Everyday reality in "Caligari" is dominated by tyrannical aspects. Authorities sit atop high perches above the people they deal with and hold offices out of sight at the end of long, forbidding stairways. Most of the film's characters are caricatures who fit neatly into prescribed social roles, such as the outraged citizens chasing a public enemy, the authoritarian police who are deferential to their superiors, the oft-harassed bureaucratic town clerk, and the asylum attendants who act like stereotypical "little men in white suits". Only Caligari and Cesare are atypical of social roles, instead serving as, in Barlow's words, "abstractions of social fears, the incarnations of demonic forces of a nightmarish world the bourgeoisie was afraid to acknowledge, where self-assertion is pushed to willful and arbitrary power over others". Kracauer wrote the film demonstrates a contrast between the rigid control, represented by such characters as Caligari and the town clerk, and chaos, represented by the crowds of people at the fair and the seemingly never-ending spinning of the merry-go-rounds. He said the film leaves no room for middle ground between these two extremes, and that viewers are forced to embrace either insanity or authoritarian rigidity, leaving little space for human freedom. Kracauer writes: ""Caligari" exposes the soul wavering between tyranny and chaos, and facing a desperate situation: any escape from tyranny seems to throw it into a state of utter confusion".