Analyze Underground Man’s “struggle” against the officer in Chapter I.

In part I of Notes from Underground,
the underground man gives us some backstory from his career as a spiteful government
official.   He says, "I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being
so."

He specifically mentions the officer, pointing out his
clanking sword:

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...[O]f the uppish ones there was one officer in
particular I could not endure. He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a
disgusting way. I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over that
sword. At last I got the better of him.  He left off clanking
it.

Later, he retracts his
spitefulness:

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I was lying when I said just now that I was a
spiteful official. I was lying from spite. I was simply amusing
myself with the petitioners and with the officer, and in reality I never could become
spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many, very many
elements absolutely opposite to
that.

Then, he
admits:

I bet
you think I am writing all this from affectation, to be witty at the expense of men of
action; and what is more, that from ill-bred affectation, I am clanking a
sword like my officer. But, gentlemen, whoever can pride himself on
his diseases and even swagger over
them?

Isn't it ironic that
the underground man is being spiteful of the spiteful?  That he is clanking his sword at
the sword-clanker?  That he is spiteful of men of action, but he is--at times--a man of
action?  Certainly, the underground man is conscious of his pride and
hyper-criticalness.  After all, he says we are all diseased like him, forever split
between action and passivity, between spitefulness and victimization, and between hatred
of others and self-loathing.  This is the modern consciousness, a mindset of existential
back-and-forths that is torn between reason and
emotion.

Here, the underground man is writing a polemic
against officers and himself.  He hates spiteful people, yet he is one!  Instead of
using brash outward attacks against others, he uses this diary as a internal attack.
 Instead of physical swords, he uses words as weapons.  His polemic is his sword, and it
clanks a lot.  He is very much treating his reader the way he treated the officer 20
years ago.  As such, the officer is a proxy for the reader: those whom the underground
man cannot stand.  They are the self-important, the hypocrites, the self-righteous, the
luke-warm Christians, the materialists, and the snobs.