Richard Wright's The Man Who Lived Underground

Richard Wright was a prolific protest writer whom was often criticized for his lack of complexity to his black characters. One of the critiques of his writing is that portrayed them as helpless victims to a hostile society brimming with oppression and violence against black folk. This constant typology of Wright’s black protagonists made his characters seem one dimensional and stereotypical to the fears already pressed upon black folks. However, Wright’s understanding of the black psychological mindset is what inevitably left him to write the short story, The Man Who Lived Underground.
In this story we see a man whom is not particularly violent or ill-willed in nature become accused of a heinous act. This man - accused of murder and forced …show more content…
Both protagonists in this story go where the masses haven’t and find a new reality, substantially altering their view of their homes and the people who reside there. However, whereas in the one starts in a dark cave and moves toward the light, the other – Fred – moves from the light and into the darkness. However, it is his descent into this darkness where he finds both the city and himself. This self-actualization is what leads him into realizing that the people in the city, aboveground, are living in a “dark sunshine.” The people above ground – much like the people below in the allegory – are living in a reality of false illumination. Wright makes this notion clear when he states, “He stood in a box in the reserved section of a movie house and the impulse … to tell them to stop seized him. people are laughing at their lives, he thought with amazement. They were shouting and yelling at the animated shadows of themselves.” It is evident – to both Fred and Wright – that these people who live above ground are lost in their reality of shrouded ignorance. Though Fred continually tries to show them the truth, they are too ingrained in their false world, and kill him for his