The Man Who Lived Underground

by Richard Wright

Curiously, he felt these questions had the power of projecting him into a strange orbit where, though he was not guilty of a crime, they made him feel somehow guilty. He fought against this enveloping mood.

Outside of time and space, he looked down upon the earth and saw that each fleeting day was a day of dying, that men died slowly with each passing moment as much as they did in war, that human grief and sorrow were utterly insufficient to this vast, dreary spectacle.

Yes, the only being who could possibly gaze down upon such a hopeless spectacle and encompass its meaninglessness would have to be a god. That was it! Maybe men had invented gods to feel what they could not feel, and they found comfort in the pity of their gods for them . . . ! For men were overwhelmed with shame and guilt when they looked down upon the irremediable frailty of their lives.

And 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.