Published by Library of America on April 20, 2021
Richard Wright (1908-60) was not a particularly prolific writer, but he wrote two of the most important books of the last century. Black Boy (1945), a largely autobiographical account of racism in Wright’s younger years that he blended with fiction, and Native Son (1940), a fictional account of the racism and poverty that underlies the crimes committed by the protagonist, are among the most powerful books of their time.
Wright published “The Man Who Lived Underground” as a short story in 1942. The story was condensed from a short novel that Library of America has, for the first time, published in full. Accompanying the novel is an essay, “Memories of My Grandmother,” that Wright hoped would be published with the novel.
The protagonist is Fred Daniels, a young black man who lives with his wife, attends White Rock Baptist Church, and works for the Wootens, a prominent white family. When the police stop him as he is leaving work, he assumes that those credentials, mixed with the deference and respect he has learned to give white people (and particularly police officers) whether they have earned it or not, will convince the police to let him go about his business. He’s not so lucky.
A neighbor of the Wootens was murdered. Since Fred is black and in the area when the police begin to investigate, they decide he must be guilty. They isolate him, beat him, confuse him, and do everything they can to convince him of his guilt before having him sign a confession that he doesn’t read.
Fred eventually seizes an opportunity to flee. Hearing police sirens, Fred escapes down a partially open manhole. He then lives for a period of time underground. Fred discovers a series of connecting tunnels and breaks into a basement with a deteriorating foundation by loosening some bricks. He steals tools that he uses to break into other basements.
While living underground, Fred observes the outside world. He contemplates the services at a black church. He sees a man stealing money from a safe and decides to do the same. He breaks through the basement of a jewelry store where a night watchman is sleeping and steals watches and diamonds. Later, Fred sees that the same cops who framed him are blaming others, including the night watchman, for crimes that he committed. He feels overwhelming guilt, one of the themes Wright explored in Native Son.
Fred quickly loses touch with the world and with himself as he lives in the dark. He feels nothing when he sees a dead baby that someone abandoned in the sewer. When he gets his hands on cash and jewels, none of it seems real. He can’t spend the money; he wants to keep it around so he can look at it. He starts to think of aboveground as “something less than reality, less than sight and sound, less even than memory.”
As the story nears its resolution, Fred decides to emerge from the underground and to atone for his crimes, as his religion taught him to do. Unsurprisingly to all except Fred, the story does not end well for him.
Racism in law enforcement is an important theme, but the novel also explores the impact of religion on Fred’s life. Living underground gives him a new perspective. “When he had sung and prayed with his brothers and sisters in church, he always felt what they felt; but here in the underground, distantly sundered from them, he saw a defenseless nakedness in their lives that made him disown them.” Living underground empowers Fred to reject all that he has been taught.
Wright’s essay about his grandmother expands upon the role of religion in black American life. Wright explains that religion was the dominant force in his grandmother’s life (she was a Seventh Day Adventist) and that he wrote The Man Who Lived Underground to depict “the religious impulses” among black people. Wright did not understand how his grandmother could embrace humanity as a whole while having such callous disregard for individual humans. That is a question that puzzles many about people who are not true to the religious values that they espouse.
The novel and the essay are just as timely today as they were when Wright wrote them. Readers who are interested in the history of black fiction and those who just want to read a powerful story should be happy that The Man Who Lived Underground has been published in its full length.
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