narrator obscures our view.
             First, the Underground Man tells us that though he will not see doctors out of spite, he does not know who this spite is directed against; that is, he is aware of certain predispositions in himself, but not of their purposes or origins. In fact, as he later tells us, he is not even spiteful but merely wants to be. Nor was he ever a rude official as he had previously told us. The Underground Man specifically insists that he could not become anything and that an intelligent man in the nineteenth century cannot become anything and necessarily lacks character. First of all, this is a clear attack on the culture of the nineteenth century in which intelligent men cannot make anything of themselves but only fools prosper. Second, the Underground Man attempts to point out in himself a fundamental lack of self. He cannot define himself as a scoundrel or as
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