As we finished our discussion of Invisible Man in class I began thinking about the narrator and his progression throughout the novel. It seems to me that not only has he gained a greater knowledge/sense of his invisibility, but by the end of the novel he has also gained a better understanding of how the world and society works.
The book opens with him stating "I am an invisible man," and by the end of it the reader understands how he came to be living in this cellar, invisible to everyone. I think that this final realization of the power of invisibility, that he can wield comes in the scene where he has diguised himself to avoid Ras' men. He is mistaken for a guy named Rhinehart at least 3 times and each time he learns a new about piece of Rhinehart's personality. How Rhinehart is actually 4 or 5 very different people all at the same time. I think that this is the truning point for him, because he realizes that by being invisible he can do whatever he wants without as many societal restrictions.
Not only did the narrator become invisible by the end of his story, but he also gained an understanding of how the world works and how society works. In the beginning he was completely oblivious. Bledsoe sells him this story of earning a job in New York and then returning to college, when in reality he is being expelled, the Brotherhood tell him that he will be the next Booker T. Washington, when really they are just using him and in the end they get rid of basically everything that he's already done. Only at the very end of the novel does the narrator realize that the Brotherhood was simply using him. At this point, I think he finally understands the dynamics of society. How Bledsoe tricked him, how the Brotherhood used him, it's all part of how this wolrd works and it takes the entire book for the narrator to finally realize that not everything is as it seems and that all of these "opportunities" that he has received have really been tricks and illusions to get him to do what the people want him to do.
I guess that what I'm getting at is that the narrator realized more than just his invisibility by the end of the novel, he also realized how society functioned around him.
I think this is definitely true. He also understands social responsibility well by the end of Invisible man because there he states that "There's a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsibly role to play" (Ellison 581). This I think shows how he realizes that yes society works in dirty and terrible ways, which is highlighted by his interactions with Bledsoe and the Brotherhood, but he also realizes that he is important that that he can write himself into the books of history which I think is a new standpoint compared to earlier in this book.
ReplyDeleteI think we could even say that "discovering" invisibility is a matter of realizing how his society works, and what being a member of that society means for his identity--essentially, he's realizing that identity isn't something deep inside him that others will recognize and appreciate. He is what others see him as. The question is, is it possible to shape how others see him, or is he doomed to forever recycle this set of stereotypes and projections? The other question is, if identity CAN be "found" through the kind of extended introspective writing we see him engaging in here, does that change the way he plays the game "aboveground" at all? Is this new sense of identity just a "private" internal experience, and in society he'll still be playing versions of the Rinehart game?
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