Notes from Underground can be considered one of the first existentialist works. In this book Dostoyevsky writes about some subjects that he developed more widely in his famous novels Gambler, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The book is written as the memoirs of a retired civil servant who lives inmersed in himself and locked up in his apartment. He is an educated man, but incapable of being sociable and of having a disinterested friendship. In his reflections he traces some negative tendencies of modern society such as individualism, selfishness and living "to do nothing".
In the first part, he narrates his life and some reflections. In the second part, after visiting a woman with a bad life, he relates the sermon he preached to her to change the situation, arguments that could well have been applied to himself. The book contains, in general, interesting ideas, but they are expressed in a negative and somewhat sad note. Ultimately , it seems clear that only religion can save him, but this is not expressed directly.