Part 5: "...most awful moments of my life" (Alexia Barrios)

I have somewhat become attached to the narrator, in the sense that as he tortures himself at this dinner party I cannot help but cringe with embarrassment and sorrow for him. I genuinely feel bad for this man because I have grown to understand who he is and all the ramblings that are produced from his heightened consciousness that flow from his head and onto paper.  Characters within Notes from the Underground, who only know him as an acquaintance I am sure would undoubtedly find him insane based on his mannerisms and lack of a filter. But they don't know him to be the same man I have come to know, and for that reason I feel terrible for him. The masochism that I have mentioned makes another appearance in this reading as he stays at the restaurant though the men have changed the date (obviously as an attempt to both humiliate and eliminate him from their plans). It is also after present when afterward an altercation at the dinner table,  he felt he was “stabbed to the heart by the thought that ten years, twenty years, forty years would pass and that…I would remember with loathing humiliation those filthiest, most ludicrous, and most awful moments of my life” (55) but then shortly after attempted to reconcile and join these men at the brothel. This action made no sense to me and I was left feeling both humiliated and sorry for him as a result.