At the story's conclusion, Golyadkin Sr. begins to see many replicas of himself, has a psychotic break, and is dragged off to an asylum by Doctor Rutenspitz.

The Double is the most Gogolesque of Dostoevsky's works; its subtitle "A Petersburg Poem" echoes that of Gogol's Dead Souls.

One contemporary critic, Konstantin Aksakov, remarked that "Dostoevsky alters and wholly repeats Gogol's phrases".

[6] This immediate relationship is the obvious manifestation of Dostoevsky's entry into the deeper tradition of German Romanticism, particularly the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann.

[7] These two readings, together, position The Double at a critical juncture in Dostoevsky's writing at which he was still synthesising what preceded him but also adding in elements of his own.

One critic wrote that The Double's main idea is that "the human will in its search for total freedom of expression becomes a self-destructive impulse".

[10] This individualistic focus is often contextualised by scholars, such as Joseph Frank, who emphasise that Golyadkin's identity is crushed by the bureaucracy and stifling society he lives in.

"[13] Vladimir Nabokov, who generally regarded Dostoevsky as a "rather mediocre" writer, called The Double "the best thing he ever wrote", saying that it is "a perfect work of art".