The Man Who Lived Underground

by Richard Wright

Fred Daniels throws his life away, that is, when we see it from the outside; but from Fred Daniels’s point of view he emerges from the underground to communicate what he has seen, and to give testimony to what one feels is a right worth dying for. Indeed, he has the right and scope of action to feel deeply enough and long enough so...

Still another strand that runs through the skein of the story, suggested by overtones rather than through explicit speech, is the theme of general, individual, and personal rebellion which is taking place so constantly and often in the world today.

The seeming relationship of this man’s feelings while in the underground to psychopathic personalities and to religion. As I wrote I drew upon these two concepts very heavily, for they seemed related to me. Perhaps their being regarded as alien to each other depends upon where they are found.

As I wrote page after page I was reminded of many psychiatric case histories of schizophrenic personalities. More and more, as the story progressed, I felt the writing to be a good emotional description of schizophrenia. The symptoms were unrolling as I wrote; I was not trying in any way to describe schizophrenia; it seemed that the very nature of Fred Daniels’s situation made such descriptions flow from the materials. First, I noticed that Fred Daniels was withdrawn from the world; second, that he suffered a loss of contact with reality in a hard and sharp sense; third, that there was a gradual disintegration of his personality. Yet, while noticing this, I also noticed that this whole idea of a man withdrawing from the world had a striking similarity to the life of my grandmother, who, in her religious life, was certainly withdrawn from the world as much as anybody has ever been withdrawn from it, as much as anyone can live in this world and not have anything to do with it.

I felt that there was or must be some relationship between psychiatry, religion, and art.

There is still another theme treated suggestively in the book, that is, the Christ legend; I’ve already mentioned Christ in the sense of a man returning to the sun of authority that first gave him eyes to see; but the theme I’m now speaking of is the brutal treatment of the superior man by his inferiors.

Still another theme, suggested in a rather muted way, is the problem of the Negro. After all, Fred Daniels is a Negro, and Negroes in America are accused and branded and treated as though they are guilty of something.

There is something fascinating about how an innocent man reacts when a false accusation is launched against him. Looking back now upon my own reactions, remembering many people with whom I’ve talked who have had similar accusations launched against them, I can say that it reveals startling quirks of character and action. I have the feeling that the branding of an innocent has the knack of uncovering something about the very nature of life as a whole. If a man has committed a murder and you accuse him of such, I don’t think he will generally act very violently. But if you accuse a man of something that he did not do, his behavior will be utterly unpredictable. It has the power of upsetting his entire way of life, coloring his feelings about people for a lifetime, and sowing the seeds of distrust so deep that they will grow and bear fruit for years afterwards.

I was not only trying to defend myself against the charge of stealing, but also against their basic conception of me that would allow them to accuse me.

When a man is accused, he is already condemned in the minds of the people who launch the accusation, all the fine and fancy Bill of Rights to the contrary. It is a psychological law. No man will accuse another, rightly or wrongly, unless he has already cast that man beyond the pale of the just and honest and decent.

I believe that the man who has been accused of a crime he has not committed is the very person who cannot adequately defend himself. There is really no way in which he can convincingly defend himself. His shocked and outraged attitude toward the charges throws him into an emotional stew which makes him blind to what he is being accused of. Every word he utters can be used against him, for he is trying not so much to refute the charges as he is trying to fight for his status as a human being, trying to keep his worth and value in the eyes of others, just because he is innocent.