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Ralph Ellison's The Underground Man

958 Words4 Pages

The Useless Man The Underground Man uses writing as his medium to ramble about his philosophies of the state of the world. He writes down his ideas, and does not intend to share them with anyone. Although there is a purity preserved with The Underground Man not sharing his ideas, overall, his philosophies remain underdeveloped as he only relies on the knowledge he has as an individual to explain them. The Underground Man continually brags about his level of intelligence, but refuses to verbally utter his so-claimed ingenious ideas aloud, demonstrating a certain level of self-consciousness and cowardice on his part. Furthermore, the exposure the audience receives to self-freedom because, The Underground Man does not intend to share his ideas with anyone, is quickly undermined by the consequences of refraining from articulating his ideas, which is a result of his cowardice and laziness. From one’s first …show more content…

If they do not, change will never transpire. The Underground Man has a multitude of problems with the way society operates, but he cannot share them with anyone. Without hope that an idea breeds some sort of action, ideas are just ethereal concepts that remain in an unreachable sphere. It is lazy and cowardly to have the plethora of issues with society, as The Underground Man has, and not intend to do anything with them. Within a society, the people who actually point out problems and do not do anything about them are the issue. Complaints just fill the air with negativity, and do not achieve anything. A person is exceedingly immoral when they understand the problems within a society, and apathetically let them occur, then a person who may actually be causing the problem. It is disheartening to know that people like The Underground Man exist within society. The Underground Man is wasting his time and energy by writing about these issues with no intention to do anything about

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