Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 1 Article 29 Issue 2 Spring

1970 Invisible Man: Somebody's Protest Novel Thomas A. Vogler

Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons

Recommended Citation Vogler, Thomas A.. "Invisible Man: Somebody's Protest Novel." The Iowa Review 1.2 (1970): 64-82. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.1062

This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Invisible Man: Somebody's Protest Novel

Thomas A. Vogler

a This simply because I had notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz at time I did not understand. He was a me. I whom the see?you just word for see did not the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do ? you see the story? Do you see anything? Conrad

can see . . Oh say you .? (National Anthem)

a With Hemingway and Faulkner both dead, this is not time of recognized liter are ary giants. The public, and critics too, too easily preoccupied with literary giantism, with finding the next heir to the vacated throne. Publishers want their books to and are not timid about claims. Readers want to feel sell, very making that what are is what to be in terms that can they reading they ought reading, be reached from the of a historical Our contem only vantage point perspective. writers be looked on and cherished as porary should, however, partly-realized po writers whose work should not be idolized too nor but tential, much, ignored, read with the best awareness we can to them of their to our bring relationships own lives and to a the traditions they continue. Melville seemed to be distinctly own seventeen were minor writer to his age. In 1945 all of Faulkner's books out of print. We should be chastened and warned by examples like these, but not in our to find of value in our overly frightened attempts something contemporary writers. With the belated advent of "Black Literature" it has become even more difficult to find a context in which to read or discuss a novel like Invisible long-term Man. Its relevance to the social of Black citizens can be contemporary problems used to reduce it to the level of a documentary of the Black experience.1 On the its insistence on craft and its careful of the ex other hand, analysis, avoidance can as plicit advocation of action, be passed off by the activists the "buggy jiv of a white middle-class or the of a This ing" sellout, ravings private ego trip. latter trend is accurately prophesied at the every end of the novel.2 Most intol some erable, perhaps, is the approach taken by critics of both colors, that the a novel is "pure" art, that Negro writer has finally written his way into the main stream some of etherealized literary tradition.3

In the existence of what Time in the of spite of present magazine calls, jargon the a "modest these are not times for literary stockmarket, literary boom," good

64

University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org are as suicide available as there are writers. There many kinds of literary writers, and the hardest seems to not to write the first but to remain at thing be, novel, the for one's self and for the one reader who will under craft, writing imaginary rather than for the the the the the stand, publisher, editor, reviewer, agent, pub and the audience serve. But it is not of a licist, novelty-seeking they enough for the writer to be in an arena where relations men de problem public largely or more termine whether his book will sell less than 5,000 than 100,000 copies. There is also the of the who are committed in their own to problem critics, way Critics become obsessed with thinking of the literary stockmarket. quite easily to the writer's creative This is the desire what is for them the counterpart urge. is and it to find patterns comprehensive enough to include everything that good, is a reasonable when followed with discrimination. But too the enough urge easily lost or dis pattern becomes a definition of what is good, and good writers get writers is torted because they do not fit the mold. The critic of contemporary vulnerable to this mistake. As Norman Mailer out, it is "natu especially pointed wiser for the mind of the to masticate the themes of ten writers, rally expert rather than the difficulties of one." approach any

a like Invisible Man in In many ways, then, to talk about contemporary novel volves different from those we face when a novelist like problems discussing Wharton or On the other no writer can be com Fitzgerald. hand, really good serious The kind of and pletely contemporary without limitations. synthesis of that we in a novel cannot be evaluation experience expect good contemporary with the experience itself. In addition, Ellison has roots in the 19th century that are at least as as those in the what he writes is as much influ important 20th; as seen enced by what he has read it is by what he has and lived through. even stories Though Ellison is close to Hemingway in many ways, and copied his hand in order to an of his he seems to bear an by develop understanding style, even more to Melville. Ellison uses two as important relationship quotations epi at Invisible Melville's Benito graphs the beginning of Man. One, from Cere?o, nature the the invisible man in the novel. The suggests the of change undergoes his which is an essential other, from Eliot, suggests the discovery of invisibility of the Before and I would part change. discussing invisibility change, however, like to suggest another passage, also from Melville, which will help to get at some more of the book?for like under of the negative aspects Ellison, Melville, stood that fiction must be negative in order to fulfill both its artistic and moral : obligations in There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! thunder; but the devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men all men are in the who say yes, lie; and who say no,?why they happy of unincumbered travellers in cross condition judicious, Europe; they a the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but carpetbag?that is to say, Ego.

There is a nice here with the invisible who crosses his frontier comparison man, into the darkness with a briefcase containing all the clues to his identity or but the also the dark of resistance which con "Ego"; passage suggests impulse

65 Criticism tinues to in Invisible Man. The permeate contemporary fiction works like novel ists seem to that violence and distortion must be the means of a agree projecting is seem to vision to which society hostile. They further agree that the contempo world a to and his must rary presents continued affront man, that response therefore be at least in part that of the rebel.

There is a standard known to neuroses and psychological experiment produce behavior in most domestic or trainable animals. In an ex psychopathic patterns environment that bears a resemblance to the world of the perimental striking novel, the animals are trained to react in certain ways to certain stimuli, and then in a situation in which the reactions are The animal then placed impossible. can on as makes what attempts it to go acting it has been trained to do, but a with continued frustration nervous collapse of some kind inevitably follows. the reaction is refuse to mix with other animals even With some, solipsistic?they for eating. Others react by batting their heads against the walls of their cages until die or are too exhausted to continue. The of they equivalent experience conflict between expectations and reality has produced what Ellison calls "the American toward self-annihilation and which Negro impulse going underground," can overcome "a will to the to evaluate his only be by confront world, experi ence honestly and throw his findings unashamedly into the guilty conscience of America."4 His Invisible Man is a record of that agony, and of the discovery of can the realities that must be faced before a genuine identity be achieved.

But I think the memoir, which is titled Invisible Man, his memoir, is an to as it exists rather than in terms attempt describe reality really of what he had assumed it to be. Because it was the clash between his assumptions, his illusions about reality, and its actual shape which made for his agony.5

In the novel we see the kind of training the invisible man is subjected to most in the scene in 5. Here are Barbee's re clearly chapel Chapter concluding as marks, holding up Bledsoe the pattern for the hero to follow:

His is a of of imitation. I to form greatness worthy your say you, him. each to follow pattern yourselves upon Aspire, of you, someday in his footsteps.

In the next Bledsoe tries to to the invisible man what he calls chapter, explain are "the difference between the way things and the way they're supposed to be," a but it is lesson he is not yet prepared to learn. The invisible man, like most of is in a culture whose rewards and the us, living incentives, punishments prevent development of the kind of personal standards which the public ideals demand a for feeling of self-respect. He is in the situation Paul Goodman describes in Growing up Absurd, where the only truly healthy response is to reject those parts of society that threaten his own possibilities for self respect. But he cannot are so reject them without knowing what they are, and they built in that he is himself responsible for much of what he must go through.

66 a a To call novel protest novel at this point of history is inevitably to call back the thirties and the great American discovery of social injustice. The roots of are much in Invisible Man to be found in this period, in writers like Dos Passos, Steinbeck, Farrell, Hemingway (at least in For Whom the Bell Tolls), and es was a pecially Richard Wright. During the forties there decline in novels dealing primarily with the social themes of the thirties; during this period, however, there was a constant of new areas of social which nov discovery disorganization elists for the focus of their works. The war was adopted experience another catastrophe, piled on top of the depression, which the American novelist had to a cope with in his attempts to find view of his place in society. Another discov this a much belated one?was of the extent and com ery during period?and plexity of the social problems of the Negro, and of the essential part these prob in to an lems took any attempt achieve overall view of American society. The a development of the Negro novel is not adequately explained by theory of or a now growing liberalism, shedding of prejudice which makes white readers willing to read books they know were written by Blacks. It is not even clear were that the early publishers, who disguised the fact that particular novels were written by Blacks, acting realistically?but that's beside the point. What is clear is that in the 20th century, as in the 19th, the position of the Black citizen our in society is the focus of social and ideological polarities that go far beyond the of race relations. It is also the focus neurotic fears question for many of the and desires that are an inevitable of our national From Rich part gross product. movement a ard Wright's first novel on, the has not been shedding of prejudice, but a in writers and readers of the essential growing awareness, alike, centrality of the Black to view American problem any adequate of society. a Negro life is byproduct of Western civilization, and in it, if only one the and to are to be possesses humanity humility see, discovered all those impulses, tendencies, life and cultural forms to be found in Western elsewhere society.6

It is in this that Black writers have been an way developing and expressing awareness of the universal of their as significance position, Faulkner had earlier found in a all the elements to an understand single southern county necessary ing of human nature and the movement of history. Ellison is like Faulkner in seeing the South as a land doomed by the curse of slavery, yet still with a ves tigial aura of Edenic simplicity. But Ellison follows his Black hero out of the as had and is much more concerned than Faulkner with a South, Wright done, direct consideration of the of the civil war to all of con relationship aspects temporary society, both North and South. a It would be too simple view to consider the function of the Black protagonist as of can serve as a to merely that another outsider who foil define weaknesses in the social structure. The situation of the Black, like that of the writer, is a part of the society and reveals important things about it. was Anyway, in the beginning I thought that the white world very different from the world I was moving out of and I turned out to be

67 Criticism It seemed different. It at least the white entirely wrong. seemed safer, seemed safer. It seemed it seemed more of people clearer, polite, and, it of view. But I course, seemed much richer from the material point didn't meet anyone in that world who didn't suffer from the very same affliction that all the people I had fled from suffered from and that was that they didn't know who they were. They wanted to be something that they were not. And very shortly I didn't know who I was, either. I could not be certain whether I was really rich or really poor, really black or really white, really male or really female, really talented or a or In I had fraud, really strong merely stubborn. short, become an American.7

an The final test of the mastery of illusion and reality, and the discovery of as ex identity, is the ability to tell it. This is not the novelist's prerogative, the amples of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver show, and as Ellison suggests in Brother Tarp's recognition of the "signifying" embodied in his chain link and his man pleasure at finally being able to communicate his story to the invisible ever ("I'm tellin' it better'n I thought I could!"). If Ellison has entered the mainstream of modern art, it is through his fusion of the problems of his Black protagonist with those of the writer, whose search for form and reality is the or so central problem of most serious writers of fiction in the last 100 years. In an eloquent mood, Ellison has spoken to the best hopes of most novelists of whatever color:

Life is as the art a in which man life's sea, ship conquers crushing it to a a series of tides and wind formlessness, reducing course, swells, on a currents inscribed chart. Though drawn from the world, "the of writes "is than all the organized significance art," Malraux, stronger of the . . . that alone enables man to multiplicity world; significance to master conquer chaos and destiny."8

Invisible Man is not a and Ellison has been 'just' Negro novel, then, very careful to avoid this even while us a throughout tempting limitation, giving very comprehensive view of race relations in both the South and the North. Look for a moment at Tod Clifton, remembering that it is no accident that Tod in German means "death." Tod is part black, part white, symbolically gray like the "Liberty Paint" that out of the to decorate some national monu goes factory important ment. Tod's death is one of the key turning points of the book, forcing the in man we visible to the recognition that all shall die, leading finally to the recog nition in an is an error cater own that, absurd society, it to to any but one's His reflections on Tod's death are a from which unique absurdity. turning-point more he intensifies the exploration of his own identity and begins to recognize sees fully the possible identities of others. In the crowd at the funeral oration he individual faces, marked with suffering that he begins to understand:

are was Here the facts. He standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He fell in a

68 man as heap like any and his blood spilled out like any blood; red any blood, wet as any blood?and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all.

a man an The specific racial killing of Black becomes more than the death of in dividual caused by social injustice. It is the death of the best parts of the indi vidual caused by the worst parts of society; it is "OUR HOPE SHOT DOWN," on us for the lower frequencies Ellison has been speaking for all.

a In Invisible Man we have full portrait of the element of despair and of the on on us as if we destructive element forced the Black, the writer, and well go we are a along. The question deliberately left with, in the end which is also be is the constructive use to which these elements can be role for ginning, put?the can the self which has at last been recognized and accepted, the kind of life one a a live in realm of absurdity which is also realm of possibility. The problem of can use how all this negation be put to is already answered in part by the very existence of the novel. It is emphasized in the beginning and end that the protagonist of the book is also its creator, and that the writing of the book is itself part of the experience, and of the discovery of an identity, which is the subject of the book. What is affirmative in both the structure and the existence man of the book is that the invisible does survive through turning his experience art. same in a to into In the way, the ordinary Black hostile society has been able turn daily injustice and suffering into the folk art of the blues. The novel, like the offers a of from one's without blues, way standing apart experience losing its intensity or its meaning. All Black writers have agreed that the blues have been a survival mechanism the in America and also that have for Negro they the most cultural contribution to American art. For the been important Ellison, a blues "is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of brutal experi ence alive in one's to its and to tran aching consciousness, finger jagged grain, a near scend it, not by the consolation of philosophy, but by squeezing from it The blues and contradic tragic, near-comic lyricism." recognizes both the painful them into like a "There is a tory aspects of experience, turning something joke. in and the evil in mystery the whiteness of blackness, the innocence of evil, of the of it in the blues." The nocence, though, being initiates, Negroes express joke is in terms artistic whether it be acceptance finally achieved only of expression, a in the blues or in the form and creation of novel. In the book itself, this analogy with the blues is In some as in the continually suggested. cases, college chapel can an of scene, the blues be expression hope:

as I closed my eyes I heard the deep moaning sound that issued from him, and the rising crescendo of the student body joining in. This time it was music sincerely felt, not rendered for the guests, but for a of and exaltation. I wanted to rush from themselves; song hope sat the building, but didn't dare. I stiff and erect, supported by the as a hard bench, relying upon it upon form of hope.

as man In other cases, such the singing at Tod Clifton's funeral, the invisible

69 Criticism comes closer to the sense of blues that Ellison was at in his recognizing getting Here is his reaction to the man who starts the definition. singing:

I looked into the face of the old man who had aroused the song and felt a of It was a face and his twinge envy. worn, old, yellow eyes were closed and I could see a knife welt around his upturned neck as his out ... I throat threw the song. watched him now, wet-eyed, and I felt a wonder at the mass. It was as the singing though song had been there all the time, and he knew it and aroused it; and I knew that I had known it too, and had failed to release it out of a or Even and sisters were vague, nameless shame fear. white brothers man joining in. Something deep had shaken the crowd, and the old and the man with the horn had done it. They had touched upon than or It was not the for something deeper protest religion. words, were all the same old slave-borne words: it was as he'd they though changed the emotion beneath the words while yet the old longing, transcendent emotion still sounded now resigned, above, deepened by that something for which the theory of brotherhood had given me no name.

man The invisible has found something here that the conscious quest for identity had failed to reveal. It is only after this discovery that he is able to make of his the same use that the makes of the blues. It is a means of writing singer achieving an acute sense of and that has been unable to identity self-recognition society provide.9 or a This discovery of the potential for self discovery in the blues, in novel which them in comes on man in approaches spirit, the invisible almost unawares, spite of the more and more conscious been literary quest for identity that he has pur before. or later it seems can in suing Sooner that almost every modern work some be read as a search?or more a a father or a way typically "quest"?for mother. The two are not offer but dif concepts interchangeable; they primitive ferent to man's to own solutions basic need reach beyond his mind and find some fixed to own a point around which orient his existence. The search for father is almost for a of a of some even always principle authority, lawgiver kind, stern some if it is the inscrutability of abstract principle of necessity. In the we earlier part of Invisible Man find figures like the Founder and Bledsoe, and the white father of Norton and the other trustees. Even the Brother great figures at as a hood, first felt fraternity of equality and freedom, is finally seen to be a dominated by harshly paternal theory of history, and Brother Jack turns out to be a as a disguised father masquerading brother. The mother figure typically offers an alternative orientation for and has that is experience, something always or missing of lesser importance in the father figures. The strictness of the father is the of the who refuses to replaced by all-embracing acceptance mother, reject her child no matter how poor, weak or sinful he has become. In Invisible Man the landlady Mary who takes up the hero and keeps him and feeds him is such a figure. He is trying to reach Mary's when he falls down the hole at the end, and it is to Mary's that his feet had unconsciously taken him earlier in the book:

70 But I was never to now reach Marys. And I realized that I couldn't return to Mary's, to any part of my old life, I could only approach it from the outside, and I had been as invisible to Mary as I had been to the brotherhood.

The that he can't return to that the alternative she recognition Mary, suggests, with all its is as unattainable as that offered the series religious overtones, by of fathers, is paralleled by the tone and structure Ellison uses to handle the theme in the novel. The invisible man's search for a father or a mother is a reflex in and therefore an inevitable his a him, part of experience and necessary part of the novel. But if the novel must go through the quest because its protagonist must can at a go through, it least do it in different way. Ellison has pointed out that "When are influenced a or art an you by body of literature from earlier it is period, usually the form of it that is available to you," and he has openly acknowledged the high degree of literary self-consciousness manifest in the novel. "Let's it this a conscious writer. I what's put way?I'm highly know been done because I've read the books, I've studied them."10 The consciousness of a form and archetype leads to deliberate and parodie use of such patterns in Ellison's work, and contributes to its enlightened literary humor. The invisible man into or may be duped questing after unattainable irrelevant goals, but he will not let his novel make the same mistake. more in In The innovative quest visible Man is not that for a father or a a a mother, but the search for group, fraternity, a brotherhood of fellow humans in which the invisible man can find his are identity and achieve the freedom and dignity which the real goals of his quest. The final irony of this quest is that the real brotherhood, that of all hu mans can facing death and oppression, be joined only by renouncing all fictitious bases of brotherhood. In every alternative but this, the invisible man must re press part of his emotions and his humanity?the group of Black boys in the bat his the the catch-all of the tle-royal, fellow-students, union, fraternity Harlem Men's House, the disguised paternal system of the Brotherhood, the Black fra of Ras the ternity Exhorter-Destroyer?all of these offer roles which he either cannot accept or which demand that he sacrifice too much of himself to find a in genuine identity membership.

As he moves from one tentative role to he cast another, attempts to off earlier of his which the new roles cannot parts identity accept. Simultaneously with be a coming brother, he tries to discard the bank which is an image of different kinds of "Feed the bank on us dependencies. me," says its front, and it reminds of all the Black entertainers who have publicly distorted themselves into this as the invisible man's to bank gross caricature, just attempt destroy the suggests the of musicians who have refused to smile while in order to corps jazz playing associations prevent with the old image from coming back to destroy the dignity of art. their In spite of his attempts, the invisible man cannot get rid of the bank. A white and a white force him to retrieve it out woman, man, first of the gar bage and then off the street. So he seals it up in the briefcase with all the other clues to the identity which he refuses to accept. The briefcase is an emblem of a himself, container of images which he hates but cannot lose:

71 Criticism in and if asked me "What's that briefcase," they said, they'd any at a wave thing else I might have stood still. But the question of me and I ran. shame and outrage shook

is the same the doctors were him now he is This question asking earlier, only ready to find the answer. He is forced, in the darkness of his hole, to explore the contents of the briefcase which are the real clues to his identity and the only source of light. as act The exploration, I have already suggested, is undertaken in the of telling are the story. In this exploration the big issues the problems of politics, of free a dom, of brotherhood, of the rejection of a father and the loss of mother, the distrust of rhetoric and abstractions which dilute experience and disguise reality. are in structure the novel. All of these issues elements the formal pattern and of are But all of these tied together by the central problem of finding his identity. Until he finds it, the invisible man is like a cup of water without the cup; he takes on his identity from whatever shape his environment offers until, finally, once new now is he realizes that his and clean briefcase, battered and dirty, sym bolically the container of all the clues that are essential to finding his true iden tity. This chameleon-like flexibility is one of the most typically American features our as an in the whole book, and it is perhaps best clue to Ellison's identity American writer. From the of legendary versatility Benjamin Franklin, through innumerable characters in Whitman and Irving, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, is a can move one to there the concept of character who from identity another without or reflection. This is so basic that it turns effort, preparation concept up both in the traditions and idealized national myths?characters like Franklin and are Alger?and in the works of writers like Ellison who rebelling from the hypoc risy of those ideals while still realizing that metamorphosis is a basic fact and of existence. It can be a almost subhuman instrument of sur possibility debased, as in Faulkner's or it can be a social as in the vival, Snopes family, triumph leg founder of the invisible man's It can be the source of as in endary college. humor, or more cosmic and ironic Melville's Huckleberry Finn, the humor of Confidence Man.11 At a crucial in the novel the invisible man "discovers" this of point principle metamorphosis which has been there all along. At first, he is impressed by the : world of possibilities opened up before him

Well, I was and yet I was invisible, that was the fundamental contra was was unseen. was as diction. I and yet I It frightening and I sat . . . there I sensed another frightening world of possibilities. Perhaps I could tell them to hope until I found the basis of something real, some firm for action. . . . But until then I would have to ground move them without moved. ... I'd have to do a Rine myself being hart.

So he tries to Rinehart it; he will find a woman in the Brotherhood and use her to inside information about man gain their plans. Unfortunately for the invisible he picks Sybil for his informant, and she has the enthusiastic frenzy but lacks

72 the information he is looking for.12 Instead, she merely gives him another lesson sees own in his invisibility. She looks through him and nothing but her fantasy And since is now a Rinehart" of the Black phallus, the Negro rapist. he "doing can as he puts it, operating in the world of possibility, he convince her?or let her she was without it. you convince herself?that raped actually doing "sybil, were raped by santa Claus writes on her And the surprise" he bare belly. is a for her of him is no more real than the child's image perfect one, fantasy sex as is fantasy. She has been taught to believe in the Black fantasy the child taught to believe in the great magic gift-giver.13

is an of the and of Ellison's charac There interesting example precision economy terization in this There are two sexual adventures in the and episode. book, they both serve distinct functions. The first adventure occurred when the invisible man was town to on to find out sent down lecture "The Woman Question," only that the real was the one Ras had asked when to under question earlier, trying stand what could move a Black to join the Brotherhood. What is it, Ras asks, or that is the invisible man's The woman money women, confusing ideology. who seduces him in her apartment is confusing the concept of brotherhood with must and then biology, offering in fact still another alternative that he try reject the novel. during women Between us Why did they have to mix their into everything? we in a and everything wanted to change the world they placed did woman: socially, politically, economically. Why, godammit, why ass they insist upon confusing the class struggle with the struggle, both us and them?all human motives. debasing

is confusion that Ras showed on the woman This the other side of the question. attribute a sexual motivation to a drive to attain social and They both equality human dignity. we seen The principle of invisibility and projected fantasy which have operating in the invisible man is an these episodes?and which gradually discovering?was nounced on the first of the novel. It is "a of the page peculiar disposition eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality." this the inner for the invisible man is not The consequence of disposition of eye see at that that people nothing all when they look in his direction, for they know at ex something is there. What they do is look through that something what they to think is there?the inner sees a fiction that it has itself pect see, what they eye created. The first concrete of this error of vision comes in the example Prologue, a curses when the invisible man bumps into tall blond man who insults him and man him when asked to apologize. In the fight that follows the white is almost man. killed, but not by the invisible "Something in this man's thick head had was sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life," and that something the man's own prejudiced concept of the Nigger which he had insulted and cursed. The also introduces the of names which the reader encounters Prologue problem and the critic suffers while to write about with almost every character, trying

73 Criticism the nameless of the novel. Thoreau once wrote an de protagonist essay largely voted to praising the system of naming practiced by the American Indians. What was Thoreau admired about the system the idea that everyone had to wait until a he had earned name through some significant action, or until he had revealed a name enough of his basic personality for to be chosen that adequately reflected an name his individuality. The "invisible man" is earned in something like the same as tne Bear" *s his name because he sees his un sense, "Jack underground time as a of hibernation. Most of the names we are for derground period given characters in the novel are also earned names, or names which serve as clues to the character's nature or his function in the novel. Sometimes these names are or More are not so much di symbolic, like "Tod" Clifton "Mary." often they as rectly symbolic suggestive.

For when we look at Brother we should remember that a common example, Jack, for is The name the financial element slang meaning "jack" money. emphasizes in the relationship between the invisible man and the Brotherhood. When Ras ("race") the Exhorter asked whether it was money or women that could blind a man was Negro to his racial identity, the invisible outraged that his purity of scene a motive could be questioned. But the whole takes place in front of garish that "checks cashed here." Brother first showed when sign says Jack up was the invisible man out of money, and his first reason for joining the Brother was same as hood for the pay they offered. Without knowing it, at the time he is trying to get rid of the bank because it is the image of the paid entertainer de basing himself for money, he is taking on an analogous position within the Broth erhood. This is emphasized at the end, when Brother Jack is disciplining him. ". . . were not hired to think. Had that? If to me: you you forgotten so, listen You were not hired to think."

Rinehart is another but it can be if one looks to significant name, misleading the German rein for "Rind" "rine" in the of the ("pure") help. (or pronunciation is a American word. If a has a lot it means novel) good slang person of rind, he has a lot of nerve. If he is a it means he is thick-skinned in a sense rind, ranging all the not way from caring what other people think to not caring what happens to them. This is the rind in the Rinehart in the novel, and the invisible man points to it just before hunting up Sybil:

Now I recognized my invisibility. So I'd accept it, I'd explore it, rine and heart. I'd plunge into it with both feet and they'd gag. Oh, but wouldn't they gag.

As it turns it is man on out, however, the invisible who gags the rind, for he is not to the role. "Such were not cynical enough keep up games for Rinehart, me," he says, and he washes off the lipstick inscription he had meant to leave behind. a Meanwhile, by doing Rinehart, by pretending to agree with the Brotherhood in order to in a undermine it, he does effect agree, and becomes betrayer of the Harlem Brothers while working in his own interests. The irony of this role is that in the very moment of seeing Sybil's fantasy of the Black rapist he is himself at to one. tempting live Rinehart the "spiritual technologist" is like the nameless

74 a Black Doctor in Barth's End of the Road, offering "Mythotherapy" for role which works until one must face the of his paralysis only consequences arbitrary action. "Emerson" is another important name in Invisible Man, and one Ellison is acutely aware as own He uses it to undercut the of that of his namesake. deliberately conventional liberal attitude towards race relations, when the son of old Emerson man. (to suggest the historical continuity) tries to befriend the invisible Young a as Emerson tries to find him place in the great Liberty Paint company just a Norton had tried to help him find place in the American society, but both Norton and Emerson have an image of the Negro which limits their possibility man. even wants to of sharing any kind of reality with the invisible Emerson a own he find place for him in his confused private life; after announcing that on: had "a difficult session" with his analyst the evening before, Emerson goes

"Some are too for he a things just unjust words," said, expelling or plume of smoke, "and too ambiguous for either speech ideas. By the way, have you ever been to the Club Calamus?" "I don't think I've ever heard of it, sir," I said. "You haven't? It's very well known. Many of my Harlem friends go there. It's a rendezvous for writers, artists and all kinds of celebrities. some a There's nothing like it in the city, and by strange twist it has continental flavor." truly

we The fey tone of this speech alone is enough to destroy what little respect it a bit might have had for Emerson, but the Calamus Club reference takes further. The allusion is to the group of Whitman poems commonly called the a Calamus Poems and dealing in subtle but unmistakable way with the theme of In here is still another or Brotherhood homosexuality. other words, fraternity as are that is being offered the invisible man, and the historical Emerson's ideas debased in his 20th-century "son," Whitman's androgynously cosmic appetite is reduced to a sexual Emerson makes it even more stylish mystique. explicit later, . . I'm see. . . ." in that the invisible when he says ". Huckleberry, you hopes man will be another Jim, and perhaps have read Leslie Fiedler. But the invisible man can't be Jim because he is already too busy being Huckleberry himself with out it. knowing Characters' and the club and the names of and names, names, factories, places institutions?even the names of like the Sambo doll?can be in things, explored a definitely in this novel. The Brotherhood has its parties at place called the a Chthonian Club, which is classical reference comparable to that of the Sybils. true The Chthonian realm belonged to the underground gods and spirits; and as we power for Ellison is an underground influence learn from seeing Bledsoe man and Brockway and Brother Jack in action, as well as the invisible writing in his Ras his with its nearness to He hole. Where does get name, vocal "race?" gives it to himself, as the invisible man gives us the name we must call him by if we are to know him for what he is.

an The invisible man in action is image collector or symbolist, gathering up into

75 Criticism reminders of his that can his briefcase all the concrete emblems and experience name is serve as clues to finding his real and identity. The book itself for the a of and clues into actions and events. reader similar container images expanded The first example of an action-as-image after the Prologue is the battle royal scene we scene which opens the story. If we explored this far enough, could a in the find in it pr?figuration of almost everything else the novel. Before battle, the boys are forced to look at the naked blonde dancing for the whites. In the battle we see a group of half-naked Black boys, blindfolded, fighting each other a in a ring for the entertainment of group of white citizens. Afterwards they fight on again, still among themselves, for the coins the electrified rug. The coins they turn are desire the most, the gold ones, out to be brass, but there enough dollars to the invisible man forward and his care go around. Afterwards, steps gives fully-prepared speech (with one prophetic verbal slip) in which he defends the status quo of the Southern Negro who is trying to better himself through educa tion in schools. These are the bare bones of the and are segregated scene, they in themselves. But if we look closer we can see much more. The suggestive naked white girl with golden hair suggests and prefigures the whole problem of sex. a money and Her golden hair, like the fake golden coins, holds out promise of a world which can never exist for the invisible man because it too is brass. The on are are blindfolds the boys white blindfolds, and the darkness they fighting in is a darkness imposed upon them by the white spectators who represent the whole society: were They all there?bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, even one the more teachers, merchants, of fashionable pastors. a They unleash great deal of violence in their brawl, but it is all directed against amusement this themselves, under the control of and for the of representative audience. the one the the invisible his blind During brawl, of boys, man, loosens a fold enough so that he can make out little bit of what is going on. And it is this one comes forward afterwards to to as invisible who speak the crowd, the man is to us in the novel. speaking scene a In the first few pages of the book, this seems to be primarily description of what to a few at a "smoker" in some small uniden happened people particular town. as we tified southern But read through the book, with this scene planted our we in memories, gradually realize that in it is condensed the whole world of the novel and almost all of the American society. The final scene, the race riot a one we in Harlem, is in large part repetition of the beginning scene, but which can more relate to the context it Instead the coins on easily larger represents. of on the electrified rug, there is the safe the third rail showering the streets with sparks. Instead of control being in ordinary citizens, it is in Brother Jack who represents their interests in controlling the Blacks. Instead of Tatlock and the in man we visible battling it out at the end for supremacy, have Ras and the in race a visible man, finally silencing his fanatic appeal to by throwing spear through his jaws. The riot is probably the most impressively sustained section of the whole novel. It is still carefully kept to the elements already prefigured in the into a comic of enormous It be brawl, yet expanded apocalypse proportions.

76 as a drunken of consumer wish-fulfillment which is a Christmas gins orgy fantasy ("At St. Nicholas the street lights were out.") and Fourth of July combined. At are controlled and the peak of their frenzied rebellion the looters still being : manipulated by society's official symbol-makers

"With all them hats in there and I'm going to come out with any a are thing but Dobbs? Man, you mad? All them new, pretty-colored Dobbs?" "Git a side of a woman called. "Git a side of bacon, Joe," bacon, Joe, git Wilson's."

Even Ras, who now calls himself the "Destroyer," has made himself up from the as scrap heap of cultural detritus Quixote made himself up from scraps and of the Romances. He is a of and African pieces old composite cowboy movies, see equipped with stage-prop lion skin, spear and shield, "one of the kind you them African in the . . ." are riot guys carrying moving pictures. Although they ing against society, no one knows how the riot got started, and the only damage own tenement. they do is to themselves, in the pathetic burning-down of their man The only difference, save that of scale, is that at the end the invisible does not a step forward and give speech prepared for him by the cultural myths, but a instead disappears down his hole and creates book which could only be written after he had recognized his invisibility.

On a smaller scale we can see the same kind of at work significance throughout In is a at at the novel. fact, there whole scale of images work almost every point in Invisible Man. Small ones, like the statue of the Founder removing the veil seen a from the slave, but in such way that it is impossible to tell whether it is or more being removed put firmly in place?echoed later by the invisible man's as spotlight blindness he makes his first official Brotherhood speech. Another is the recurring image of the mounted police, controlling the animal power of their a black horses through more efficient power and technique. In the invisible man's office is a of the world with the of Brotherhood map figure Columbus, reminding us that the real America is yet to be discovered, and that although there may be natives will not be the natives we to find. there, they expected

Some of these seem to be intended reader alone. Al images quite clearly for the though they are registered through the eyes and consciousness of the invisible are not noted him as In the El man, they by containing any special significance. Toro there are two which are described bar, bullfight posters matter-of-factly with the other miscellaneous contents of the room. The first shows along poster a large black bull, being skillfully controlled by the matador. The other poster shows the tables turned, the bull finally discovering the illusion of the cape and a tossing the matador high into the air. This is much like the fight between prize a fighter and yokel described in the Prologue, where "the yokel, rolling about in one the gale of boxing gloves, struck blow and knocked science, speed and foot work as cold as a The smart hit the canvas. The welldigger's posterior. money are long shot got the nod." The bullfight posters, and their echo of the prizefight, a silent comment on the discussion on in the bar between Brother going Jack?

77 Criticism man. are a who is trying to discipline him?and the invisible They also predic tion of the outcome of the contest which will be fulfilled later in the novel.

Another condensed is in the scene where pr?figuration carefully suggested man Brother Tarp gives the invisible his severed chain link, telling him the story of his which the doctors can't For no" to a man who wanted limp explain. "saying was sen to take something from him, Tarp lost his wife, children and land and tenced to a life in on a chain Nineteen he said no prison gang. years later, again, and kept saying it until he broke the chain and left. Still limping, and still "look man a ing for freedom," he gives the link to the invisible because "it's got heap of signifying wrapped up in it and it might help you to remember what we're really fighting against." At the moment of giving him the link, Tarp stops calling him son and calls him Brother "for the first time." The ceremony is

like a man on to his son his own father's which the passing watch, son not because he wanted the old-fashioned for accepted time-piece itself, but because of the overtones of unstated seriousness and so an lemnity of the paternal gesture which at once joined him with his marked a of his and a con cestors, high point present, promised creteness to his nebulous and chaotic future. And now I remembered that if I had returned home instead of coming north my father would have me old-fashioned with its given my grandfather's Hamilton, burr-headed stem. long, winding

are Tarp is both his spiritual father and brother, for they looking for freedom no together by saying to slavery which has left its mark on each of them. Had the man in in own invisible stayed the South, his father's and grandfather's tradition, he would have remained a "burr-head" and a slave without it. knowing some are Although of these images like guideposts for the reader, reminding him of the of the the ones are all in some mean larger pattern novel, larger degree to the invisible and there is a consistent in his reaction to ingful man, pattern them. After each he a which summarizes his state significant event, gives speech of as of that moment in the novel. The most naive is the development speech one he after the brawl. In each he is at least gives succeeding recognition poten more aware of who he is and what his means until the tially experience point where he is able to summarize the whole in a book which includes the other An of the tentative of these can be seen speeches. example progression speeches in ex Chapter 13. After having had his old identity wiped out through the boiler a own a un plosion, he begins to find feeling of his identity in self-conscious but ashamed acceptance of some of the shabbier aspects of Harlem life. He eats a on the without fear of seen. When he comes on the yam streets, being eviction, at he is first embarrassed by the naked exposure of all the odds and ends of junk as that tell the story of the life this old couple has lived. But gradually, the furni ture and debris pile up, he begins to realize that the belongings of the couple tell the story of his race, going all the way back to the Free Papers dated August, 1859. Even the consciousness of shame instilled in him from the day he was born can't obliterate the feelings of identity he gets from seeing these things:

78 was some And it was as though I myself being dispossessed of pain con ful yet precious thing which I could not bear to lose; something a one founding, like rotted tooth that would rather suffer indefinitely the of that would mark its than endure short, violent eruption pain And with this sense of came a of removal. dispossession pang vague recognition.

The is but and the shows in the recognition vague intense, intensity up speech a or he makes and his willingness to fight for feeling he still cannot define fully accept. a Most of the actions and images I have been discussing have plausible existence we to in the real world, and the important thing is the sensitivity of vision bring No matter we can afterwards see the effect to them. how subtly calculated be, there is the of a real event while we are There are always impression reading. in Invisible where the action seems to places Man, however, decidedly secondary the ideas Ellison is trying to convey, where the priority of the ideas dominates so that we can't the to back into the read without attempt translate the action ideas. In these cases Ellison seems to share Ishmael's attitude towards what he calls "hideous and intolerable allegory," not believing in it at all, yet unable to resist the comic indulgence of his appetite for it.

The clearest example here is in the factory hospital scene, where the doctors try to remake the invisible man into the mechanical man he had been before, the sub servient southern Negro who died when he attacked Brockway in the boiler a room. When he wakes in the hospital his mind is blank, and he only gradually becomes aware that the are to achieve a machine-induced doctors trying pre scene frontal lobotomy that will return him to his previous state. The whole is as a presented return to childhood followed by rebirth, including the cutting of the umbilical cord (the electric cord attached to the stomach node), followed an alcohol an efficient nurse. a new the doctors by rubdown by "You're man," tell him. On the the the "new man" is meta pointedly way home from hospital into the new the Biblical who even his own morphosed man, Adam, predicts fall. "And I felt that I would fall, had fallen," he says, and then looks across the aisle of the car to see "a blonde at a red De subway young platinum nibbling licious apple."14 same are so The serio-comic intent is behind the 1,369 light bulbs that made are much of in the Prologue. The light bulbs his means of fighting the Monopo a lated Light and Power Company, and Ellison's way of illustrating the effects of on the that most of the novel. After first self-recognition power struggle occupies finding his own light by burning the papers in the briefcase, he can begin to take on the that he has suffered under for so He is revenge power monopoly long. out their can finally of control. He can't overthrow them, but he undermine and weaken them by draining off part of their power. No writer would go to this extent for the sake of an idea alone, and there is a very pointed humor in much tone of Ellison's "allegory." The ironic, joking of the blues is continually showing as well as the Ellison from the virtuoso through, pleasure obviously gets manipu lation of words. For a final example, consider the description of eating dessert in

79 Criticism the hole. The invisible man is there. He's he's he's sitting blue, wondering why means blue, and thinking what it to be blue. And he's listening to Louis Arm so strong playing and singing, "What Did I Do to Be Black and Blue." He has a now just made big point of being in the great American tradition, and he is de his favorite dessert of sloe and ice cream. As we visualize him scribing gin pour over we ing the red liquid the white mound, suddenly get the point of the color scheme he has been building up to emphasize his Americanism, and the sub merged but deliberate joke helps to establish the tone of the whole Prologue. The effect is almost but Ellison is a fierce and he can't gratuitously clever, punster, always restrict himself to the obvious level of "I yam what I am," or turning Brother Tobitts into two bits.

a He is also prophetic writer, and that is why I must conclude with the envelope or us frame which makes up the novel's beginning and end. The Prologue gives a man a picture of the invisible after he's finished writing the book, picture of his present state. He has discovered that he is invisible, and taken the first step that he must take after the He has his and his suffer discovery. preserved anger even more ing by embodying it in art, and has fully grasped his identity in the process. But what is he to do with his identity after this, and after all the em on even an man a phasis in the Epilogue "the possibility that invisible has socially responsible role to play." We know that he is in hibernation, and we can't help wondering with him whether he will come up to find the smell of death or the smell of spring in the outside air. The invisible man doesn't know; he is for a and a new but has not been into it. prepared rebirth, life, yet born About 35 years ago Henry Roth published Call it Sleep. It was an extremely a were good novel, and for first novel almost unbelievably good. Those depres sion and it a so was not a times, wasn't protest novel, there great reaction, but those few who did appreciate it looked forward with anticipation to Roth's next work. While Roth and has they waited, however, disappeared, only recently been birds near Maine. With the discovered, raising game Augusta, rediscovery and tardy acclaim of Call it Sleep, many readers have naturally wondered why Roth has not written anything for so long. It turns out that he has been trying to write off and but can't. His he is that is one theme on, problem, says, "There I like above all and that is but I haven't the others, redemption, fable."

Man a Invisible is clearly prelude to and preparation for something like redemp an tion, and therefore extremely dangerous and difficult novel to follow. It may be that Ellison has written himself into a corner, or it may be that in his next novel he will find the fable for us. It seems to me that, if any of our contem porary writers can find it and express it, he can. But it has to be there first to be found, and whether it exists or not cannot be answered until it is found. Ellison on a has been working his second novel for long time now. Whatever he is do some ing, there is evidence that it will be apocalyptic, that it will attempt to show us either the of our or of our destruction and continued frus pattern redemption tration. We shouldn't that the alternative to a vision of is forget redemption on carefully planted in the Prologue of Invisible Man. In his reflection the brawl with the white man, the invisible man says:

80 was a He, let us say, lost in dream world. But didn't he control that is me dream world?which, alas, only too real!?and didn't he rule out a of it? And if he had yelled for policeman, wouldn't I have been taken for the offending one? Yes, yes, yes! Let me agree with you, I was the irresponsible one; for I should have used my knife to protect the higher interests of society. Some day that kind of foolishness will cause us trouble. All dreamers and must the tragic sleepwalkers pay even price, and the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility; I became too snarled in the incom notions that buzzed within brain. I was a . . . patible my coward.

FOOTNOTES

1 "To read such a for as book, example, Ralph Ellison's brilliant novel of 1953, Invisible Man, is to find, among one's richest satisfactions, the sense of immersion in all the concrete materialities of Negro life. One hears the very buzz and hum of Harlem in the of racy, pungent speech his West Indians and his native hipsters, and all the grotesquerie in his account of little of a remote opening the dreary backwater Southern Negro college has in it a certain kind of absolute is full empirically Tightness. Indeed, the book packed of acutest of manners the observations the and idioms and human styles that comprise the of in us a sense ethos Negro life the American metropolis; and it gives such of social fact as can be come in academic by nowhere the stiffly pedantic manuals of sociology." Nathan A. "The Dark and Haunted Tower of Richard Black Ex Scott, Jr., Wright," Addison pression, ed. Gayle, Jr. (N.Y., 1969), p. 298.

2 Leroi a are com Cf. Jones' "The Myth of Negro Literature," where all Black writers mitted to were mediocrity because "The literary and artistic models always those that could to be socially acceptable the white middle class, which automatically limited to most Ex them the spiritually debilitated imitations of literature available." (Black pression, p.192)

3 on same Worth noting for its grotesque insistence this point, while at the time contra it a ... is one dicting with reputed social message ( "Ellison's hero of those catastrophic must can individuals of which society rid itself before there be peace and sanity."), is Nancy Tischler's "Negro Literature and Classic Form," Contemporary Literature, Sum mer 1969, Vol. 10, No. 3.

4 "Richard Wright's Blues" (Black Expression, p. 325).

5 Interview 11. "An with Ralph Ellison," Tamarack Review, No. 32, Summer 1964, p. 6 Black Expression, p. 324.

7 a Name James Baldwin, "Notes for Hypothetical Novel," Nobody Knows My (N.Y., 1961), pp. 148-49. 8 Black Expression, p. 316.

9 to an In "The Discovery of What it Means be American" Baldwin describes what he calls "a of how he was it to species breakdown," and oured of by listening Bessie Smith on records. He wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain "armed with two Bessie Smith records and a as man writes his to Louis typewriter," the invisible story listening Armstrong.

81 Criticism There is a in Part III of Go Tell It on the Mountain passage where John Grimes under an to same goes experience comparable the invisible man's, in almost the words that I have quoted from Ellison: it it was now ears were to "He had heard all his life, but only that his opened this sound came from come that the darkness, that could only from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to And now in so the glory of the light. his moaning, and far from he heard it in himself?it rose from It any help, his bleeding, his cracked-open heart. was a sound of time rage and weeping which filled the grave, rage and weeping from set bound now in that had no no voice? free, but eternity; rage language, weeping with which to startled of of yet spoke now, John's soul, boundless melancholy, the bitterest and the of most patience, longest night; the deepest water, the strongest chains, the cruel of most most of lash; humility wretched, the dungeon absolute, love's bed defiled, most and birth dishonored, and bloody, unspeakable, sudden death. Yes, the darkness in in on hummed with murder; the body the water, the body the fire, the body the tree. looked down the line of these armies of darkness, army upon army, and his John " soul are whispered, Who these? (p. 228) 10 Tamarack Review, pp. 5-6.

11 It can also the of a as in Sister Bernetta Tra be subject book, Quinn's Metamorphic dition in Modern and Form in Poetry, Daniel Hoffman's and Fable American Fiction.

12 In classical times or were in caves or sibyls sibyllae young maidens dwelling lonely by Their function was to utterances inspiring springs. give forth prophetic while under the an influence of enthusiastic frenzy.

13 Mailer's is a more or same essay "The White Negro" sophisticated Hip version of this in "The Black Looks at the White "to fantasy. Baldwin, Boy Boy," acknowledges that be an American is to be a kind means Negro male also of walking phallic symbol: which that one in one's own for pays, personality, the sexual insecurity of others."

14 scene is reminiscent This of Hart Crane's "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen," where the Helen in a New poet-Faust imagines meeting York subway:

And some I yet, suppose evening forgot The fare and transfer, yet got by that way Without recall,?lost yet poised in traffic. I across an Then might find your eyes aisle, Still flickering with those pr?figurations? Prodigal, yet uncontested now, Half-riant before the jerky window frame.

82