The Man Who Lived Underground

Fred Daniels is the protagonist of “The Man Who Lived Underground.” Little is revealed about Fred in the story except that he’s a Black man living in an American city sometime in the 1940s. Biographical detail like his family or home is unknown, beyond the fact that he worked for Mrs. Wooten, a (presumably a white woman), who lived next door to Mrs. Peabody, a white woman who was murdered. For the most part, Fred is referred to only by third-person pronouns such as “he” and “the man.” This gives him an everyman quality, implying that Fred’s role in the world represents that of every Black man in American life: to be perpetually put upon by white people, as is clear in his interactions. For example, the couple at the butcher shop treats him like an idiot, the people on the street call him names and yell at him for disrupting traffic, and the police treat him like either an insane person or a criminal.

The accusations of criminality set the story in motion and haunt Fred throughout it. At the beginning, he’s on the run because he has been beaten into confessing to the murder of Mrs.