Sandra starts: By Ralph Ellison, this is another book I’ve heard of for years and thought about reading but never got around to it -- well, finally I can say I have read it. It is a pretty interesting read. The best word I can come up with to describe it is “surreal” and I’m pretty sure that isn’t the best word to describe it, but a lot of stuff happens without my being able to provide real solid details about what happened.
The story is about a young man whose name we never know and his journey from a Black college in the South which he is asked to leave and his tribulations in New York City where he ends up. He is rather naïve but has a gift for making speeches. He ends up working for something called the Brotherhood in Harlem and becomes disillusioned with them. He lets you know at the beginning of the story “all my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was” and he finds out “That I am nobody but myself” which is the universal part of this story. The part that deals with being African American is where he discovers that he is “an invisible man!”
I’m probably not up to the task of explaining what this means to him exactly because I think I can’t truly understand his perspective. However from my perspective as a woman I can relate. There are several different descriptions about this invisibility thing. A veteran from the mental hospital that he runs into at the Golden Day bar explains to Mr. Norton (the white man our protagonist is chauffeuring around campus and town) about our man “Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! A mechanical man!” And the reasons our man is this is found throughout -- at the smoker where he thinks he’s being paid to deliver a speech but has been brought to fight they let him know “We mean to do right by you, but you’ve got to know your place at all times.” When Mr. Norton questions him about his plans he replies “You have yours, and you got it yourself, and we have to lift ourselves up the same way.” A nice fairy tale considering Mr. Norton was probably born rich and hasn’t had a hard day’s work in his life. “The thing to do was to be prepared—as my grandfather had been when it was demanded that he quote the entire United States Constitution as a test of his fitness to vote. He had confounded them all by passing the test, although they still refused him the ballot…” Anyway, living in the South there have been lots of reasons for suppressing his true thoughts and feelings.
The theme that runs through the book is about dispossession. Dispossession in the sense that while some chosen few may have theirs they still don’t want you to have yours, or anybody else to have anything for that matter. The Brotherhood in NYC is trying to unite the people to fight for basic rights like a decent place to live, a decent wage and basic necessities that many folks give no thought to and don’t care about for others. But there are some who care about this idea for everyone. One of the well-to-do white women explains her interest in the Brotherhood “Through no effort of my own, I have economic security and leisure, but what is that, really, when so much is wrong with the world? I mean when there is no spiritual or emotional security, and no justice?”
Much of what Ellison writes is done very eloquently and is a pleasure to read. Then there are times when I have no idea what he is going on about and things are vague and muddled. Maybe that’s the influence of some of that stream-of-consciousness stuff that we’ve encountered in books written prior to this time. Invisible Man was published in 1947 and it isn’t quite clear when this story takes place but it is sometime prior to that. In the “how little things have changed department” which I seem to enjoy there’s this bit on the media “These…folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them that you’re lying, they’ll tell the world even if you prove you’re telling the truth. Because it’s the kind of lie they want to hear…”
There is some satisfaction in the fact that our protagonist does finally discover something about his true self and feelings and decides he will live on his own terms. “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?” However on a conventional level there is little satisfaction in the kind of life he is living. “I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole—or showed me the hole I was in, if you will—and I reluctantly accepted the fact.” It is a pretty powerful book and if you have the time and inclination you might give it a chance. “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”
Ernie says: I never really knew what to make of Invisible Man as I read it. Even now, after reflecting on it and discussing it with Sandra, I can’t really define what I think of it. Although not written in a “stream of consciousness” style, it sounds more like someone describing a complex dream than remembering actual events. On many levels, it reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. The narrator suffers a series of misadventures at home, at school and in New York City. Through his ignorance, eloquence and ambition, some doors are opened wide and then slammed shut in his face.
The characters he meets along the way are all rich in personalities but lacking in substance. They seem to be analogies for ideas and ideals come to life. But their true motivations are never revealed. The narrator seems to be thrown in with them only to be pulled out just as quickly. At first, he seems to trust most people or at least take them at face value and is truly shocked when they let him down. As he becomes less trusting and more self-focused, he still seems surprised when they betray him.
At one point, the narrator is pulled into the Brotherhood. He embraces the Brotherhood and its program without it ever being fully explained. We see the tactics but never the strategy. While he admits that this will serve his own purposes as well, he knows that they are all fighting for a better world…somehow. Others are fighting for that better world too but fighting against the Brotherhood. From every stage of his story, the narrator takes a memento, almost like a totem to remind him of his past, or to guide his future. His high school diploma, a letter of betrayal, a briefcase, a paper doll and a link from a leg chain--all serve, like Dickensian ghosts, to illuminate the folly of blind trust…or is it blind ambition? I can’t tell.
Next week: We are both reading books by E.M. Forster so we'll combine on a post about A Passage to India and A Room with a View
No comments:
Post a Comment