The Man Who Lived Underground

by Richard Wright

The song lashed him to impotent fury. Those people were pleading guilty, wallowing sensually in their despair. He gritted his teeth. How could one ever get used to this thing? Overcome with wonder, he felt suddenly that he knew, that he had snared the secret! Guilt! That was it! Insight became sight and he knew that they thought that they were guilty of something they had not done and they had to die.

again he was overwhelmed with that inescapable emotion that always cut down to the foundations of life here in the underground, that emotion that told him that, though he were innocent, he was guilty; though blameless, he was accused; though living, he must die; though possessing faculties of dignity, he must live a life of shame; though existing in a seemingly reasonable world, he must die a certainly reasonless death.

He felt that he was not explaining himself sufficiently; he sat still, trying to muster all of the symbols that lay sprawling in him. The symbols stood out sharp and clear in his mind, but he could not make them have the meaning for others that he felt they had for him.