“Olaf sat up slowly, not to answer but to look at this brooding black vision; it towered darkly some six and a half feet into the air, almost touching the ceiling; and its skin was so black that it had a bluish tint.”
This story is in part an analysis and commentary on the ambiguity of racial prejudice. Olaf is the night porter at a hotel in Denmark. He says that he is not prejudiced and goes on to prove it in his mind by insisting that he treats all hotel guests equally. The significant aspect of the story—exemplified by this quote—is not what Olaf insists about himself through dialogue but how the narrator implicates Olaf through descriptive language. The title character has just arrived at this point in the story and nothing is known about him other than physical description. The focus on the man’s blackness and size creates an ominous expectation. The characterization of his skin pigment as having a bluish tint subtly suggests something not-quite human. Take together, Olaf’s emphasis—via the third-person narrator’s penetration into the porter’s mind—the title of the story and the description of the man all point toward an underlying racism that is, perhaps unconsciously, reading things into the physicality of the stranger that would be absent if the stranger were another white man like Olaf.
“What do you suppose he’s suffering from?” Johnson asked.
“Delusions of grandeur, maybe,” Murphy said.
“Maybe it’s because he lives in a white man’s world,” Lawson said.
After Fred Daniels, the protagonist and titular character of “The Man Who Lived Underground” has risen back into the world above the underground he is behaving strangely, incoherent, and even perhaps a little crazy to some white cops who seem unable to understand him. Daniels is trying to help the police officers by leading them to the site of a crime, but all they can see is a black man suspected of killing a white woman. The suspicion is due to nothing more than the color of his skin. The cops briefly muse over the cause of Fred’s erratic behavior with Lawson having the last word. The name of the cop who confers the cause as a feeling that all men share is significant. Broken up, the name pointedly suggests the officer is the son of the law. And the law is unquestionably, by Lawson’s own words, constructed for the protection of white society. It is the very incapacity of the officers to listen to what Fred is saying and understand the value of his information that is at the heart of the story which is exemplified by Lawson’s summation of the situation. In the underground, racism failed to exert its power over Fred. It is only when he reappears in the world above that it immediately shows up.
“The first movement he made the following morning was to reach under his pillow for the gun. In the gray light of dawn, he held it loosely, feeling a sense of power. Could kill a man with a gun like this. Kill anybody, black or white. And if he were holding his gun in his hand, nobody could run over him; they would have to respect him.”
Although this quote also describes a black man, the central theme of this story exists outside the sphere of race relations. It is also a story that is more relevant today than it was when published. The young man in question believes wholeheartedly that a gun will earn him the respect that has been absent his whole life. In modern-day America mass shootings becoming more than a daily event, and this misguided belief has never been more dangerous. Indeed, by the end of the story Dave, the teenage protagonist, learns the lesson that even the tremendous power of a gun is not enough to earn respect. Dave, like so many others before and after him, has confused the means of power with the responsibility of having that power. The story turns on the one death that does come at the hands of Dave pulling the trigger. He accidentally shoots a mule which later dies. As a result of this act, the young boy puts his family into an even deeper economic hole and the fear of having to submit to the terms of repayment stimulates his running away. Dave’s gun has wound up conferring even more power upon someone else and losing whatever small shred of respect he may have had.
