Questions

I've finished the book and my thoughts on the last two pages are rather distraught. At first, I thought the narrator was an example of how a socially unacceptable man would act but by the end, he acts as though he is of the same breed as his companions, just with different faults. Maybe in fact, he is an example of how humanity should act, but is lost in the evolution of man. "Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less." 

Was this story written for self punishment since he has made it clear the anger he has towards himself? Was it for self realization, to discover how much he wasted his life through depression and his lack of social graces? 

But then the quote goes on and speaks of the structure of a story. Is he the hero, or the villain? Did he save anyone? Was he saved? Or did he destroy something in someone else? Maybe Liza saved him, or he felt he saved her? Maybe he destroyed her? He fantasized about being her savior, yet when the time came, he coward back and revealed his true self, but it was still indecisive on who was saved or destroyed. Maybe he destroyed his friends from the beginning of the narrative; maybe they were so appalled by his behavior that they lost faith in humanity. Or maybe he realized that all of humanity is crippled or dented in someway and made himself loose his own faith. 

Maybe this is the example of what happens in a story with no hero.

Could this be his his self punishment? To write this story so he can reveal to himself how blind he was. "It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... Yes, I assure you ... We should be begging to be under control again at once." What if the whole point of this book was for him to fall into deeper depression upon noticing how doomed humanity is and we are just looking aimlessly into his mind. His self punishment is realizing that life is no longer about stories and fantasies from book but rather mechanical processes that are deemed as socially necessary.