Three Shades of Blackness: The Invisible Man Response
Through characters in The Invisible Man Ellison explores disillusioned identities of black men in 20th century American culture. Brother Clifton, Ras the Exhorter, and the narrator portray different social and political beliefs in regards to black identity. One may ask which of their paths lead to the arguably best existence no matter their ultimate fate. However, it is easier to assess which character and their beliefs enacted the most societal change. But come the end of the novel, all experience pain.
Much of the novel is characterized with black obedience of namely white authorities. The narrator and those by whom he is surrounded comply to rules and social constructs, and any disobedience is quickly smothered. The murder of Brother Clifton, a black man seemingly devoted to the Brotherhood, provides a turning point. The brooding narrator stumbles upon Clifton in the streets where he shouts sales pitches for paper Sambo dolls. The crude paper puppets of black boys, manipulated by thin strings in Clifton’s hands, dance for the crowd; Clifton markets them as toys to “keep you entertained” (Ellison 431). Since Clifton’s audience consists of white people who can afford and have time for entertainment, the caricatures portray black people as white people want them to exist in America—flimsy, funny, and easily manipulated. Further, the Sambo doll allegedly “lives upon the sunshine of your [owner’s] lordly smile” (432). The doll serves to make white people happy like they wish slaves and black Americans did. Even use of the word “sunshine” creates the image of the sun, the center of the solar system, in place of a white owner around whom black servants revolve. And not only are the Sambos complacent; they are “all for twenty-five cents, the quarter part of a dollar” (432). This fact seemingly recalls the Constitutional Convention. The white Founding Fathers decided black slaves were to each be three-fifths of a person when counted in population for political representation and taxation among the states. Selling Sambo slave dolls for part of a whole dollar insinuates that, even generations after the abolition of slavery, black Americans were seen as less than white.
Clifton embodies his product by selling the black Sambo dolls. The narrator describes Clifton’s actions like those of the awkward doll as he is “riding back and forth in his knees...without shifting his feet, his right shoulder raised at an angle and his arm pointing stiffly” (433). However, Clifton is not lost; he meets the narrator’s gaze with a “contemptuous smile” (433). The narrator interprets this as contempt towards himself and perhaps disrespect towards the Brotherhood. All the same, one could interpret this as contempt for the Sambo dolls and white buyers, for when the narrator spits on the doll, Clifton never shows anger towards him, a former Brother. The only time Clifton is enraged is when the white police harass him over his sales. When caught with the Sambo dolls, Clifton defends himself and “kicked the box [of dolls] thudding aside” (436). If he intended to protect his business, he would make an effort to protect his product. His swiftness in abandoning the dolls speaks to the lack of meaning he attributes to them. This disdain for the Sambos and the contemptuous look he shares with the narrator lead one to question if Clifton selling the dolls could be read as a satiric act of rebellion in itself. The narrator says that through this existence, Clifton “fell out of history” (434). This may be true as it’s unlikely Clifton intended to make radical change by selling Sambo dolls. However, a black man selling the white’s ideal black caricature plays into the narrator's grandfather’s theory to “agree ‘em to death” (16) while still getting something—a profit—for oneself. Clifton follows the grandfather’s advice, for he finds a niche in the systematic oppression and survives while silently rebelling. This life suffices until Clifton is killed by the police; here, Ellison finds irony in the fact that black Americans can be exactly what white Americans want and still be punished.
Clifton’s life of compliance with the potential for subtle rebellion was not Ellison’s only embedded philosophy for black existence in America. Living a life drastically different from Clifton is Ras the Exhorter, a Harlemlite who argues for black rights without the influence of white organizations. Yelling on the streets and swinging from ladders, Ras proves his bold philosophy of living and embraces his nature. When Ras encounters the narrator and Clifton on their brotherhood mission to Harlem, Ras criticizes them for their allegiance with white men of the Brotherhood because “brothers the same color. We sons of Mother Africa” (370). In this innate connection between black people and African origins, Ras champions for those who believe in separating from their white enslavers and fully embracing black culture. While the narrator and Clifton are wary of Ras, the Exhorter argues his credibility with the same black nationalist ideology. He says he speaks poor English because “it ain’t my mama tongue, I’m African” (372), and he agrees with the narrator and Clifton that “organization is good” (373) even if he asserts that instead of with the Brotherhood, “we organize black” (373). Although his speech jumbles and his words are brash, he is sane. He even shows he genuinely cares and wants the narrator and Clifton to leave the white Brotherhood when he tells them “‘you black and beautiful...you wasn’t them t’ings you be dead, mahn. Dead! I’d have killed you’” (373). Although this sounds like a death threat, Ras says the narrator and Clifton are protected by their blackness rather than put at a disadvantage by it. In Ras’s eyes, their black identity is potential for kingship and regalty. Finally, the Exhorter promises, “Ras would not sahcrifice his black brother to the white enslaver. Instead, he cry” (374). After his bawdy show, this moment in which Ras looks upon the narrator and Clifton as lost souls he wishes to guide melts the harsh exterior of the man whose name invokes kingship. To softer men, Ras appears a radical force with which to be reckoned—and he is. But he also shows himself as intelligent and as human.
This can only carry him so far. Throughout the story, Ras, his ideas, and his Harlem territory are invaded by white men and their black helpers. He becomes increasingly agitated. After Clifton’s death and the Brotherhood’s lack of action, Ras snaps. He channels the angry energy of the crowd into a force for change, shedding the identity of the Exhorter and becoming Ras the Destroyer. True to the glory of black culture, Ras leads a crowd through the streets of Harlem from his regal height on horseback. The narrator witnesses Ras “dressed in the costume of an Abyssinian chieftain” (556), the outfit complete with a shield, a spear, and a fur cape. He expresses his African expression outwardly, and in doing so, he symbolizes a return to African roots right in the middle of Manhattan. His presence creates a fantastical and other wordly air like “a figure more out of a dream than out of Harlem, than out of even this Harlem night, yet real, alive, alarming” (556). This furthers themes of disillusionment and absurdity throughout the novel; when Harlem becomes a jungle, Ras sets himself free.
At this point in the novel, with his territory upheaved, Ras turns to violence, fighting police just as Clifton did before his death. Unlike Clifton, Ras fights with more than fists and “let fly with that spear” (564) which allows him to escape alive and still on horseback. However, like Clifton selling the Sambo dolls, Ras turns on the narrator—but perhaps not black men. When Ras spots the narrator, he orders the crowd to “hang him up to teach the black people a lesson, and theer be no more traitors...Hang him up theer with them blahsted dummies” (557). He calls for the narrator’s hanging not necessarily because he wishes him dead. Perhaps he even feels a semblance of the sorrow he expressed earlier in the novel at the idea of losing a black life. But he calls for death to make an example of the narrator who he sees as a traitor to black people. He calls for death because he does not want to lose other black allies to the narrator’s ill-chosen path. It it not personal; the narrator will hang like all the other historical victims of white abuse, and his body will be like the hanged mannequins, empty and unreal. Ras may feel some sadness. But if he wishes, he can presumably see the narrator in the hanging dolls, like the Sambo dolls, standing for nothing but lost causes. Whether or not Ras ends the novel with an ounce of happiness, one cannot tell. The last chronological mention of the Destroyer shows hims struggling to remove the spear the narrator launched into his jaw, never giving up his fight, as his rallied crowd run into the night to fulfill his call for the narrator’s blood. If he is in pain and misery, he at least made something of it.
This leaves the unnamed narrator, the man with whom the reader is supposed to sympathize. While other black figures such as Clifton and Ras make stands based on their original thoughts, the narrator shuffles through white sponsored education, works white jobs, and speaks white words for a white Brotherhood. He even only joins the Brotherhood because of the pay and the debt he owes Mary—not because he wanted to make change (297). But when Clifton, the narrator’s closest friend, is unjustly killed by the police, he acknowledges that “I’d been asleep, dreaming” (444). He organizes a grand funeral for Clifton where his speech moves the crowd. However, one may argue that the crowd could have been rallied by anything. The narrator describes an old man’s song enchanting the procession. As they walk, people drape signs that read “Brother Tod Clifton / Our Hope Shot Dead” (450). The anger began before the narrator opened his mouth, and it began with the death of Clifton; in this way, one could argue that Clifton, sparking the anger, was a bringer of greater change in death than the narrator could be in life. Without the death of a fairly innocent and agreeable man, no speeches, songs, or riots would be made. Here, the narrator’s speech is arguably a turning point for the narrator’s perception of the world, but not for his impact upon it. The speech opens him to a wider perception of what is right and true, but he only plays a role in helping others see it.
All the same, as seen earlier in his weak reasoning for joining an organization for change, the narrator focuses on himself rather than tensions boiling among the people of Harlem. He is preoccupied with Clifton’s death, exploring the unknown and malleable identity of Rineheart, and experiencing the failure of yessing the Brotherhood. Ultimately, he gets caught up in his own identity and explorations, and he lets the emotionally charged Harlem linger. This leaves Ras to organize the anger into a riot. When the narrator finally reaches the scene, his precious words are useless; Ras accuses the narrator’s “lying tongue” (557), and the narrator knows he “had no words, no eloquence” (558). The Rineheart glasses break, and he must face the murky green identity that remains. In this moment, the narrator realizes he has been played by white men; he tells the crowd not to “kill me for those who are downtown laughing at the trick they played” (558). He argues that even if black men are to fight, they should not fight at the hands of white men like he did at the early battle royale. But he reaches this point too late. Much earlier, Ras insinuated that the bickering narrator and Clifton “look at you two and look at me—is that sanity? Standing here in three shades of blackness! Three black men fighting in the streets because of the white enslaver? Is that sanity?” (372) The narrator ultimately comes around to Ras’s expressed logic in the face of potential death. They may be different shades or ideaologies of black, but they are still black, and they should not allow white men to tear them apart. However, the narrator failed to realize this early on, failed to take a stance, and that squeezed him between beliefs of those like Clifton, who somehow comply with societal norms, and those like Ras, who challenge them. The narrator does neither. He is invisible to both sides, but he attempts for so long to appease both. He faces Ras and the people of Harlem, “those whom I had failed” (559), and his undecided nature runs him altogether out of society. He ends his story alone in a hole. Only there, in the darkness and in need of light, does he “burn every paper in the brief case” (568) gifted to him so long ago. His high school diploma. The false recommendation letters from his university. His Brotherhood name. The Sambo doll. All that and more burn away with the false identities he allowed others to construct around him.
In the darkness, the narrator sheds old identities and asserts that “even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play” (581). He remains invisible, and he remains without a self-asserted identity, but he shakes off the roles assigned to him—that is a step forward. But whether this or his eventually true identity bring him any happiness, one cannot yet say. He carries hope, perhaps, which is more than Clifton and his compliance and is less destructive than the anger of Ras the Destroyer. But perhaps if Clifton existed in a world without anger of oppressed, he would have existed peacefully without falling victim to a race crime. Perhaps if people took Ras seriously, if he managed to channel his anger in a more presentable and less wild manner, he would have made a difference outside of race riots—that is, if taming Ras would still make him Ras. And perhaps if the narrator fed his anger a bit, if he found happiness or something to believe, he could birth a brighter world. Perhaps, with his pondering and realizations beneath the earth, he will, as he says, emerge with a new purpose. But ultimately, none of these three men were allowed to exist in American society as black men. They were not allowed any identity. Clifton was neither an advocate nor a salesman; Ras was neither an Exhorter nor a Destroyer; the narrator was neither an intellect nor an earthshaker. They could be nothing but black -- and perhaps this is what makes them all invisible.
No comments:
Post a Comment