The narrator (which as in all first person singular 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 nineteeth 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. And 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 gent

The narrator envies the "normal", and even goes so far as to say that perhaps the latter's stupidity is "beautiful". And yet the first part of the novel is basically one viciously devastating attack after another on the foolish, positivistic optimism that science and rationality would soon perfect human nature and solve all of man's chronic problems - values he pins on the gentleman.

Yet for all the insults and disparaging observations he heaps upon the gentleman, he also envies him the very certainty he lacks.

So there is a method to Dostoevsky's apparent madness. He's basically playing the fool to trap the reader into some critical self-analysis, as well as trying to poke holes in the popular myths of his day.

the mouse does not believe in the justice of it".

"...It is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognized and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savor of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. It is so subtle, so difficult of analysis, that persons who are a little limited, or even simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand".

The key to Dostoevsky's system of values is freedom of choice, or free will. Even the narrator's constant self-accusations are a kind of free will, a

Some common words found in the essay are:
Balzac Zola, Feodor Dostoevsky, Underground Dostoevsky's, hopelessness one's position, Notes Underground, gentleman dostoevsky, one's position, hopelessness one's, notes underground,
Approximate Word count = 1028
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)