Invisible Man
By
Ralph Ellison
The Meaning of Invisibility (cont.)
13 September 2023
English 3B – (232ENG3BB3)
Lecturer: Dr Siphiwo Mahala
Invisible Man - Reflections
• Author Biography and Book Synopsis
• Various notions of Invisibility
• The Protagonist and Narrative Point-of-View
• College Student Mr Norton’s Guide
• Moving from the South to the North (Harlem, New York)
• The Great Eviction Speech in Harlem
• Becoming the Speaker of the Brotherhood
Frederick Douglass (1817 – 1895)
Frederick Douglass (1817 or 1818 – 1895) was an American social
reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping
from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist
movement in Massachusetts and New York, during which he gained fame
for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was
described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to
slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to
function as independent American citizens. Douglass wrote three
autobiographies, describing his experiences as an slave in his Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a
bestseller and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was
his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil
War, Douglass was an active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and
wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First
published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the
book covers his life up to those dates. Douglass died of a heart attack on
20 February 1895. He was 77.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass
Booker T Washington (1856 – 1915)
Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was
an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of
the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the
dominant leader in the African-American community and of the
contemporary Black elite. Washington was from the last generation of
black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of
the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in
the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws
enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Washington was a key proponent of AfricanAmerican businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro
Business League. His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a normal school,
later a historically black college in Tuskegee, Alabama, at which he served
as a principal. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895,
Washington gave a speech, known as the "Atlanta compromise", that
brought him national fame. He called for black progress through
education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly
the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in
the South. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class
blacks, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with a
long-term goal of building the community's economic strength and pride
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican political activist. He was the
founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and African Communities
League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through
which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa.
Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas
came to be known as Garveyism. Garvey was a controversial
figure. Some in the African diasporic community regarded
him as a pretentious demagogue and they were highly critical
of his collaboration with white supremacists, his violent
rhetoric and his prejudice against mixed-race people and
Jews. He received praise for encouraging a sense of pride and
self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora amid
widespread poverty, discrimination and colonialism. His ideas
exerted a considerable influence on such movements
as Rastafari, the Nation of Islam and the Black Power
Movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey
Setting - Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. In the 1920s and
1930s, Central and West Harlem was the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an
outpouring of artistic work without precedent in the American Black community.
Though Harlem musicians and writers are particularly well remembered, the
community has also hosted numerous actors and theater companies. Harlem is also
home to the largest African American Day Parade, which celebrates the culture of
African diaspora in America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harlem was the scene
of a series of rent strikes by neighborhood tenants, led by local activist Jesse Gray,
together with the Congress of Racial Equality, Harlem Youth Opportunities
Unlimited (HARYOU), and other groups. These groups wanted the city to force
landlords to improve the quality of housing by bringing them up to code, to take
action against rats and roaches, to provide heat during the winter, and to keep prices
in line with existing rent control regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem
Absorbing the Ideology
“I’ve worked pretty hard to master the ideology.”
Master it,” Brother Jack said, “but don’t overdo it. Don’t let it master you. There
is nothing to put the people to sleep like dry ideology. The ideal is to strike a
medium between ideology and inspiration. Say what the people want to hear,
but say it in such a way that they’ll do what we wish.”
Ras - The Black Nationalist
I froze, seeing him [Ras] draw back the knife and stop it in mid-air; draw and
stop, cursing; then draw back and stop again, all very quickly, beginning to cry
now and talking rapidly at the same time; and me easing slowly forward.
“Mahn,” Ras blurted, I ought too kill you. Godahm, I ought to kill you and the
world be better off. But you black, mahn. (370)
What saves Clifton is the colour of his skin, though they are ideologically at
polar positions.
Race & Betrayal
“And you, mahn,” the Exhorter said, “a reg’lar little black devil! A godahm sly
mongoose! Where you think you from, going with the white folks? I know,
godham; don’t I know it! you from down South! You from Trinidad! You from
Barbados! Jamaica, South Africa, and the white mahn’s foot in yoru ass all the
way to the hip. What you trying to deny by betraying the black people? Why
you fight against us? You young fellows. You young black men with plenty
education; I been hearing your rubble rousing. Why you go over to the
enslaver? What kind of education is that? What kind of black mahn is that who
betray his own mama? (371)
Black Against Black
You call me crazy? Look at you two and look at me – is this sanity? Standing
here in three shades of blackness! Three black men fighting in the street
because of the white enslaver? Is that sanity? Is that consciousness, scientific
understanding? Is that the modern black mahn of the twentieth century? Hell,
mahn! Is it self-respect–black against black? What they give you to betray –
their women? You fall for that?
Harlem – Black Man’s Territory
“Godahm, mahn,” he said, leaping forward, “this is Harlem. This is my territory,
the black mahn’s territory. You think we let white folks come in and spread their
poison. Let ‘em come in like they come and take over the numbers racket? Like
they have all the stores? Talk sense, mahn, if you talking to Ras, talk sense!
The Mouthpiece of Brotherhood
And the Brotherhood was going out of its way to make my name prominent.
Articles, telegrams and many mailings went out over my signature – some of
which I’d written, but most not. I was publicized, identified with the
organization both by word and image in the press. On the way to work one
late spring morning I counted fifty greetings from people I didn’t know,
becoming aware that there were two of me: the old self that slept a few hours a
night and dreamed sometimes of my grandfather and Bledsoe and Brockway
and Mary, the self that flew without wings and plunged from great heights; and
the new public self that spoke for the Brotherhood and was becoming so much
more important than the other that I seemed to run a foot race against myself.
The Wake Up Call
Brother,
This is advice from a friend who has been watching you closely. Do not go too
fast. Keep working for the people but remember that you are one of us and
do not forget if you get too big they will cut you down. You are from the South
and you know that this is a white man’s world. So take a friendly advice and go
easy so that you keep on helping the colored people. They do not want you to
go too fast and will cut you down if you do. Be smart…
Becoming Too Big
• “All you have to do is listen to folks in Harlem. All they talk about is him. Never
nothing about what the rest of us do. I tell you, Brothers, this man constitutes
a danger to the people of Harlem. He ought to be thrown out!”
• For by selecting me to speak with its authority on a subject which elsewhere
in our society I’d have found taboo, weren’t they affirming their belief both in
me and in the principles of Brotherhood, proving that they drew no lines even
when it came to women?
Used & Discarded
What is this, I wondered; then I called the leaders of other districts with the
same results. And now I was certain that the meeting was being held. But why
without me?
But the cop would be Clifton’s historian, his judge, his witness, and his
executioner, and I was the only brother in the watching crowd. And I, the only
witness for the defence, knew neither the extent of his guilt nor the nature of
his crime. Where were the historians today; and how would they put it down?
Clifton & the Doll
What had made it seem to dance? Its cardboard hands were doubled into fists,
the fingers outlined in orange paint, and I noticed that it had two faces, one
on either side of the disk of cardboard, and both grinning.
The incident was political. I looked at the doll, thinking. The political
equivalent of such entertainment is death. But that’s too broad a definition. Its
economic meaning? That the life of a man is worth the sale of a two-bit paper
doll…”
Community Mobilisation
• Members were set on the streets with cans to solicit funds for his burial. A
committee of three old women went t the morgue to claim the body. We
distributed black-bordered leaflets denouncing the police commissioner. Preachers
were notified to have their congregations send letters of protest to the mayor. The
story spread. A photograph of Clifton was sent to the Negro papers and published.
People were stirred and angry. Street meetings were organised. And, released (by
the action) from my indecision, I threw everything I had into organizing the funeral,
though moving in a kind of numb suspension.
• The funeral was arranged to attract the largest number. Instead of holding it in s
church or a chapel, we selected Mount Morris Park, and a appeal went out for all
former members to join the funeral march.
Death as a Rallying Point
• “…His name was Clifton and they shot him down. His name was Clifton and he was
tall and some folks thought him handsome. And though he didn’t believe it, I think
he was. His name was Clifton and his face was black and his hair was thick with tight
rolled curls – or call them naps or kinks. He’s dead, uninterested, and, except for a
few young girls, it doesn’t matter…”
•
• His name was Clifton, Tod Clifton, he was unarmed and his death was as senseless as
his life was futile. He had struggled for Brotherhood on a hundred street corners
and he thought it would make him more human, but he died like any other dog in
a road… The cop? What about him? He was a cop. A good citizen. But this cop had
an itching finger and an eager ear for a word that rhymed with ‘trigger,’ and when
Clifton fell he had found it.
Blatant Disempowerment
“Let us handle the theory and the business of strategy,” he said. “We are
experienced. We’re graduates and while you are a smart beginner you skipped
several grades. But they were important grades, especially for gaining
strategical knowledge. For such it is necessary to see the overall picture. More is
involved than meets the eye. With the long view and the short view and the
over-all view mastered, perhaps you won’t slander the political consciousness f
the people of Harlem.”
“…The committee makes your decisions, and it is not its practice to give
undue importance to the mistaken notions of the people. What’s happened to
your discipline?”
Seen as a Traitor
When I reached 125th Street, I was approached by a group of civil-liberties workers
circulating a petition demanding the dismissal of the guilty policeman, and a block
further on even familiar woman street preacher was shouting a sermon about the
slaughter of the innocents.
“Look, look, Black ladies and gentlemahn! There goes the representative of the
Brotherhood. Does Ras see correctly? Is that gentlemahn trying to pass us unnoticed?
The Exhorter waved his arms and pointed, shouting, “That mahn is a paid stooge of
the white enslaver! Where has he been for the last few months when our black
babies and women have been suffering—”
Recognizing Self
• Well, I was and yet I was invisible, that was the foundational contradiction. I
was yet I was unseen. It was frightening and as I sat there I sensed another
frightening world of possibilities.
• And now I looked around a corner of my mind and saw Jack and Norton and
Emerson merge into one single white figure. They were very much the same,
each attempting to force his picture of reality upon me and neither giving a
hoot in hell for how things looked to me. I was simply a material, a natural
resource to be used. I had switched from the arrogant absurdity of Norton to
Emerson to that of Jack and the Brotherhood, and it all came out the same –
except I now recognised my invisibility.
The Damascus Moment
“I am no longer their brother,” I shouted. “They want a race riot and I am
against it. The more of us who are killed, the better they like –”
And now I realized that I couldn’t return to Mary’s, or to any part of my life. I
could approach it only from the outside, and I had been invisible to Mary as I
had been to the Brotherhood. No, I couldn’t return to Mary’s, or to the campus,
or to the Brotherhood, or home. I could only move ahead and stay here,
underground. So I would stay here until I was chased out. Here, at least, I could
try to think things out in peace, or, if not in peace, in quiet. I would take up
residence underground. The end was in the beginning.
Ending [Epilogue]
So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of
others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.
Thus I have come a long way and returned and
boomeranged a long way from the point in society
toward which I originally aspired.
Thank you
Dr Siphiwo Mahala
Consultation Times: Monday: 15h00 – 17h00 | Tuesday: 14h00 – 16h00 | Friday: 09h00 – 11h00
Office: B-Ring 716 Kingsway, Auckland Park, Johannesburg
Email: siphiwom@uj.ac.za
Phone Number: 011 – 5594555