The significance of the Crystal Palace, the anthill, the piano key and other concepts is that they illustrate aspects of the underground man’s beliefs and his attacks against the Utopian Socialist philosophies and Chenayshevsky’s novel, “What is to be Done?” – ideas circulating in Russian in the 19th Century.
These philosophical ideas which circulated in Russia at this time put forth that man, once enlightened to what his own best interests, were would always act with these interests in mind and, therefore, would act in a virtuous way. Dostoyevsky, through the voice of his underground man, attacks this absurd notion by asking, since when did man, even when enlightened to his own best interests, act in this manner? He cites from examples of history, Schleswig-Holstein, Napoleon, Cleopatra and the 19th Century, the historical instances when man has not acted in his best interests and much bloodshed has occurred.
The Crystal Palace is an architectural structure of the 19th Century which represented the height of architectural achievement and modern progress. The underground man begs to be shown something better than the Cristal Palace for he feels mostly that he wants to stick his tongue out at this perfect structure for all the modernity it represents.
A better structure he says is the anthill and its social structure, highly organized and yet, its problem being that the ants have no freedom.
Freedom and free will are the key to the underground man’s attack. He believes that if man has no free choice to choose to act, man will feel like nothing more than a piano key on which to be played. In this case, man will do anything to express his free will, even if it includes acting irrationally or committing evil.
Other concepts include: The Wall and 2 + 2 = 5 which is a fine thing. The underground man says that 2 + 2 = 4 is a wall for most people and they do not have the courage to go beyond this wall which blocks their living. However, for the underground man the wall is his own habit of thinking, his unbearable sensitivity and self consciousness which leaves him forever (?) locked in his underground, alienated from life and humanity.
