At the end of Notes from Underground, Feodor Dostoevsky writes: "The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here". Everything in this literary work is paradoxical รป the relation of the writer to the reader, his relationship with himself, and his social relationships, especially the relationship between the narrator and the "above ground gentleman".
The narrator (which as in all first person shngular literary works is a combination of fiction and the author's views) has a complex relationship with this straw man of a gentleman. Dostoevsky uses the device of this fictional type to hurl his salvos of disapproval at the direction in which Western civilization in general and his nineteenth century Russia in particular were moving.
The first distinction he makes between himself and the gentleman is that he is highly intelligent, and the latter is stupid. Yet, he admires the simple-minded certainty that allows the gentleman to be a man of action, while he himself hems and haws diffidently, unable to find any cause so morally certain that he can make a decision to take definitive action on anything himself. Not only that, while the gentleman is un-vexed by doubts, the more intelligent narrator always sees things from many different angles. In other words, his view is complex, while that of the gentleman is simple-minded. As Dostoevsky puts it: "For through his innate stupidity the latter looks upon his revenge as justice pure and simple; while in consequence of his acute consciousness the mouse does not believe in the justice of it". For all the insults and disparaging observations he heaps upon the gentleman, however, he also envies him the very certainty he lacks.
The narrator is presented with a variety of strongly unpleasant or negative words. Words like "disgusting", "loathsome", "degenerate", " miserable", "humiliation", and "d...