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Native Sons Or Invisible Men? NATIVE SONS OR INVISIBLE MEN? The Afro-American Search for Identity in 20th-Century America as portrayed in Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and an Adaptation of the Topic for the English Classroom Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Magisters der Philosophie an der Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Eingereicht bei Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Gudrun M. Grabher Institut für Amerikastudien von Mag. Martin Alexander Delucca, BA Innsbruck, im Februar 2020 Native Sons or Invisible Men? 2 To Be Great Is to Be Misunderstood Ralph Waldo Emerson In lieber Errinnerung an meine außergewöhnliche Mami Danke, Sonja, Marco und Nadia. Und Dir, Fabian. Native Sons or Invisible Men? 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface……………………………………………… 5 Introduction……………………………….............. 5 1. The White World Is the Right World…………. 11 1.1.White Supremacy………………………………. 16 1.1.1. Institutions and Their Whitewashing 19 1.1.2. White Status Symbols ………………. 26 1.1.3. Meeting the Daltons…………………….. 31 1.2. Black Microcosms: “A Nation Within the Nation” 39 1.2.1. The Southern World in Invisible Man 40 1.2.2. Black Metropolis…………………….. 44 1.2.3. Meeting the Thomases………………….. 50 2. “Running Nigger Boys”………………………. 53 2.1 Motion in a Static World………………………. 55 2.1.1. Conformity: “I’m Nowhere” ………. 58 2.1.2. Escapism: “Going Nowhere” ………. 63 2.1.3. Supremacist Tendencies: “You Are Nowhere”……………….. 69 2.2. “Machines Inside the Machine”……………… 74 2.3. Communism: Black and Red Brothers?……… 79 Native Sons or Invisible Men? 4 3. Acts of Emancipation and Reconstruction……… 88 3.1. Initiation Rites………………………………......... 92 3.1.1. Bigger’s Blasting of White Walls……… 93 3.1.2. The Erasure of Invisible Man’s supposed Visibility……………………. 99 3.2 Uncle Tom’s Children?…………………………… 104 3.2.1. The Awakening of the Double Consciousness…………………………. 106 3.2.2. The Enlightenment of Invisibility…….. 111 3.3. “Lower Frequencies”…………………………….. 117 4. Conclusion………………………………................ 122 5. An adaptation of the Topic for the English Classroom…………………………………….. 128 5.1 Preliminary remarks……………………............... 128 5.2 Constructivist learning theory…………………... 129 5.3 Aims of the lessons……………………….......... 131 5.4 Lesson plans……………………………………. 133 Bibliography………………………………................ 149 Appendix……………………………………………………….. 156 Native Sons or Invisible Men? 5 Preface The present thesis constitutes a supplement to the original text “Native Sons or Invisible Man? The Afro-American Search for Identity in 20th-Century America as portrayed in Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man”. While chapters one to four were handed in as thesis at the University of Innsbruck in 2006 and are listed as reference in the bibliography, chapter five marks a new addition dealing with a practical approach to the topic of identity in the English classroom. Both versions have been supervised by Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Gudrun Grabher, whom I would like to thank for her availability and efficient support. Introduction Identity, that is knowledge of oneself, is a basic need everybody longs to satisfy. It is no static entity, but rather a lifelong process of learning, an open-ended and uninterrupted evolution that takes place unconsciously. When one gets to know other people, initially one has a first impression that is mostly limited to appearances. Through communication one observes other traits that one considers to be relevant in order to get to know the other person better. One’s background, nationality, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religious and political affiliations are some examples from an interminable list of criteria that are employed to define oneself and others. The organisation of society is based on the categorisation and Native Sons or Invisible Men? 6 consequently on the identification of its members. Society is based on the division of labour, and, therefore, one’s profession is of paramount importance in this process of identification. Furthermore, society consists of a net of groups and movements that facilitate contact between individuals and enable them to express themselves and to get to know themselves. There is an interaction between society and its individual members: one has to follow legal and moral codes imposed by society, and is given the possibility to develop within its frame and to contribute to its modelling. In our day and age, which is dominated by material values, identity is also turned into merchandise. The media propagate images of how one should look like and behave, and these trends constantly change. Sometimes one truly gets the impression that the accumulation of material goods constitutes identity, which can supposedly be bought off the peg. Especially youngsters are easily manipulated to accept the catchphrases of advertisements and to internalise them as universal truths. Yet, as one grows older and accumulates experiences, the real concerns of life become more relevant. One has to choose which path leads to happiness among various options, one has to balance decisions between personal aspirations and communal requests, one has to look inward and to analyse oneself. Thus, identity is an inner process that involves mind, body, and soul. Self-reflection is often triggered off by external events that shatter traditional conceptions of oneself: the loss of a loved one, separation or disappointments, but also happier incidents such as a new love or success are some of the catalysts for the scrutiny of one’s self. As a result, one may Native Sons or Invisible Men? 7 feel alienated from the background one comes from or, even worse, from oneself. Literature offers an abundance of examples of this phenomenon. Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening is prototypical among them. The topic of the search for identity is obviously even more prominent in the works of authors belonging to so-called minorities. American literature comprises a variety of literary productions that spring from marginal artists and that reflect the manifold layers of people that constitute America’s population. Ethnic voices have established themselves in the canon of literature as a distinct artistic way of articulating the peculiarities of their existence. This includes Native Americans, immigrants from South America, the old continent, Asia, and, above all, the Afro-American segment of the population. In the course of my studies, I have repeatedly had the opportunity to tackle the theme of identity especially in relation to minorities. I have always had a deep interest in this topic, since being part of a minority myself has delineated my entire existence. In my hometown in South Tyrol, we speak a third language in addition to German and Italian, namely Ladin. More often than not, emphasis is put on the adherence to one of the three camps and one is judged according to the personal affiliations. Conflicts between the three linguistic groups have cooled down, but still, stereotypes and related jokes are on the daily agenda when the topic of language comes up, while the benefits of multilingualism are mostly neglected. Personally, I have always been interested in this peculiar background. My studies in English and German have enabled me to observe it even more closely and, hopefully, also more critically. Native Sons or Invisible Men? 8 Besides linguistic analysis, literature has enabled me to merge myself with characters presented therein that experience a similar situation as I do. Among works of fiction, Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man stands out, as it has provided me with a sort of aha-experience. The book caught my attention straight away first of all due to its mesmerizing narration. Furthermore, the immediate closeness I have felt towards Ellison’s nameless protagonist has intensified with the unfolding of events in the novel so that, as a result, Invisible Man is the first novel I analyse in my thesis. I have chosen Richard Wright’s opus Native Son as the second Afro-American novel due to its raw and violent depiction of the search for identity. While Native Son mainly focuses on actions and the consequences they have, Invisible Man is an introspection that incorporates various possibilities of development. In fact, the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s novel has a choice on how to achieve self-realisation, whereas Bigger Thomas in Native Son is left with no alternative but to accept an identity that is forced upon him by his environment. Additionally, I have observed that the comparison of the two novels is interesting and rewarding because Native Son and Invisible Man reflect real-life developments among the black population of the United States. The initial structure of my thesis was based on the contrast between the peaceful, enduring approach of Invisible Man and the violence of Native Son. I chose Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marcus Garvey as real-life equivalents to the protagonists of the novels only to discover that, even though their activities appear to be in a binary opposition, the goal they persuade is the same: the freedom to develop, to get to know oneself and Native Sons or Invisible Men? 9 others, that is the freedom to find one’s own personal identity. Furthermore, I have come to the conclusion that in order to be able to draw a clear line of division between good and evil or black and white, a measure of subjectivity would be required that I estimate counterproductive. In fact, one of my aims in the present paper is that of unveiling exactly such categorizations as mere subjective constructs that shift according to the perspective from which they are analysed. My thesis therefore investigates the Afro-American search for identity as presented in Native Son and Invisible Man from a point of view that focuses on common ground between opposites. My aim is to reveal that the categories of black and white are at best hyponyms for numerous other opposites that affect all of us, such as darkness and light, me and you, man and woman, or us and them.
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