The Man Who Lived Underground | Essays and Criticism

  • Fred Daniels

    Bily has written for a wide variety of educational publishers, and directs an interdisciplinary college program for talented high school students. In the following essay, she discusses the strategies Wright uses to present Fred Daniels both as a representative African-American man in a racist society and as an Everyman whose crisis transcends race.

  • Existentialist Parable

    In the following essay, Gounard calls ''The Man Who Lived Underground" an "existentialist parable'' in which the protagonist is ''the symbol of loneliness and anonymity surrounding man in a materialistic and unfeeling society.''

  • Protagonist's Identity Formation

    In the following essay, Meyer examines the events that lead to the protagonist's identity formation in "The Man Who Lived Underground." The story's lesson, Meyer indicates, is that self-realization occurs only upon "acceptance of one's responsibility in an absurd world "