One of the reasons I like Crime and Punishment is its sophisticatedly designed symbolism, like the crossroad and the Bible, which convey its connotations so well. Invisible Man achieve this purpose too and this makes me like the story. Among all symbols that are used in the Prologue, my favorite is the basement where the invisible man lives, a place with 1369 light bulbs. On page 13 the invisible man says, "Before that I lived in the darknessinto which I was chased, but now I see. I've illuminated the blackness of my invisibility--and vice versa." I think this quote, together with the symbol, are so powerful because it shows the invisible man's ultimate goal. This is the best designed symbol as it reflects on the man's desire of being seen. The invisible man calls himself invisible since he is ignored by the world and white people. He is a victim of racism. Because of this unfair treatment he suffers, he escapes from the world by locking himself in a basement. This action shows his twisted action under social injustice. However, the society could not suppress the invisible man's most natural desire of being seen, of being a successful, intelligent person. In order to satisfy this desire, the invisible man steals electricity from Monopolated Light & Power Company to light up the 1369 light bulbs in his little room. Through lighting up his "small world", he feels that he can finally be detected by the "blind world" and be someone's attention. The juxtaposition of locking himself in a small room and lighting up countless light bulbs show the internal struggle the invisible man is going through. It also symbols the struggle between the suppressing society and the suppressed self. Besides, I also find out that the bright lights in the small isolated room can be interpreted as the tiny last hope the man has in his heart. I am really curious of what is gonna happen next. Will the invisible man finally be seen? Will this hope come true? I can't wait reading the next chapter. But before ending this entry, I would like to ask you what other symbols you have found in the story? Do you see anything special in the symbol of 1369 light bulbs in the prologue?
Hello James. You are preaching! Unlike you, I did not like Crime and Punishment. I love that quote by the way! It also can be mored over and applied to our own lives, for me personally I can see how society closes in and makes everyone believe in small specific things that are near impossible to achieve, God however lights our path to him. How would you apply this quote to your own life? He states “I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed. About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate from the fingers of the hand. And they believed it. They exulted in it. They stayed in their place, worked hard, and brought up my father to do the same” (15). Have you ever been ashamed of something then been ashamed that you were at one point in time ashamed by it? When he is talking about being ashamed we have to consider the fact that there was still segregation, still inequality and still a hate for the black race. Is there still racism in america in your opinion? If so, how has racism changed from the time of this book? I do not think the invisible man will be seen till much later in the book. I feel as though the way he introduces himself, the ghost will be a symbol. The lightbulbs represent the only thing that allows him to be seen. He says “without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well” (7)
ReplyDelete(Chapter 3-6)
ReplyDeleteI feel more and more attracted by the story as the flashback of the narrator progresses since I find some of the characters relatable to real-life.
First a summary of these four chapters. Invisible Man took the unconscious Mr. Norton, the college trustee, into a black tavern. But then Mr. Norton was humiliated by a black veteran, calling the former blind and ignorant. Invisible Man reported this event to Dr. Bledsoe, the school president, and was scolded by him. Invisible Man was asked to leave school for a year as a punishment and earned his own tuition in New York. Before leaving, he listened to a chapel sermon about his school founder, about the encouraging story of this former slave pursuing education on his own and building up a college.
As Invisible Man is a book about black people's lives, I find it interesting when comparing the attitude and views of different black people, like the Invisible Man's and Dr. Bledsoe's. Invisible Man felt sorry for bringing Mr. Norton to the tavern and made him feel humiliated, but Invisible Man never sought to hide anything from Norton, nor did he fake virtues in front of white people. In contrast, Dr. Bledsoe, after knowing the entire humiliation event, shouted, "we take these white folks where we want them to go, we show them what we want them to see.” (Ellison 102) From this quote we know that all Dr. Bledsoe cares is acting nice but not being nice. He then punishes narrator for being real and suspends him from school. As a black person himself, Dr. Bledsoe is ironically the one that hinders black people's social progress the most. If the invisible man is invisible, then I would say Dr. Bledsoe is the blind one, and he is blind on purpose, because he chose to ignore the situation of his people.
So, May, is there any character in these four chapters you find interesting and what's special about them?
I find Mr. Norton, the very wealthy white man, the most interesting to me. Mr. Norton helped found the narrator's college. Also Mr. Norton seems to be symbol of the old traditions. Side note he seems like he is a liberal, so it will be interesting to see how politics play out in this book. So far it is still quite hard for me to get myself to read it. This section has a lot of Mr. Norton remembering when the college was founded and back in the days and doing the whole back in my day things where great type thing. Mr. Norton tells the narrator about his late daughter whom he remembers as having been absolutely perfect. He shows the narrator a framed picture of her, and the narrator does indeed find her beautiful. Mr. Norton explains that she got sick during their vacation in the Italian Alps. Mr. Norton claims that everything he does is in her memory. So there is no way he is a bad guy in this book. Do you think Mr. Norton will help the invisible man to feel like he is being seen? How do you feel about Mr. Norton and how he feels about the school? The Narrator questions the colleges intentions behind education colored people stating “Then in my mind's eye I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding” (36). What do you think the colleges intentions are?
ReplyDelete(Fascinating comments about the light bulbs and about how "there's no way [Mr. Norton] is a bad guy." Keep it up.)
ReplyDelete(Chapter 7-18)
ReplyDeleteSadly Mr. Norton does not turn out to be a main character in this book, but I certainly like Mr. Norton. He is a kind person, and I believe that he has good intentions for the school, although this character is ignorant of the injustice Dr. Bledsoe does. After all I don't think Mr. Norton has any functions on making the narrator seen by others.
The plot moves fast in chapter 7-16, where the narrator moves to New York, discovers Bledsoe's scheme of kicking him out and ruining his life, gets into a fight in his new work place in Liberty Paints, gets recruited by and gives speeches in the Brotherhood, and gets disconnected from the Brotherhood in Harlem because of another black person's calculations. In the speech he gives in Chapter 16, the narrator says, "Up to now we've been like a couple of one-eyed men walking down opposite sides of the street. Someone starts throwing bricks and we start blaming each other and fighting among ourselves." (Ellison 344). The narrator points out one of the biggest problems at that time: African-Americans were not united in fighting for freedom. In real life Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois were opposing each other. They could only find differences among themselves but not their similarities. In the book the narrator was framed several times by other black people, like Dr. Bledsoe and Brother Wrestrum and etc. The Brotherhood and Ras the Exhorter are also fighting against each other. When I think deeply into the narrator's speech of two one-eyed men, I start associating this to the theme of "blindness". Does blindness solely mean the white people's ignorance of racial injustice, or does it foreshadow the failure of black people's movements in the book, because of the two uncooperating one-eyed men add up to a complete blindness?
I feel as if the “blindness” is more then just white people’s ignorance to the race and treatment of black people or foreshadowing the failure of black people’s movement in the book. The blindness is a complex thing that Ralph Ellison hopefully will give us the answer of what he wants us to interpret the blindness as. In chapter ten we can see the relation of white and black workers in the Liberty Paint Plant, as Lucius says, “our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through.” The Liberty Paint Plant’s paint mixing process is a symbol of the black and whites ways of life in the American society. The optic white can cover up anything including the charcoal, which was typically used to make black marks. The white people were destroying the black way of life and whitening them. Just like in the twenty first century’s society, black girls can not typically have their natural curly hair. They have to product it, spend hours straightening it, and try and become white. The white people in Ralph Ellison’s era, and still now in the twenty first century, what white people say goes. How do you feel the relationship between white people and black people have changed through out the years? Do you think that Barack Obama had an impact on how white people view black people? Do you think Donald Trump changed the way people see black people?
ReplyDelete(Chapter 19-22)
ReplyDeleteVery sadly I think the relationship between the two groups of people has never been peaceful. It only changes from white people dominating black people to mutual hostility. Because of the extreme way the civil rights movement develop, many black people start to hate white people as a revenge of segregation, such as the narrator's grandfather in Invisible Man, instead of forgiving the once suppressors. Fortunately we had Barack Obama who proved to people of different colors how accomplished an educated African American can be, and I believe in his era racial tensions definitely reduced. But now under President Trump, sadly I must say he does not do as good as Obama did in resolving racial issues: some of the comments Trump made on African Americans, like calling the black communities in "the worst shape", unavoidably creates misunderstanding among white people and dissatisfaction among black people.
Now let's go back to the book. The narrator's relationship with the Brotherhood is further worsened because of ideological difference: the Brotherhood refuses to mourn for Brother Clifton's death since he was regarded as a traitor to the organization, and this angers the narrator as he thinks the organization tries to manipulate its member's beliefs. While under the attack of the organization, the narrator is also physically attacked by the follower of Ras the Destroyer for being too "moderate" and failing to escalate the racial tensions in Harlem after the death of Clifton. The narrator is now stuck in the middle: he is too radical to the Booker T Washington-like Brotherhood, and too moderate to the WEB Du Bois-like Ras the Destroyer. After reading these four chapters, I think this book actually focus more on the conflicts within the black community rather than interracial conflicts. In this case, why would, and how would the narrator be invisible? Do you think he is actually invisible to his fellow African Americans? Or do you still think he is invisible to the white people more?
I do not see the conflict as solely between black and black or white and black, I feel like it is a mix. The narrator will never be black enough or white enough for either side. Also the thing we did in class on Friday, bringing up our old mor, nineteen eighty-four was brought up, and the brother hood within that book. Do you see a correlation between the two brotherhoods? How do you feel about the brotherhoods in general? What brotherhood do you feel is more evil? I feel as though the brother hood in the invisible man is just hostile and manipulative and saying that they are trying to do good. However, in reality, they are only trying to make the ones in power better, bigger and stronger. The brotherhood made the jobs in Harlem disappear, and the brothers in Harlem are not happy with the brother hood and are very hostile to the narrator. The narrator goes to headquarters, and leaves furious. After he leaves headquarters, he does the best kind of therapy, shoe shopping. When you get angry what do you do? I am definitely a therapeutic shopper. When he goes back to Harlem he is haunted by the death of Clifton and the black doll. How did you feel about those events? I felt creeped out and slightly horrified. So far, I am not a fan of this book. Clifton was not a bad guy! If you could kill off one person in this book who would it be and why?
ReplyDelete(Chapter 23-End)
ReplyDeleteI have to be honest. I really don't know what is going on in the end. Everything just goes so wrong since the narrator puts on disguise. I will try my best to analyze what I know here.
First a brief summary of the plot. The narrator bumps into Ras the Destroyer (aka Ras the Exhorter) and has a skirmish with his followers. The narrator escapes, and to avoid more fighting he then puts on sunglasses and a hat. Then everyone in the street starts calling him Rinehart. From people's different address and descriptions the narrator knows that Rinehart is a hypocritical reverend. Then in the next chapter the narrator tries to get information from the Brotherhood and uses the girl Sybil, a wife of a "brother". He fails as Sybil does not know anything. He then goes back to Harlem and witnesses a riot that is seemingly schemed by Ras, but that the Brotherhood is also involved in. The narrator then falls into a hole in chaos. He burnt several objects for warm, including his high school diploma, Clifton's doll and an anoymous letter which is actually from Brother Jack. Then the narrator has a dream of being castrated by Brother Jack, and in the dream he is confused about the identities of Brother Jack, Bledsoe, Emerson, Norton, etc. In the epilogue the narrator rethinks about what his grandfather's words truly mean, and says he is wrong in isolating himself in the hole and that "even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play" (Ellison 581). Apparantly everything in the story is only a dream.
So again I am really confused about the ending of this story. The only part I understand is the part about Rinehart. After disguising into Rinehart, the narrator is no longer visible, or more precisely, identifiable, to the public. Ironically, Rinehart is visible to everyone, but his true self is invisible, that no one knows who he actually is. Is he really a kind and helpful reverend? Or is he a whoremonger? I try to substitute this situation into the narrator, but it seems that the narrator does not have this problem. The narrator is always being his true self and never hides anything. Besides, no one ever mistakes for the narrator's real personalities. So, to end this journal, I want to ask, what do you think "invisible" and "blindness" truly mean in the story? How do you think about this ending? And this book generally?
The blindness is how people willfully avoid seeing and confronting the truth. The narrator becomes invisible because the other people are blind. Being invisible in my opinion was a blessing in disguise for the narrator, being invisible gives him freedom and mobility. Also I in this section I was extremely confused about what exactly was going on. Is this a dream or reality? I feel like the end of his story is also the beginning. So my guess is a dream. The narrator says that he finally has realized that he must honor his individual complexity and remain true to his own identity without sacrificing his responsibility to the community. So he becomes visible at the end as well. He sort of finds himself in a way at the end. As far as if I like this book, I am going to be honest. I did not really enjoy this book. A book needs to give me closure and The Invisible man did not give that to me. The Narrator says, “…and my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man…” (573). This quote is the Narrator explaining his troubles in the story. He has not been himself and has not lived his own life but rather has allowed the complexity of his identity to be limited by the social expectations and prejudices of others. He has followed the ideas of the university and the ideas of the Brotherhood without trusting or developing his own identity. He has realized that his own identity, both in its flexibility is the key to freedom.
ReplyDelete(Good analysis. Note that the book is designed as a flashback, not a dream. :-)
ReplyDelete