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A review by lovelykd
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
2.0
I read this on the heels of finishing Native Son. Perhaps I shouldn’t have but, to be honest, I expected something better. Something more believable and less condescending.
The beginning of the story grips you—a young man is wrongfully accused of a heinous double murder, arrested, and tortured into signing a confession—but the latter half devolves into something COMPLETELY different.
As much as I wanted to understand the purpose of having Fred Daniels become a different sort of man, once he went underground, I simply couldn’t buy into any of his reasoning.
Fred essentially becomes a child. Within 72-hours, he goes from a man of reason, to being one whose presence has no earthly value. His descent—literally and figuratively—is so profound that I, personally, began to dislike his character altogether.
I could not believe Fred was the same man they’d arrested. I guess that was supposed to be the point? How racism, in the hands of law enforcement, unmoors Black men in ways we can’t see. Turns them into shells of themselves and makes them feel emasculated to the point of becoming infantile and stunted to the point of no longer understanding the point of “following the rules” and abiding by “the status quo” if, ultimately, your person is subject to the whims and judgments of those in charge of maintaining the system.
If that’s the point? Point made. Even so, Fred’s evolution struck me negatively. Not because of the cause—although I was certainly angered—but because of its quick and utter completeness.
Fred may as well have never been born for all the fight he had within himself.
This book won’t change my opinion of Wright but I won’t be recommending it to anyone anytime soon.
The beginning of the story grips you—a young man is wrongfully accused of a heinous double murder, arrested, and tortured into signing a confession—but the latter half devolves into something COMPLETELY different.
As much as I wanted to understand the purpose of having Fred Daniels become a different sort of man, once he went underground, I simply couldn’t buy into any of his reasoning.
Fred essentially becomes a child. Within 72-hours, he goes from a man of reason, to being one whose presence has no earthly value. His descent—literally and figuratively—is so profound that I, personally, began to dislike his character altogether.
I could not believe Fred was the same man they’d arrested. I guess that was supposed to be the point? How racism, in the hands of law enforcement, unmoors Black men in ways we can’t see. Turns them into shells of themselves and makes them feel emasculated to the point of becoming infantile and stunted to the point of no longer understanding the point of “following the rules” and abiding by “the status quo” if, ultimately, your person is subject to the whims and judgments of those in charge of maintaining the system.
If that’s the point? Point made. Even so, Fred’s evolution struck me negatively. Not because of the cause—although I was certainly angered—but because of its quick and utter completeness.
Fred may as well have never been born for all the fight he had within himself.
This book won’t change my opinion of Wright but I won’t be recommending it to anyone anytime soon.