Summary Of The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Beneath New York City

Jennifer Toth’s journey in the tunnels under New York City in search for tunnel dwellers as described in her book, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City, is quite an adventure. People living in the subway tunnels of NYC were considered to be an urban legend, but Toth’s exploration for these individuals and their communities proved otherwise. Under the busy streets of one of the most popular city in the world is a number of homeless living in a network of sewage, water and train lines. Learning about the life underground is exhilarating and it can change one’s perspective on what they believe kinship, family and society is defined to be. Although it may not seem as though a community can successfully strive in these covert environments, Toth provides many examples of different communities that can be considered as a society. In addition, the survival of these many communities is reliant on the search for food and therefore can be classified as modern foragers.

These associations can be “gentle and welcoming” while others “violent and hostile” and the majority of them are made drug addicts and the mentally ill (Toth 1993:39). However, all underground homeless has a reason why they go underground. Some go down to escape society above ground while others have no other place to go. There are those who go down because of economic reasons, safety reasons and sometimes to stay together as a family. In the end, they all leave the way of life aboveground to a place where “they can call their own home” (Toth 1993: