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.
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