Friday, January 11, 2013

Present Day Underground man.

If you were to see a man out like the underground man just walking around on the street and he started to talk to you how do you think it would go?
I'm going to paint a picture for you; there is a man in the corner of a restaurant sitting alone, hunched over in the darkness. He seems lonely so you go over there to talk to him. He sees you and says hello, but then immediately breaks eye contact and mutters something out of anger for doing so. You talk to him for a little bit and after a while he seems almost overeager just for talking to someone. He follows all of the points he makes with some sort of retraction such as, "that's not what I meant", "I'm only joking", or then again "I could be wrong" as if he is afraid you will leave the table or laugh at him for his beliefs. As the conversation progresses he becomes more and more aggressive and starts to finish your sentences for you and assume he knows what you are talking about. He starts to get angry with you for no reason and has snobby retorts any time you make a point. Finally, toward the end of the conversation he is extremely agitated and acts as if he is upset with himself but making excuses for it, and blaming you for all of his problems. When you at last try to reconcile with the poor fellow, he breaks off any connection he had with you and storms off cursing under his breath either talking to you or himself.
That is how I would envision an encounter with the Underground man (or someone like him) what do you guys think he would be like?

2 comments:

Madeline Davis said...

I can definitely picture an encounter with Underground Man going pretty much like this, but I have a feeling he might be more reserved and cryptic. I would imagine an encounter with the UM being mostly me trying to make conversation, him answering very cryptically in few words, occasionally letting his guard down and accidentally answering rashly without monitoring his thoughts, and mentally beating himself up for answering so impulsively.

WAIT, THE UNDERGROUND MAN IS DOBBY FROM HARRY POTTER. Kind of.

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Dobby is often careful of what he says for fear of reproach, but occasionally slips up, says things he regrets, then beats himself up with a lamp and yells "Bad Dobby" to punish himself before anyone else can. That's kind of how I picture the Underground Man's thought process.

Tyler Dean said...

I agree with you both, and I think another movie example would be Gollum from the Lord of the Rings, as we said in class. He seems like the perfect example to me because like the UM has no family, Gollum once was Smeagle, but hundreds of years before his village and his race was wiped out. Ever since that, he became a recluse, hiding in caves and coveting his "precious", the ring. Like the UM, he separated himself from society and now talks to himself in odd ways. I think it would be like having a conversation with Gollum except in proper English and he might say more. But I disagree with madeline's point about us leading the conversation. I think that the UM would pretty much not let you talk and eventually cut you off and answer for you, as Mitchell said