The Man Who Lived Underground Analysis

As soon as Europeans brought Africans to America to be slaves, the Africans were seen as an inferior race. Their inferiority meant they did not deserve the same rights as the white people they belonged to, nor did they deserve to be treated as people. These African Americans worked hard as slaves and were viewed as a physically capable race, so when slavery was abolished in the South, whites saw these capabilities as a threat and were frightened by the African Americans. Whites let their fear of African American strength run wild, thus the beginning of racial stereotypes. African Americans were also seen as a lesser species because of their skin color and people began to treat them differently solely because of that reason, beginning the racial

In the short story “Big Boy Leaves Home,” Big Boy loses his adolescent innocence due to the stereotypes society has created about African Americans. The story is about a young man who finds himself in a situation completely blown out of proportion due to his skin

The story begins with Fred Daniels being confronted by three police officers as he is on his way home from work. The Policemen accuse him of murdering a woman who lives next door to the house he works in. The three police officers then beat Daniels, who is innocent of the crime he has been accused of, until he signs a confession saying he murdered the woman. Daniels then escapes the police station and heads underground. While underground, Daniels experiences a series of events that represent self-knowledge and maturity (Smelstor). Daniels originally flees underground in an attempt to live as a free man, but winds up reflecting upon himself and his previous actions. Fred Daniels has no one to count on but himself and he thinks about who he is, what he looks like, and how this could have brought him to confessing to a crime he did not commit. Mainly, Daniels discovers a huge difference between the two