Quarter 1; Post 4

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is going down as my favorite book on a couple of my college applications. I believe it too; it isn’t just too woo them with my ability to read 500 pages. This is one of the first books I have read as a close reader and truly enjoyed. The payoff of engaging with the text is real. Invisible Man was an art piece worth remembering and I’ll try to articulate my thoughts on it. My framework for doing so will be discussing the narrator’s grandfather, colors and lighting in the novel and blindness.

As discussed in my first blog post, from his deathbed, the narrator’s grandfather orates what would become a curse in the narrator’s life. The grandfather tells his family that “after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (16). In my first blog post I hypothesized that the grandfather’s curse would serve a symbolic role because Ellison ends the chapter with the narrator’s grandfather profiting off of the narrator’s dreamed failure. Indeed, the curse comes back to push the narrator in the opposite direction of his ambitions. When the narrator finishes his first speech in Harlem with the brotherhood, Ellison writes, “Perhaps the part of me that observed listlessly but saw all, missing nothing, was still the malicious, arguing part; the dissenting voice, my grandfather part; the cynical, disbelieving part -- the traitor self that always threatened internal discord” (335). A more concrete example of the curse occurs after the narrator gets a letter from the South, unstamped and undated telling him to slow down his work. He looks up, and exclaims, “I received another shock. Framed and there in the gray, early morning light of the door, my grandfather seemed to look from his eyes. I gave a quick gasp, then there was a silence in which I could hear his wheezing breath as he eyed me unperturbed” (384). The fact that the letter has no sender and the narrator looks up and sees, mysteriously, a “painting” of his grandfather that wasn’t there before suggests that the letter is figuratively from his grandfather. His grandfather represents black distrust in white folks. His grandfather would side with Ras the Exhorter given the choice, a black nationalist. The ghostly appearance of the grandfather slows the narrator’s progress on racial issues and helps Ellison convey his message that to further separate the oppressors from the oppressed is not the answer.

Colors and lighting in Invisible Man are blatantly repetitive and used in nearly every description, so Perrine and my instinct say that they have symbolic significance and lead to meaning. Namely, there is the contrast between black and white. For instance after the narrator is running from the cops pursuing him for his eviction protest speech he sees a myriad of white: “The long white stretch of street was empty, the aroused pigeons still circling overhead. I scanned the roofs, expecting to see him peering down. The wound of shouting continued to rise, then another green and white patrol car was whining around the corner and speeding past me” (286). Here Ellison associates white with panic and the bigoted police force. Later in his journey with the Brotherhood, the narrator is given a “white envelope” and jack says “This is your new identity…open it” (309). Whiteness means needing to cover up who he is and go by a different name and fulfill a different role in society. Whiteness means fakeness. During Clifton’s death white pigeons shed their feathers indicating an injustice. The contrast is subtle, but certain between black and white. Black means trustworthiness and unity to the narrator. The practiced reader knows white most often means innocence, and purity whereas black represents hell or the dark and dreary parts of life. Ellison takes this idea and shoves it back in our faces as readers but reversed. It is not an ironic move, but rather one that makes the reader consider why we are alarmed when something white turns out to be destructive, and have trouble finding the beauty he discusses in black.

The lighting of situations complements the white and black opposites. For instance Ellison will almost always elect to include descriptive language of whether a room is dim, dark, bright or anywhere in between. When taking notes of page numbers for recurring motifs I listed over 20 for descriptions of light. I believe this is to show that despite lighting, the narrator was still invisible. This plays well into the last point about blindness. Thomas C. Foster wrote a chapter about blindness in How To Read Literature Like A Professor and I was confused because I hadn’t read many books with prevalent blindness. Invisible Man fixed that problem. Blindness is directly mentioned tens of times, and implicitly referenced when someone can not see. From when narrator is “blinded” by the light on stage to when Barbee gets up to make his speech about the Founder’s importance blind every character has the ability to be blind. The most important reference to blindness is when Jack is reiterating the Brotherhood’s ideology to the narrator. The observed lack of an eye for Jack occurs during this explanation of the ideology indicating a major flaw. Not to mention that while studying books written by white men on how to achieve social justice, a flagrant social injustice has just been committed unto brother Clifton and no one is doing anything. Intuitively we don’t want to get ourselves into anything “blindly,” it’s a figure of speech. But the idea is that what we say and do is conscious. The narrator becomes fully cognizant through others’s blindness that he is being played as a puppet. At one point he was showing Mr. Norton what Dr. Bledsoe wanted Mr. Norton to see, and now he is preaching to the American populace what the brotherhood wants to see them hear.

In the narrator’s first speech, before brotherhood literature has corrupted him, he says “Did you ever notice my dumb one-eyed brothers, how two totally blind men can get together and help one another along? They stumble, they bump into things, but they avoid dangers too; they get along. Let’s get together, uncommon people. With both our eyes we may see what makes us so uncommon” (344). This is truth; and this speech is interactive and one of the narrator’s personal favorites even though it receives heavy critiquing from the blind brothers themselves.

Race is ultimately something we see. Ellison tests our ability to dive into his fictional work and inspect race at this most basic level. Do we see anything? If so, what do we assosiate that sight with? What do we do about what we see? Is it better to see in no light, dim light, white or black? Ellison’s novel has real world implications today, and is beautifully written. I suggest it.

Quarter 1; Post 3

Ralph Ellison’s unnamed protagonist and narrator’s epic quest from his Southern black college to Harlem New York is not a smooth one. If it were a smooth one though, Invisible Man wouldn’t be the art piece that it is. I am nearly done with the book -- page 528 of 580 -- and man events are adding up to create a climactic time in the narrator’s quest.

As the narrator begins to get fed up with the Mens House, and as his job opportunities fall through due to Bledsoe’s malicious letters, a woman named Mary encounters the narrator as he is leaving the hospital after his paint factory incident. She extends a helping hand to him and takes him in for the night. This part of the text reminded me of when Robbie turner is at war fighting and citizens take him in to eat. I take two things out of the initial run in with mary: that our unnamed narrator is a Christ figure to some extent and Mary has to function as the virgin Mary if the first condition is true. As the narrator is running out of Mary’s distraught, Ellison writes, “And behind the film of frost etching the glass I saw two brashly painted plaster images of Mary and Jesus surrounded by dream books, love powders, God-Is-Love signs, money-drawing oil and plastic dice” (262). The narrator going on to see a sign that reads “you too can be truly beautiful” with “ointments guaranteed to produce the miracle of whitening black skin” validates the importance of the Mary and Jesus image because he is having things that are important and relevant to his purpose flash before his eyes. Similar to Tim O’Brien’s figurative baptism on the water with Elroy in The Things They Carried, our narrator in Invisible Man is going through a contemplative period. Ellison furthers the allusion to Jesus and Mary by making the narrator conscious of the fact during his baptism. There is water present during this period in the text as well: “And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set” (260). winter-like period of rest and hibernation will allow for the narrator to find a new guiding purpose or drive. Or maybe not entirely new, but a variation and advancement of his old one bestowed upon him by Dr. Bledsoe.

On to a new idea. I’ll come back to that one in the fourth blog post. In a text with an unnamed protagonist, when characters are named it is significant. Ellison defying our normal idea of everyone having a name that they go buy allows him to play with the idea of naming later in the text firstly when the narrator is given a new name to “preach” under for the Brotherhood and secondly when he is called Rinehart for various reasons. Besides the name Mary representing the virgin Mary and strengthening the tie of the narrator to Jesus, Bledsoe ends up being fierce and bloody, and Sybil, the mistress of a significant brother ends up romantically (weirdly, too) involved with the narrator. Originally attempting to discover the true motives behind the Brotherhood to which he is employed, he takes advantage of Sybil, who eventually coerces him to engage in her sick sexual fantasy. Ellison writes, “I was annoyed enough to slap her. She lay aggressively receptive, flushed, her navel no goblet but a pit in an earthquaking land, flexing taut and expansive. Then she said, ‘Come on come on!’ and I said, ‘Sure, sure,’ looking around wildly and starting to pour the drink upon her” (522). Sybil turns out to have no useful information and only desires the narrator sexually. The narrator ends up in a position where he is protecting himself, and coming to terms with the fact that he is invisible. Sybil in Greek Mythology is a woman who guides a significant man through the underworld. I take this to mean that invisibility is the inevitable hell for the narrator. No matter what he does, who he sees, or how is gets his message across he is painfully invisible which thwarts his dreams.

Quarter 1; Post 2

I am still very happy with my choice to read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. The novel is structured with a prologue that serves as the present day, and the (unnamed) narrator going back in time and telling his life story. Superfluous detail makes it easy to forget that the narration is not supposed to be in the moment though. I have now read through page 230, and it is a 500 page book. Our protagonist has just been expelled from his college, and moved to New York City and is job hunting. That is sufficient summary for the dedicated readers of my blog.

Dr. Bledsoe is a really interesting character in the novel. He serves as an important school official, and he makes the decision to expel the protagonist. Even when Mr. Norton, a white trustee, insists that the narrator is not to be punished for what happens at the Golden Day Dr. Bledsoe does not create a punishment to fit the crime. First of all, he over-glorifies the injury to Mr. Norton when earlier in the book we are introduced to black people living in deplorable conditions but a little scratch on Mr. Norton’s head must be addressed with impeccable care. The narrator idolizes Dr. Bledsoe. Ellison writes, “And I remembered too that whenever white guests came upon the platform he placed his hand upon them as though exercising a powerful magic. I watched his teeth flash as he took a white hand; then, with all seated, he went to his place at the end of the row of chairs” (115). The power that Dr. Bledsoe has is mesmerizing to the protagonist but to the reader Dr. Bledsoe’s flaws are made increasingly apparent. Dr. Bledsoe is interrogating the protagonist surrounding the Golden Day mishap and after the protagonists says he was just following Mr. Norton’s requests to see that area of town, Dr. Bledsoe exclaims “He ordered you. Dammit, white folk are always giving orders, it’s a habit with them. Why didn’t you make an excuse? Couldn’t you say they had sickness -- smallpox -- or picked another cabin? Why that Trueblood shack? My God, boy! You’re black and living in the South -- did you forget how to lie?” (139). The juxtaposition between Dr. Bledsoe, the successful, influential lying black man, with the weak and young yet truthful protagonist reassures the reader of the protagonists moral upstanding.

Dr. Bledsoe is arguing that the protagonist has made a mistake that will “drag the entire race into the slime” by showing Mr. Norton the unfortunate truth of being black in America (141). Moreover, Dr. Bledsoe is likely the force the instils the concept of invisibility in the protagonist’s mind when he remarks “You’re nobody, son. You don’t exist -- can’t you see that?” (143). Hearing an influential black man validate this fact wrecks the protagonist. The final confirmation of Dr. Bledsoe’s antagonistic function in the novel comes when he literally says he will kill off every black individual to promote himself: “But you listen to me: I didn’t make it, and I know that I can;t change it. But I’ve made my place in it and I’ll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am” (143). How could someone who is successfully carrying out the mission of the college to end educational oppression towards blacks be on such a selfish power trip? They can’t.

So our protagonist gets expelled, and receives seven letters written to influential white New Yorkers with ties to the college from Dr. Bledsoe. He is under the impression that they advise these white men to hire him temporarily for an eventual return to the college, but in actuality they paint a very negative picture of the protagonist concluding with the message that he will never matriculate back into the college to finish his studies. After he isn’t hired by any of the seven white men in New York, he finds himself in a new land with a different breed of racism. In the North the fact that whites apologize to blacks when they bump into them in the street and other demonstrations of common courtesies surprise the narrator and in effect surprise the reader that it was really that bad in the south. Wow, that was too much summary. Back to analysis.

The narrator lands a job at Liberty Paints with the motto “Keep America Pure With Liberty Paints” (196). Later in the novel, we find out that the plant supplys the nation with the best white paint. Ellison writes, “White! It’s the purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint any whiter. This batch right here is heading for a national monument!” (202). Throughout the description of the new job, it becomes clear that blacks are the ones creating the white paint. I began to wonder if Ellison was trying to say that blacks were supporting white leadership and dominance at the time by telling the reader that they are instrumental to the creation of the white paint that “keeps the nation pure.” Brockway (narrator’s boss) declares (about his basement), “Right down here is where the real paint is made. Without what I do they couldn’t do nothing, they be making bricks without straw. An’ not only do I make up the base, fixes the varnishes and lots of the oils too” (214). Ellison gives an example with plentiful description of how experience counts for more in the world than race.  

Quarter 1; Post 1

I am really happy with my choice to read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison this quarter. One of the first things that I picked up on was the lack of a name for the protagonist (first person narrator). You'd think this would make the writing more awkward, especially during dialogue, but it has not at all. In fact, the namelessness is essential to the voice of the narrator. He is, after all, the invisible man. Why would a man who we elect not to see have a name? Of course he doesn't. The novel is written to appear such that the narrator is reflecting on his life, including the reader in on his thoughts about the world. I suspect that Ellison uses his nameless character as a pipeline for his thoughts to the paper. I know a major reader doesn’t read literature as a textbook according to Nabokov and all those other smart people, but Ellison sheds an opinion on race relations in Invisible Man that deserves to be acknowledged for its historical pertinence. 

The point is I am enjoying the book, partially because of my vested interest in the time period (early 20th century) during which it takes place. Anyways, I am only about eighty-five pages in as I am writing this, but here goes on this analyzing game. So far the narrator lays out where he is recounting his life from - his underground, well-lit den, and he has told us about specific events from his younger years. The first notable event, which I predict will become a motif throughout the novel, is his grandfather’s death. His grandfather says, “Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (16). With those words the narrator’s grandfather dies, leaving his family “more alarmed over his last words than over his dying” (16).

The reason I suspect that the “grandfather’s curse” so to speak will play a larger role in the novel is that towards the end of the chapter the narrator has a dream in which his grandfather laughs at the fact that he got his scholarship to college revoked. The narrator “awake with the old man’s laughter ringing in [his] ears” (33). I believe that grandpa’s curse has to do with white people, and his reluctance to stir up trouble with them. He regrets being too complacent, thus he calls himself a “spy in the enemy’s country.” Later in the novel as the narrator is serving as a chauffeur for Mr. Norton, a white founder of the black college, a discussion of fate surfaces. The narrator’s idea that a good fate is not possible comes from “the first person who’d mentioned anything like fate in my presence, my grandfather” (40). I’ll be looking out for the context in which grandpa’s curse comes up in during the novel to see if it means something entirely different, which it may.

Ellison’s style is very literary and smart, but not overbearingly so. For instance he uses an obscure literary device like personification, but it doesn’t disrupt his narrator’s stream of consciousness. Ellison writes, “The room went red as I fell. It was a dream fall, my body languid and fastidious as to where to land until the floor became impatient and smashed up to meet me” (25). A large chunk of chapter two is the story of Jim Trueblood - a local living near the college. After hearing a reality of black life in America, Mr. Norton passes out and is luckily revived by the narrator. I predict that literally saving a white man’s life (80) will come back to haunt him at some point later in the novel. No matter how seemingly pro-black Mr. Norton is, the fact of the matter is that the narrator has pressure on himself to dislike white folks. Mr. Norton is a special case because he started the very college that the narrator attends, putting our narrator at a moral crossroads.