. 

12. The essence of human life is desire, not reason.

13. Part of his discontent with science (which his reason accepts) is that it subsumes him under rational formulas, puts him in a predictable box, something his moral-emotional self will not agree to.

14. But when he looks around him, Underground Man sees nothing answering to his desires. 

15. Discussion of revenge, one of the most basic and long-lasting of human feelings and absolutely fundamental to any sense of justice. 
16. Stupid people (in his view) are capable of acting on their feelings directly, in taking revenge or asserting themselves.

17. There he spends his time resenting his situation, hatching elaborate revenge plots but never acting on them.