The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man 

Standing in a crowded room and feeling all alone is one of the worst feelings. Imagine feeling that all of the time. The anonymous main character, the narrator, lives his life “underground.” He lives his life as an outsider who has no place where he belongs and nothing he can identify himself as. He sees himself as better than others, but is also terrified and intimidated by others. Although he is very contradictory, the one understandable trait he has is that he feels lost and misplaced. The only place he can be is on the outskirts or “underground.” The question is, did society put him underground, or did he put himself there? 

Relationships are something that humans naturally crave. Having human interaction is necessary for survival. However, the underground man has no real relationships and has very twisted views of relationships. He has nothing truly real in his life, almost everything is in his head. For instance, there he had a small encounter with a man and became obsessed with the interaction that he formed an entire relationship around it, that was not even there. One night as he was walking home, he walked past a bar and there were two men fighting. He envied them and went into the bar to start a fight in hopes of getting thrown out as they did. However, an officer stopped him before he got the chance and sent him on his way. After this, the underground man became obsessed with interacting with him again, he would walk past the bar and the officer countless times to see if he noticed him and get him to notice him. It took him months to work up the courage to even bump shoulders with the officer, and in his mind, the officer noticed him but was merely acting as if he did not notice him. The underground man has no real relationships, just imagined ones. 

The underground man tried to get himself noticed, however, it failed. In the text, it says, “I was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word - without a warning or explanation - moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me.” Reading this, it seems that the underground man wants to be noticed. Another instance in the book, he stays at a party for hours, not speaking to anyone. He was not noticed because no one spoke to him. Reading this, it seems like it is society that pushes him away. It seems like he is putting effort but not having it reciprocated. However, is he really putting himself out there and trying to form relationships? He ran into a bar to get into a fight just to get thrown out because he envied the men fighting and getting thrown out. He sat at a party and did not speak a word, just listened to others speaking to each other. Did the underground man do enough by just showing up? Did he do enough by bumping shoulders with the officer after months of walking past him? Did he do enough by walking into the bar? Did he do enough by showing up to the party? If so, was it up to the people around him to approach him and begin the relationship? I do not think so. The underground man did not make himself approachable in the slightest. Firstly, he admits to being intimidated by those around him, so he probably did not give them the chance to speak to him. He was not truly open to them. 

Does the underground man want relationships? He claimed that he did, he fantasized over ideal relationships, with the people around him and a future family. However, his fantasized relationships are not real or how normal relationships actually are. When he was describing his ideal future family, he seemed to want total possession of them. In the text, he said that he would not want his daughter to love anyone else more than him. The underground man said, “I should be jealous, I really should. To think she should kiss anyone else! That she should love a stranger more than her father! It’s painful to imagine it.” However, I believe that this want to total control of his family stems from a lack of control in his own life. He does not have anyone in his life. He has no real control over what goes on around him. He has no one that relies on him or for him to rely on, he does not know what that is like. Therefore, it is hard for him to imagine a real, healthy relationship because he has nothing to compare it to. He thinks he wants a relationship, but he does not even know what a true relationship looks like. 

The posed question is if society put him underground or did he put himself there. I believe that he put himself underground. He despises the thought of being vulnerable, because that means that there is a possibility of being hurt. Therefore, the best option is to remove himself from society so he can avoid ever getting hurt. If he distances himself, nothing can get to him. He thinks that he wants relationships, but he does not want to be vulnerable. His version of putting himself out there is not even close to taking the steps to forming relationships. The closest thing he got to a relationship was with a prostitute. However, even that was not real love. He does not understand how real human interaction works. He has removed himself from the lives of others, from society, and put himself underground. Society did not put him there, the underground man put himself underground.