Invisible Man, Chapters 10-11 + Close Reading Workshop

Post your close reading ideas as comments (if you haven't already emailed them to me). These do not need to be 150+ words.

Chapter Ten 

Kimbro and "Optic White" 197-206

Lucius Brockway 206-230

The Union:

The first employee that the Invisible Man speaks to points out a "'new racket'" of "'firing the regular guys and putting on you colored college boys...That way they don't have to pay union wages'" (197). The white workers don't particularly like these new employees and the Invisible Man's first task on the job involves correcting the mistakes of "'those laboratory blubberheads'" (199).

Kimbro and the other white employees are rushed and busy and they do not go out of their way to assist new employees who pose a threat to their job security. Kimbro rushes off without giving the Invisible Man detailed instructions on 202 and the Invisible Man foolishly assumes he can use his senses to solve a problem (even though they have failed him so far). Kimbro questions whether the Invisible Man is "'trying to sabotage the company'" on account of the stupidity of his error (204).

Even after the paint is corrected and accepted by Kimbro, the Invisible Man is aware of a "gray tinge glow[ing] through the whiteness" (205) on the samples painted from the cans of paint he messed up. He doubts Kimbro's motives in accepting the paint and considers the fact not only that maybe things at the factory are messed up -- the workers are mistrustful and not really helpful -- but that "something had gone wrong" more generally, "something far more important than the paint; that either I had played a trick on Kimbro or he, like the trustees and Bledsoe, was playing one on me'" (205-6).

The Invisible Man stumbles into a Union meeting looking for his lunch on 218-223. They immediately both refer to him as "'brother'" -- a familiarity that surprises him "[e]ven after my weeks in the north" (219) -- before immediately denouncing him as a "'dirty fink'" -- a term that simply means "strike-breaker" without racial overtones but which "grated" on the Invisible Man's ears like a racial slur (219).
See the discussion of "finkism" on 221.

Ellison parodies the paranoia and bureaucracy of unions through the concern over how the Invisible Man found out about the meeting on 220, their discrimination based on his boss on 220-221, and the approval of the condemnation of himself as a "fink" on 221. The Invisible Man is deeply offended by the attitudes of the union members, particularly their claims of being "'highly developed'" by the duration of their time in the "'labor movement'" on 222 -- a claim he responds to by simply hearing the claim about his low level of comparative development. He is ultimately permitted the freedom to retrieve his lunch and is told that the union holds no personal grudge -- their hostility is due to the existence of "'certain conditions here at the plant'" from which the members feel the need to "'protect [them]selves'" (223). The chairman expresses a "'hope'" to eventually have the Invisible Man "'as a member in good standing,'" but this vague invitation is moot on account of the offense that the Invisible Man takes and Brockway's reaction to his prolonged absence from the basement.

Once sent down to Brockway, the Invisible Man definitely ends up the victim of a power play on the part of an old employee determined to protect his job from black college-educated engineers and union members alike.The mania about job security mounts after the Invisible Man takes twenty minutes to retrieve his lunch. The Invisible Man and Brockway have a misunderstanding and fight over the Union and the Invisible Man's absence from (and presence in) the basement on 224-30.Brockway instinctively responds to the threat of the Union by associating the Invisible Man with "'that bunch of troublemaking foreigners'" (224) and fighting him on 225-26. Once the Invisible Man gains the upper hand, Brockway admits his particular reservations to "'[t]hat damn union'" which he perceives as being "'after [his] job'" (228). When employees like the "'young colored fellers up in the lab'" join the union Brockway argues that it is "'like we was to bite the hand of the man who teached us to bathe in a bathtub'" and insists that he "'hates it" and means to "'keep on doing all [he] can to chase it outta the plant.'"

A sidenote on bathing from Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery: 

"Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; was constantly taking me into a new world. The matter of having meals at regular hours, of eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and of the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all new to me.
I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath. I learned there for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue. In all my travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton I have always in some way sought my daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should be a part of every house" (56).

 Regardless of his awareness of "joke[s]" being played on him and his physical triumph over Brockway on 225-7, the Invisible Man cannot ultimately win the "'important victory'" that he momentarily achieves on 228-the top of 229. The fight distracts both men from the valves and Brockway sends the Invisible Man off to risk injury regulating them while he goes "scrambling away in the other direction...for the stairs, his hands clasping the back of his head, and his neck pulled in close, like a small boy who has thrown a brick into the air" (229). The Invisible Man's awareness of his laughter and posture suggests that Brockway is well aware that an explosion is imminent and intends to sacrifice the Invisible Man and save himself. Brockway is presumably the voice at the end of the chapter that rejects men of the Invisible Man's generation, "'these here Nineteen-Hundred boys,'" as "'no good for the job'" on the grounds of their want of "'nerves'" (230). Brockway successfully defends his job against what he views as another threat of a more-educated worker.

Does the Invisible Man actually make significant progress with Brockway through and after their fight? Do you think that the IM ever really gained, let alone "lost irrevocably an important victory" (229)?

Chapter Eleven 

The Invisible Man undergoes rebirth in what we discover is the "factory hospital" on 243, a designation he considers in more detail on 245. Although the doctors initially diagnose him as being "[m]erely stunned," they keep him under observation and end up performing several experimental medical (and mental) procedures on him.

The Invisible Man is placed in a machine and "pounded between crushing electrical pressures" in order to "'get [him] started again'" (232). The doctors treat him with "icy authority" and "profound detachment" as they attempt to treat his condition within a simultaneously coffin and womb-like "glass and nickel box" (233). He seems to dream of something like heaven, or at least some kind of paradise on 234 with green hedges and roses, but swiftly comes back to the doctors and overhears the rationale for his treatment.

The doctor who created the box used to treat the Invisible Man thinks that his "'little gadget will solve everything,'" though the other doctors suggest that the "'background'" (race, any information on his past) of this patient could respond to the "'effectiveness of simple prayer'" (235), implying that little is wrong with the Invisible Man and the experimental intervention is unnecessary. On 236 we discover that the machine "'produce[s] the results of a prefrontal lobotomy without the negative effects of the knife'" and is intended to effect "'as complete a change of personality'" as possible while leaving the patient "'both physically and neurally whole.'" 

The doctors attempt to stimulate the Invisible Man's memory on 239-242 by first asking him questions about himself and then about Buckeye and Brer Rabbit -- characters in African trickster tales and folklore popularized in the nineteenth century United States by Joel Chandler Harris and most well-known today from the censored 1946 Disney movie, Song of the South (which has never been released for home video). The Invisible Man both identifies with these figures and resists "these childish names" (242). He holds his peace and ends up abruptly released from the hospital. Note that he rediscovers his name on 245-46, but that it is not provided to readers and causes the Invisible Man extreme pain and disorientation. His dismissal from the paint factory parallels his dismissal from school on the basis of his recent injury and lack of preparation "'for work under our industrial conditions'" (247). Like Bledsoe with the letters, the doctor inflates his hopes by suggesting that "'[a] little later perhaps we'll be able to do something'" (247).

How does the Invisible Man judge the changes in his personality on 249?