curses her and takes back everything he said to her, saying he was, in fact, laughing at her and reiterates the truth of her miserable position. Near the end of his painful rage he wells up in tears after saying that he was only seeking to have power over her and a desire to humiliate her. He begins to criticize himself and states that he is in fact horrified by his own poverty and embarrassed by his situation. Liza realizes how pitiful he is and tenderly embraces him. The Underground Man cries out "They—they won't let me—I—I can't be good!" After all this, he still acts terribly toward her, and, before she leaves, he stuffs a five ruble note into her hand, which she throws onto the table (it is implied that the Underground Man had sex with Liza and that the note is payment). He tries to catch her as she goes out to the street, but he cannot find her and never hears from her again. He tries to stop the pain in his heart by "fantasizing."And isn't it better, won't it be better?… Insult—after all, it's a purification; it's the most caustic, painful consciousness! Only tomorrow I would have defiled her soul and wearied her heart. But now the insult will never ever die within her, and however repulsive the filth that awaits her, the insult will elevate her, it will cleanse her…He recalls this moment as making him unhappy whenever he thinks of it, yet again proving the fact from the first section that his spite for society and his inability to act makes him no better than those he supposedly despises. The concluding sentences recall some of the themes explored in the first part, and he tells the reader directly, "I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway.” At the end of Part 2, a further editorial note is added by Dostoevsky, indicating that the 'author' couldn't help himself and kept writing, but that "it seems to us that we might as well stop here". Themes and context The narration by the Underground Man is laden with ideological allusions and complex conversations regarding the political climate of the period. Using his fiction as a weapon of ideological discourse, Dostoevsky challenges the ideologies of his time, mainly nihilism and rational egoism. In Part 2, the