Invisible Man, Chapters 19-23

Chapter Nineteen

"The Woman Question"

"I was lost, for the conflict between the ideological and biological, duty and desire, had become too subtly confused. I went to her, thinking, Let them break down the door, whosoever will, let them come" (416). 

The specter of the cuckolded husband and the nature of his quiet acceptance -- invisibility vs. "sophistication, decadence, over-civilization" (418). A question of the consequences of his action with regard to the Brotherhood. The Invisible Man thinks that this "man who had spoken like an indifferent husband...seemed to recall to me some important member of the Brotherhood -- someone so familiar that my failure to identify him was driving me almost to distraction" (418).

The Invisible Man somewhat changes his approach thereafter. He is "unable to shrug off the notion that [he] had been tested and had failed," he knows "nothing definite of where I stood," and is "caught between guilt and innocence, so that now they seemed one and the same" (419). He puts on a new public front:

"work had to be done and I would play the waiting game. And despite my guilt and uncertainty I learned to forget that I was a lone guilty black Brother and to go striding confidently into a roomful of whites. It was chin up, a not too wide-stretched smile, the out-thrust hand for the firm warm hand shake. And with it just the proper mixture of arrogance and down-to-earth humility to satisfy all. I threw myself into the lectures, defending, asserting the rights of women; and though the girls continued to buzz around, I was careful to keep the biological and ideological carefully apart" (419). 

Chapter 19 draws to a close with the Invisible Man being suddenly shifted back to Harlem in spite of all of his self-development downtown. The Brotherhood cannot determine "'[w]hat has become of Brother Tod Clifton'" who has "'disappeared'" and they need the Invisible Man to contain a "'crisis'" in his old district:

"'Brother Tod Clifton has not only disappeared but failed in his assignment. On the other hand, Ras the Exhorter and his gang of racist gangsters are taking advantage of this and are increasing their agitation. You are to get back there and take measures to regain our strength in the community. You'll be given the forces you need and you'll report to us for a strategy meeting about which you'll be notified tomorrow'" (421). 

Chapter Twenty

Crisis in Harlem

During this time, the Harlem office and member base that the Invisible Man worked so hard to build has been dissolved by the shifting agendas of the Brotherhood. The Invisible Man receives a rude welcome back to Harlem in Barrelhouse's Jolly Dollar, a "dark hole of a bar and grill on upper Eighth Avenue" that used to have ties to the Brotherhood (423). He swiftly realizes that things have changed -- in Barrelhouse's words, "'Business is bad. Very bad'" -- and that he is particularly blamed for deserting his district.

One of the men antagonizing the Invisible Man at Barrelhouse's suggests that he "'got the white fever and left'" rather than being reassigned. This perception has to do not only with changing Brotherhood practices, but also the manner in which the Invisible Man departed back at the end of Chapter Eighteen:

"I couldn't bring myself to say good-bye to anyone...I simply slipped my papers into my brief case and left as though going downtown for a meeting" (408). 

The Invisible Man discovers through Barrelhouse that "'lots of folks who got jobs through you people (the Brotherhood) have lost them'" including '"people in [the] organization'" itself (426). The Invisible Man returns to the Harlem headquarters only to discover that the Harlem office has been emptied and basically shut down Even Brother Tarp, who lived in the headquarters, is nowhere to be found (426-27). The portrait of Frederick Douglass that Tarp gave to the Invisible Man is also missing (428).

The Invisible Man is lost between his present and past actions. In his desperation, he makes his first (subconscious) attempt to return to Mary's on 427 and reflects that "[e]verything seemed to be slipping away from me and I could find no quick absorbing action that would get it under control." Along the lines of the suspicions regarding his betrayal of his district and race voiced in Barrelhouse's bar, he comes to realize that some of his former "brothers" and "sisters" likely

"believed that [he] had requested to be transferred because I hated my own people...No doubt there would be some who'd resent my return, so it was best to confront them all at once without giving any one of them the opportunity to organize any sentiment against me" (427). 

Tod Clifton's Disappearance

When members do arrive, the Invisible Man discovers that no one knows what has happened to Tod Clifton or the Brotherhood itself.

"Not one could give me any definite information. Brother Clifton had appeared at the district as usual up to the time of his disappearance. There had been no quarrels with committee members, and he was as popular as ever. Nor had there been any clashes with Ras the Exhorter -- although in the past week he had been increasingly active. As for the loss of membership and influence, it was a result of a new program which had called for the shelving of our old techniques of agitation. There had been, to my surprise, a switch in emphasis from local issues to those more national and international in scope, and it was felt that for the moment the interests of Harlem were not of first importance. I didn't know what to make of it, since there had been no such change of program downtown" (429). 

The Invisible Man is left out of a Brotherhood meeting on 429 and wanders the streets in "new summer shoes" that he purchases until he comes upon the lookout for a street vendor selling "some kind of toy":

"at my feet I saw a square piece of cardboard upon which something was moving with furious action. It was some kind of toy and I glanced at the crowd's fascinated eyes and down again, seeing it clearly this time. I'd seen nothing like it before. A grinning doll of orange-and-black tissue paper with thin flat cardboard disks forming its head and feet and which some mysterious mechanism was causing to move up and down in a loose-jointed, shoulder-shaking, infuriatingly sensuous motion, a dance that was completely detached from the black, mask-like face. It's no jumping jack, but what, I thought, seeing the doll throwing itself about with the fierce defiance of someone performing a degrading act in public, dancing as though it received a perverse pleasure from its motions" (431).

The spiel of the street vendor, whom the Invisible Man quickly identifies as Clifton, is given on 431-434:

"Shake it up! Shake it up!
He's Sambo, the dancing doll, ladies and gentlemen, 
Shake him, stretch him by the neck and set him down, 
--He'll do the rest. Yes!

He'll make you laugh, he'll make you sight, si-igh. 
He'll make you want to dance, and dance --
[...]
Buy one for your baby. Take him to your girl friend and she'll
love you, loovve you!
He'll keep you entertained. He'll make you weep sweet -- 
Tears from laughing
[...]
What makes him happy, what makes him dance, 
This Sambo, this jambo, this high-stepping joy boy?
He's more than a toy, ladies and gentlemen, he's Sambo, the 
dancing doll, the twentieth-century miracle.
[...]
Sambo-Woogie, you don't have to feed him, he sleeps collapsed, 
he'll kill your depression
And your dispossesion, he lives upon the sunshine of your lordly
smile
And only twenty-five cents, the brotherly two bits of a dollar be-
cause he wants me to eat.
It gives him pleasure to see me eat.
You simply take him and shake him...and he does the rest" (431-33).

The Invisible Man does not immediately recognize the vendor as Clifton, even given the diction of his sales pitch. At first he is "held by the inanimate, boneless bouncing of the grinning doll and strugged between the desire to join in the laughter and to leap upon it with both feet" until he recognizes that

"the voice didn't go with the hand. It was a though I had waded out into a shallow pool only to have the bottom drop out and the water close over my head...'Not you...' I began. But his eyes looked past me deliberately unseeing. I was paralyzed, looking at him, knowing I wasn't dreaming" (432). 

Clifton himself has assumed a peculiar stride and attitude, "riding easily back and forth in his knees, flexing his legs without moving his feet, his right shoulder raised at an angle and his arm pointing stiffly at the bouncing doll as he spieled from the corner of his mouth" (433). Clifton continues in his pitch, pointing out that there is "'no license'" required to obtain this "'little...joy spreader'" because "'[y]ou can't tax joy.'"

The Invisible Man is horrified by these caricatures and the fact that instead of striving to meaningfully assist the public, Clifton has become a street huckster seeking to make a profit through the sale of controversially entertaining items. Clifton's sell-out is even more offensive to the Invisible Man than if he had gone over to Ras's side to step up what Ras understands as their racial responsibilities (as black men).

"For a second our eyes met and he gave me a contemptuous smile, then he spieled again. I felt betrayed. I looked at the doll and felt my throat constrict. The rage welled behind the phlegm" (433). 

He tries to disrupt Clifton's pitch, but the crowd is resistant. They prefer entertainment to efforts to promote the Brotherhood's self-interested science which ultimately does not seek to benefit the black (or, one might argue, any other particular) community or group of individuals. Clifton relocates around the corner and the Invisible Man tries to avoid encountering him again.

"What a way to find him, I thought. What had happened to Clifton? It was all so wrong, so unexpected. How on earth could he drop from Brotherhood to this in so short a time? And why if he had to fall back did he try to carry the whole structure with him? What would non-members who knew him say? It was as though he had chosen -- how had he put it the night he fought with Ras? -- to fall outside of history...'To plunge,' he had said. But he knew that only in the Brotherhood could we make ourselves known, could we avoid being empty Sambo dolls. Such an obscene flouncing of everything human! My God! And I had been worrying about being left out of a meeting! I'd overlook it a thousand times; no matter why I wasn't called. It'd forget it and hold on desperately to Brotherhood with all my strength. For to break away would be to plunge...To plunge! And those dolls, where had they found them? Why had he picked that way to earn a quarter? Why not sell apples or song sheets, or shine shoes?" (435). 

In an almost dream-like sequence on 435-38 the Invisible Man witnesses Clifton challenge and be shot by a policeman. He wanders onto the subway at the chapter's close where he contemplates the meaning of rejecting one's place in "history":

"Why should a man deliberately plunge outside history and peddle an obscenity...Why should he choose to disarm himself, give up his voice and leave the only organization offering him a chance to 'define' himself?...Why had he turned away? Why had he chosen to step off the platform and fall beneath the train?Why did he choose to plunge into nothingness, into the void of faceless faces, of soundless voices, lying outside history? I tried to step away and look at it from a distance of words read in books, half-remembered. For history records the patterns of men's lives, they say...All things, it is said, are duly recorded -- all things of importance, that is. But not quite, for actually it is only the known, the seen, the heard, and only those events that the recorder regards as important that are put down, those lies his keepers keep their power by. 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 defense, 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?
"What did they ever think of us transitory ones? Ones such as I had been before I found Brotherhood -- birds of passage who were too obscure for learned classification, too silent for the most sensitive recorders of sound; or natures too ambiguous for the most ambiguous words, and too distant from the centers of historical decision to sign or even to applaud the signers of historical documents? We who write no novels, histories, or other books. What about us[?]" (439). 

The Invisible Man finally actually notices the people around him for the first time -- zoot suiters on 440, women shoppers on 440-41. He reflects that these young men

"speak a jived-up transitional language...think transitional thoughts, though perhaps they dream the same old ancient dreams. They were men out of time -- unless they found Brotherhood. Men out of time, who would soon be gone and forgotten...But who knew (and now I began to tremble so violently I had to lean against a refuse can) -- who knew but that they were the saviors, the true leaders, the bearers of something precious? The stewards of something uncomfortable, burdensome, which they hated because, living outside the realm of history, there was no one to applaug their value and they themselves failed to understand it. What if Brother Jack were wrong? What if history was a gambler, instead of a force in a laboratory experiment, and the boys his ace in the hole? What if history was not a reasonable citizen, but a madman full of paranoid guile and these boys his agents, his big surprise! His own revenge? For they were outside, in the dark with Sambo, the dancing paper doll; taking it on the lambo with my fallen brother, Tod Clifton...running and dodging the forces of history instead of making a dominating stand" (441). 

He then sees a pairing of a white and a black nun and contemplates his own position "in relation to the boys," who are now reading comic books. The Invisible Man contemplates himself (and the youths) as "[p]erhaps an accident, like Douglass":

"Perhaps each hundred years or so men like them, like me, appeared in society, drifting through; and yet by all historical logic we, I, should have disappeared around the first part of the nineteenth century, rationalized out of existence.Perhaps, like them, I was a throwback, a small distant meteorite that died several hundred years ago and now lived only by virtue of the light that speeds through space at too great a pace to realize that its source has become a piece of lead" (442). 

For the first time he pays attention to and recognizes the people swarming around him and recognizes his own smallness and anonymity, even in the context of the Brotherhood. For the first time, he takes responsibility for his actions (and actions that extend beyond him) upon himself -- however rightfully:

"All our work had been very little, no great change had been made. And it was all my fault. I'd been so fascinated by the motion that I'd forgotten to measure what it was bringing forth. I'd been asleep, dreaming" (444). 

Chapter Twenty-One

Tod Clifton's Funeral
Fewer details on this chapter, though it is significant . The major consideration is why the Brotherhood objects so strongly to the funeral and the Invisible Man's role in organizing it.

The Invisible Man realizes that in lashing out against Clifton's sale of the Sambo dolls he has betrayed his "political stupidity" (445). When he examines the Sambo doll in his office he realizes how the contraption operates: "a fine black thread...Clifton had been making it dance all the time and the black thread had been invisible" (446).

The remainder of the Harlem branch finds out about Clifton on 448 and the Invisible Man unsuccessfully attempts to contact headquarters on 449. He arranges the funeral (450-459) on his own "personal responsibility" lacking the oversight of higher Brotherhood committees. He delivers an ambiguous tribute to Clifton in the form of a speech on 454-459, in which he repeatedly suggests that "Clifton believed in Brotherhood," an endorsement that the Brotherhood -- we discover in Chapter Twenty-Two --  is unwilling to permit.

Chapter Twenty-Two

To properly comprehend this chapter it is important to note three elements of the Invisible Man's involvement in the Brotherhood:
1) He conceives of the organization as one where African American individuals can develop as individuals
2) He understands himself as being in a position of legitimate leadership and capable of acting on his own "personal responsibility" (463)
3) He still fails to understand why he was moved from Harlem (individuality, emotional vs. scientific appeals, mob-like popularity vs. informed membership). See back in Chapter 20:

As for the loss of membership and influence, it was a result of a new program which had called for the shelving of our old techniques of agitation. There had been, to my surprise, a switch in emphasis from local issues to those more national and international in scope, and it was felt that for the moment the interests of Harlem were not of first importance (429). 

The Invisible Man has gone back to Harlem and has been left intentionally uninformed so that the Brotherhood can see what he will do. He organizes and delivers the speech at Clifton's funeral (as an individual leader) and does so in the name of the Brotherhood. See the debate over "personal responsibility" starting on 463-464.

The Invisible Man discovers that the Brotherhood likely knowingly alienated Clifton in addition to their objections to the funeral beginning on 466:

(Brother Jack) "'Under your leadership, a traitorous merchant of vile instruments of anti-Negro, anti-minority racist bigotry has received the funeral of a hero. Do you still ask what's wrong?'"

The Invisible Man insists that he has only "'dramatized the shooting down of an unarmed black man,'" but Jack insists that this "'black man, as you call him, was a traitor'" (467). The Invisible Man insists upon the popular appeal of the event as well as its ability to incite support for the movement on 467: "'But hell, isn't the shooting of an unarmed man of more importance than the fact that he sold obscene dolls?'"

A misunderstanding develops when the Invisible Man responds to objections to his drawing out mass support from the black community in racially charged terms starting on 468. He objects to what he comprehends as a racial discrepancy in the movement when the Brotherhood members and Brother Jack object to his reliance on "personal responsibility" rather than awaiting orders.

(Brother Jack) "'Don't twist my meaning. For all of us, the committee does the thinking. For all of us. And you were hired to talk...We furnish all ideas. We have some acute ones. Ideas are part of our apparatus. Only the correct ideas for the correct occasion.'"
(IM) "'And suppose you misjudge the occasion?'"
(Jack) "'Should that ever happen, you keep quiet.'"
(IM) "'Even though I am correct?'"
(Jack) "'You say nothing unless it is passed by the committee. Otherwise I suggest you keep saying the last thing you were told.
(IM) "'And when my people demand that I speak?'"
(Jack) "'The committee will have an answer!...Let us handle the theory and the business of strategy....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 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 of the people of Harlem'" (470). 

The Invisible Man continues to insist on the validity of his own "'political consciousness of Harlem'" in spite of all of the committee members' objections (471).  The Brotherhood is also unwilling to allow that there are things (like community or racial issues) that their science fails to explain. When the Invisible Man mentions that Harlem residents have begun to "'insult me and accuse us of betraying them,'" Jack calls out his report as "'an indefensible lie'" (472).

Ellison's references to the "'great white father'" and "'Marse Jack'" on 473 invoke an array of earlier themes:  the reefer dream in the introduction in which a slave woman who has poisoned her master and the father of her sons reveals her mixed emotions (11), the vets' comments about Norton -- "'it's Thomas Jefferson'" (77-8), and his comparison of Master the bulldog with the crowd at his first Brotherhood speech and with Jack himself (338).

Jack insists that he is "'[n]ot their father, [but] their leader,'" that the Brotherhood knows best, and that the organization does "'not shape [their] policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they think but to tell them!'" (473).

Another early motif of blindness is rounded out at the close of the chapter through Jack's glass eye (474). The Invisible Man's shock over the false eye and empty socket leads Jack to label him "'a sentimentalist'" and to go on to clarify that he "'lost [his] eye in the line of duty'" (475).

Note prior invocations of blindness (this is not a complete list):

- Invisibility of some persons as a "peculiar disposition of the eyes...with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality" (3)
- The man that doesn't see him and whom he beats in the introduction (4)
- Blindfolding at the battle royal (21-25)
- The revelation of Reverend Barbee's blindness following his speech back in the college chapel on 133
- The Invisible Man waking from his dream and actually seeing the people around him on 438-44
- The Invisible Man's blindness throughout the development of the plot

The chapter closes with the Brotherhood reasserting its discipline over the Invisible Man and Jack redefining "'Personal Responsibility'" as "'sacrifice, sacrifice, SACRIFICE'" (475). The Invisible Man realizes that the Brotherhood members do "'not-see'" him (477) and questions which of Jack's eyes is "really the blind one" (478).

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Invisible Man walks by the efforts stemming from Clifton's funeral at the opening of Chapter Twenty-Three including a bar argument, "a group of civil-liberties workers circulating a petition demanding the dismissal of the guilty policeman," and a sermon by the "familiar woman street preacher...about the slaughter of the innocents" (479). Rather than causing a unified response, the Invisible Man's efforts have given rise to the emergence of "[l]ittle groups" (479). 

The Invisible Man is mobbed by Ras and his followers on 480-82. In escaping from Ras's "'goons'" he finds himself on Lenox avenue where he buys a pair of sunglasses with the "darkest lenses [he] could find" (482). These dark glasses disguise his identity and make him see the world differently, "swarmed in a green vagueness" (483). He is mistaken for Rinehart first by a woman who flirts with him until she discovers that he is not who he appears to be and warns him that he had "'better not let him catch you pretending to be him.'" Disguised, he heads back to the meeting, and on the way he is waylaid by men seeking to play the numbers game: "'Rinehart, poppa, tell us what you putting down'" (484). He does not initially put all of this together -- "Who was this Rinehart and what was he putting down? I'd have to learn more about him to avoid further misidentifications" (484).  

On 485, Ras the Exhorter (first introduced by name back on 365) is reborn as "Ras the DESTROYER" and in fleeing this new incarnation, the Invisible Man finds himself back (unrecognized) at Barrelhouse's bar where he starts a fight with his former-brother Maceo (487-490). More Rinehart misidentifications follow on 490-91, eventually taking the specific form of being mistaken for "'Rine the runner'" or "'Rinehart the number man'" (491). 

Note that the theme of lotteries or "playing the numbers" courses throughout the novel:

- The Invisible Man claims to have won the money he gives to Mary (really his first Brotherhood funding) by, in Mary's words, "'playing the numbers'" (324). 

- Ras argues that "'white folks'" have taken over '"the numbers racket'" as well as "'all the stores'" in Harlem on 374. 

In being mistaken for Rinehart, he realizes that a man who looks basically like himself (black, disguised) is a major force in the community invisible to the Brotherhood or other institutionally governed structures of power, or operating under the table, as with the cops who insist that he "'better have [their] cut in the right place'" on 492. On 494 Rinehart becomes even more multiplicitous when his familiar nickname "'Bliss'" is added to the catalog of the Invisible Man's mistaken identities. 

More layers of identity -- as opposed to clarification -- are suggested on 495, where Rinehart is specifically identified by a bill handed out outside of his "'Holy Way Station'" as "'Rev. B.P. Rinehart, Spiritual Technologist'" (495). This promotional bill suggests that his power is not limited to Harlem but extends throughout "Way Stations in New Orleans, the home of mystery, / Birmingham, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and L.A." The Invisible Man is thus invited to bring his problems to God through Rinehart the middle-man and to join the Holy Way Station "'in the NEW REVELATION of the / OLD TIME RELIGION'" (495). He briefly enters the Harlem Way Station on 496-498 where he is led to reflect that the world is actually an enormous realm full of possibility where one man could 

"be all of them: Rine the runner and Rine the gambler and Rine the briber and Rine the lover and Rinehart the Reverend? Could he be both rind and heart? What is real anyway?" (498).

Rinehart symbolically embodies the possibilities that the vet told Invisible Man about back on 156: "'the world is possibility if only you'll discover it.'"

"He was a broad man, a man of parts who got around. Rinehart the rounder. It was true as I was true. His world was possibility and he knew it. He was years ahead of me and I was a fool. I must have been crazy and blind. The world in which we lived was without boundaries. A vast seething, hot world of fluidity, and Rine the rascal was at home. Perhaps only Rine the rascal was at home in it. It was unbelievable, but perhaps only the unbelievable could be believed. Perhaps the truth was always a lie (498)...All boundaries down, freedom was not only the recognition of necessity, it was the recognition of possibility. And sitting there trembling I caught a brief glimpse of the possibilities posed by Rinehart's multiple personalities and turned away. It was too vast and confusing to contemplate" (499). 

While the Brotherhood (and particularly Hambro) keep counciling him on "'Sacrifice'" he comes to realize that the Brotherhood and their ideology are "all a swindle, an obscene swindle!" (507) He decides to "accept" the world in all of its possibility and vows now to "explore it, rine and heart...I didn't know what my grandfather had meant, but I was ready to test his advice" (508). 

"They were forcing me to Rinehart methods, so bring on the scientists" (512). 

4/10 Class Cancelled (see email)

Hello all, 

I'm caught up dealing with a car issue that I hoped would be resolved before today's class. Since there is no presentation scheduled for today, I'm going to go ahead and cancel class. 

Check back on the blog this weekend for feedback on your essay idea posts as well as a list of potential critical sources for next week's essay topic assignment (a brief description of your prospective topic is due by midnight next Sunday 4/20). 

On Tuesday, we'll discuss Invisible Man through page 512 (the end of Chapter 23). 

Feel free to send along any essay topic inquiries. 

Best,

Catherine

Chapter 17 & 18

Presentation by Cathlin O'Reilly

The invisible man is chosen as the “chief spokesperson of the Harlem district”(Ellison 369). His studies with Hambro have progressed well, but brother Jack advises him to “say what the people want to hear, but say it in such a way that they’ll do what we wish”(Ellison 359). This is ironic because the brotherhood has been successful at getting the invisible man to do what they want. The invisible man is blinded by their manipulation. Brother Jack informs the invisible man that he “will have freedom of action—and [he] will be under strict discipline to the committee” (Ellison 360). This contradictory statement says that the narrator is both free and subject to the commands of the committee.

The next morning, at the Brotherhood meeting, we encounter Tod Clifton, an important figure who serves as the youth leader in the Harlem district. Since the narrator just got appointed as the spokesman of the Harlem district, he initially sees Clifton as “a possible rival” (Ellison 363), but end up working very well together. They discuss innovative strategies for working with the Harlem community as well as explain the concern for Ras the Exhorter, a black nationalist who opposes cooperation between races. Sure enough, during the narrator’s speech, Ras and his followers interrupt, transforming it into a street fight. Another inconsistent statement of the brotherhood is displayed in their meeting when the brothers stress that they will not act with “any aggressive violence” (Ellison 365), but end up in an intense fight between the groups.

Black Nationalist Flag

The diction and language that Ellison uses for Ras makes him seem as if he has a Jamaican accent. (i.e. “mahn”, “understahnding”(Ellison372)). These characteristics resemble a real life historic individual, Marcus Garvey, who pushed for black rights more than anything.

The next day at the office, Brother Tarp gives a portrait of Frederick Douglas to the narrator and tells him to “look at him once in a while” (Ellison 378). The narrator and Frederick Douglass show distinct similarities in the fact that they both experienced sudden rise to importance. They also used their power in speeches by moving the audience with their brilliant oratory skills.

The invisible man’s grandfather is a constant figure in most of his dreams. The narrator remembers his grandfather’s words about transformation, which are “you start up Saul and end up Paul…When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul—though you still Sauls around on the side”(Ellison 381). His grandfather compares one’s conversion to a man in the bible. Saul started off as a young and naïve individual, but eventually became a wise apostle of Jesus and changed his name to Paul. The narrator’s experiences helped shape and change into his new identity. He is not the same man as he was in college, but he still holds similar characteristics.

The invisible man receives a mysterious letter warning him to “not go too fast” (Ellison 383) and that “this is a white man’s world” (383). The Invisible man is very puzzled and goes to Brother Tarp for help on identifying the unknown source but Brother Tarp tells him not to worry. Brother Tarp talks about his past and gives the narrator part of his chain link when he was imprisoned. The link reminds him of one on Bledsoe’s desk, except Tarp’s is one “made by the blade of a hatchet” (Ellison 389). The worn and rough chain resembles the hardships and unfairness that he has encountered.

In the encounter with Brother Wrestrum, he tells the narrator that he has enemies both in and out of the brotherhood. Wrestrum says that some are “just in it to use it for their own ends” (Ellison 393). A magazine editor calls the narrator for an interview and he repeatedly declines recommending Clifton for the interview. A couple weeks later, the invisible mans is charged by “using the Brotherhood movement to advance his own selfish interest”(Ellison 400). This is an ironic because Brother Wrestrum acts as an enemy by making a false accusation against the narrator. In reality brother Wrestrum tries to advance his own power because he thinks his position is being threatened. The narrator is then given a choice to leave the organization or lecture on the “Woman Question”.

Questions

1. Why do we still not know the Invisible man’s name after his new identity?

2. Who do you think wrote the letter to the Invisible man?

3. Do the grandfather and Mr. Norton resemble Brother Tarp in any way? What are their similarities and differences?

Invisible Man, Chapters 17-18

Chapter 17:

Harlem headquarters of the Communist Party

Harlem District of the Brotherhood

After four months of training, see 356, the Invisible Man is made the "'chief spokesman of the Harlem District'" (359). He has "seen very little of Brother Jack" since he began his studies with Brother Hambro and his life became "too tightly organized" (357). The Invisible Man likes Hambro -- "[a] tall, friendly man, a lawyer and the Brotherhood's chief theoretician" -- but calls him a "hard taskmaster."

"Between daily discussions with him (Hambro) and a rigid schedule of reading, I had been working harder than I'd ever found necessary at college. Even my nights were organized; every evening found me at some rally or meeting in one of the many districts (though this was my first trip to Harlem since my speech) where I'd sit on the platform with the speakers, making notes to be discussed with him (Hambro) the next day. Every occasion became a study situation, even the parties that sometimes followed the meetings. During these I had to make mental notes on the ideological attitudes revealed in the guests' conversations. But I had soon learned the method in it: Not only had I been learning many aspects of the Brotherhood's policy and its approach to various social groupings, but the city-wide membership had grown familiar with me. My part in the eviction was kept very much alive, and although I was under orders to make no speeches, I had grown accustomed to being introduced as a kind of hero.

"Yet it had been mainly a time for listening and, being a talker, I had grown impatient. Now I knew most of the Brotherhood arguments so well -- those I doubted as well as those I believed -- that I could repeat them in my sleep" (357-58). 

The Invisible Man says as much (excepting the part about his doubts) to Brother Jack: "'I've worked pretty hard trying to master the ideology'" (359), to which Jack responds:

"'Master it...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 a way that they'll do what we wish...Remember too, that theory always comes after practice. Act first, theorize later; that's also a formula, a devastatingly effective one!'" 

"He looked at me as though he did not see me and I could not tell whether he was laughing at or with me. I was sure only that he was laughing" 

"'Yes...I'll try to master all that is required'"

"'You can...And now you don't have to worry about the brothers' criticism. Just throw some ideology back at them and they'll leave you alone -- provided, of course, that you have the right backing and produce the required results'"  (359).

Recall the Invisible Man's earlier recollections of "Master, the bulldog" and his resemblance to both the crowd and Jack back in Chapter 15:

"My mind flowed. There was a child standing in rompers outside a chicken-wire fence, looking in upon a huge black-and-white dog, log-chained to an apple tree. It was Master, the bulldog; and I was the child who was afraid to touch him, although, panting with heat, he seemed to grin back at me like a fat good-natured man, the saliva roping silvery from his jowls. And as the voices of the crowd churned and mounted and became an impatient splatter of hand claps, I thought of Master's low hoarse growl. He had barked the same note when angry or when being brought his dinner, when lazily snapping flies, or when tearing an intruder to shreds. I liked, but didn't trust old Master; I wanted to please, but did not trust the crowd. Then I looked at Brother Jack and grinned: That was it; in some ways, he was like a toy bull terrier" (338).

Jack takes the Invisible Man to visit his new office in Harlem where he meets Brother Tarp on 360-62. His first meeting with the Harlem branch and Brother Tod Clifton, in whom the Invisible Man initially "[s]ense[s] a possible rival" (363) occurs on 362-367.

Marcus Garvey -- both an inspiration and "not" (see Art of Fiction interview)

Ras the Exhorter

The Brotherhood discusses the threat of Ras the Exhorter on 365. Clifton arrives late (a practice that the regulated and organized Brotherhood resents) with a bandage on his cheek:

(Brother Jack) "'Ah, so, Brother Tod Clifton is late...Our leader of the youth is late. Why is this?'"
(Clifton) "'I had to see the doctor...Just a little encounter with the nationalists. With Ras the Exhorter's boys'"

The Invisible Man does not initially realize that the speaker he saw angrily addressing a crowd on his first walk through Harlem on 159-161 is the same person that Jack describes as "'the wild man who calls himself a black nationalist'" (364), whom a sister refers to Ras as the "'Extorter'" on 365, and who antagonizes black members of the Brotherhood for cooperating with whites in the organization (370-376). Brother Jack insists that the Brotherhood is

 "'against violence and terror and provocation of any kind -- aggressive, that is...We will not countenance any aggressive violence. Understand? Nor attacks upon officials or others who do not attack us. We are against all forms of violence, do you understand?'" (365). 

Any fighting the black Brothers do with Ras is supposed be defensive in order to be countenanced or publicly recognized or endorsed by the Brotherhood.

Clifton considers their actions in terms of Marcus Garvey -- a figure with more in common in terms of his agenda with Ras. Garvey is mentioned earlier in the eviction scene when the Invisible Man notices a newspaper clipping about his 1927 deportation from the United States back to Jamaica (272). This reference indicates that Clifton is not strictly tied to the Brotherhood agenda. The Invisible Man insists "'Well, we're not Garvey, and he didn't last'" and starts trying to do all he can to make the Brotherhood a popular success.

They encounter Ras in person on 368 and the public speech the Invisible Man is delivering swiftly turns into a street battle in which the lines between defense and offense are blurred (369-377). The Invisible Man sees Clifton punching Ras on 369-70 and they both (Clifton more than the Invisible Man) listen to what Ras has to say about their duty to the universal black race.

"'Mahn...I ought to kill you. Godahm, I ought to kill you and the world be better off. But you black mahn. Why you be black, mahn? I swear I ought to kill you. No mahn strike the Exhorter, godahmit, no man...'

("sobbing") 'Why you with these white folks? Why? I been watching you you a long time. I say to myself, 'Soon he get smart and get tired. He get out of that t'ing.' Why a good boy like you still with them?'

'You my brother, mahn. Brothers are the same color; how the hell you call these white men brother?...Brothers the same color. We sons of Mama Africa, you done forgot? You black, BLACK...You got bahd hair! You got thick lips! They say you stink! They hate you, mahn. You African. AFRICAN! Why you with them? Leave that shit, mahn. They sell you out. That shit is old-fashioned. They enslave us -- you forget that? How can they mean a black mahn any good? How they going to be your brother?'" (370-71)

[The Invisible Man hits Ras with a pipe, "suddenly hot with fear and hate" (371)]

'And you mahn...a reg'lar little black devil! A godahm sly mongoose! Where you think you from, going with the white folks? I know...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 your 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 rabble 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?'

'I talk! Bust me with the pipe but, by God, you listen to the Exhorter! Come in with us, mahn. We build a glorious movement of black people. Black People!  What they do, give you money? Who wahnt the dahm stuff? Their money bleed black blood, mahn. It's unclean!...Money without dignity'" (371)

 Ras refuses to be called "'crazy'" by these Brotherhood members. To his mind, Clifton and the Invisible Man are crazy for betraying their race through cooperating with whites:

"'Me crazy...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 understahnding? Is that the modern black mahn of the twentieth century?...Is that self-respect -- black against black? What they give you to betray -- their women? You fall for that?'" (372). 

"'Women...is that equality? Is that the black mahn's freedom?...What they do to my people? Where is your brains?...They betray you and you betray the black people. They tricking you, mahn. Let them fight among themselves. Let 'em kill off one another. We organize -- organization is good -- but we organize black. BLACK!'"

"'When the black mahn going to tire of this childish perfidity (perfidy)? He got you so you don't trust your black intelligence. You young, don't play yourself cheap, mahn. Don't deny you'self! It took a billion gallons of black blood to make you. Recognize you'self inside and you wan the kings among men! A mahn knows he's a mahn when he got not'ing, when he's naked -- nobody have to tell him that...You young and intelligent. You black and beautiful...You wasn't them t'ings you be dead, mahn. Dead! I'd have killed you, mahn. Ras the Exhorter raised up his knife and tried to do it, but he could not do it. Why don't you do it? I ask myself...but somet'ing tell me, 'No, no! You might be killing your black king!' And I say, yas, yas! So I accept your humiliating ahction. Ras recognized your black possibilities, mahn. Ras would not sahcrifice his black brother to the white enslaver. Instead he cry...So why don't you recognize your black duty, mahn, and come jine us?'" (373-74). 

Ras has his own strange code of honor and does not kill Clifton because he is a fellow black man, however misguided Ras thinks that Clifton is. Even within the Brotherhood, race continues to be a significant issue at the Harlem branch regardless of their acceptance within the larger institution of the Party.

Black Nationalism Links:

Martin Delany accused Harriet Beecher Stowe of supporting colonization -- namely emigration to Liberia, which he called... Delany would later advocate emigration to eastern (rather than western) Africa and ultimately attempted to secure the office of American consul to Liberia.

Marcus Garvey 

Malcolm X -- see additional readings below. 

Portrait of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

Brother Tarp gives the Invisible Man a portrait of escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass on 378, and the Invisible Man moves forward with remaking his own identity. 

Just as Douglass traded out the last name of his master (Bailey) for Douglass, the Invisible Man enters public life with his new name and "almost laughed into the phone when [he] heard the director of the Men's House address me with profound respect" (379). You might consider the focus on changing identities over time expressed by another one of his grandfather's sayings that he recalls on 381: 

"'You start Saul, and end up Paul...When you're a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts trying to be Paul -- though you still Sauls around on the side.'" 

Chapter 18:

The Anonymous Letter (383)

Leg irons

The Invisible Man has full faith and confidence in the Brotherhood at the end of chapter 17 that is immediately shaken as 18 opens with an anonymous letter.

Brother Tarp helps him regain his equilibrium by telling him his own story of escaping from a chain gang on 386-390. 

Brother Wrestrum immediately objects to the chain link that Tarp has given him on the basis of the Brotherhood needing to avoid "'dramatiz[ing] our differences'" (392). This reminder of inequality and criminality is not a unifying device, to Wrestrum's mind. He also objects to the Invisible Man's self-aggrandizement or self-interested promotion of his own persona at the expense of the rest of the party. 

While Wrestrum's allegations on 398-402 are certainly exaggerated -- "'I'm exposing a double-dealer...Brother's this man is a pure dee opportunist!'" and a "'petty individualist'" -- the basis of his charge is borne out by the Invisible Man's complaint on 404 that "'he attacked my reputation'" (404).

The Invisible Man continues to think of himself as an individual striving to advance. He realizes that this desire is somewhat antiquated and that he "had almost allowed an old, southern backwardness which I had thought dead to wreck [his] career" (408), especially in his initial resistance to his reassignment to "The Woman Question."

Individual notoriety

Supplemental Readings:

For Thursday, 4/10: W.E.B. Du Bois's "Application for Membership in the Communist Party of the USA" (1961) ~2 pages

For next week (4/15-17):  "The Art of Fiction" -- an interview with Ralph Ellison, Paris Review, Spring 1955. ~8 PDF pages. 

• See especially page 212 (PDF page 2) and their discussion from the paragraph break on the bottom of 216-224 (PDF pages 4-8).

Additional Sources (not required reading)

Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (1965, excerpts -- not the best copy)

• See "A Declaration of Independence" (18-22, PDF pages 2-4)
• "The Black Revolution" (45-57, PDF pages 5-12)
• "Uncle Toms" (derogatory usage) on 160, PDF page 15
• Answer to "What do you think is responsible for race prejudice in the U.S.?" (212, PDF page 19)
• Shift from desiring a black state in 1965 (212-213, PDF page 19)
• "How to Organize the People" (214, PDF page 20) -- esp. with regard to Ras
• Factionalism in New York (222, PDF page 21)

***************************

4/8: In-class Assignment 

Consider the approach you took to Invisible Man in Close Reading #3. Make an individual comment of at least 100 words considering ways you might add to this reading for Essay #2. You might mention: 

- major themes, characters, or issues you're interested in 

- potential passages for a second close reading for the essay

- confusions or uncertainties

Changing Images in Invisible Man Chapters 15-16

Presentation by Darcy Child

In Chapter 15 the narrator literally and figuratively breaks the image of the ideal black man, which he has believed for so long. The invisible man awakens and notices a figure that he has never seen before. 

"the cast-iron figure of a very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro, whose white eyes stared up at me from the floor, his face an enormous grin, his single large black hand held palm up before his chest. It was a bank, a piece of early Americana, the kind of bank which, if a coin is placed in the hand and a lever pressed upon the back, will raise its arm and flip the coin into the grinning mouth" (319) 

This bank angers the narrator very much and he breaks it without thinking. This could be a symbol for the invisible man before he had his “rebirth” in the hospital; his college days. He was focused on pleasing the white men and would smile for them in order to get ahead in life (i.e. money). Just as he did not notice the offensive statue, he also did not realize how is behavior was offensive to himself and his race as well. The invisible man has a sort of awakening and comes to terms with the idea that what he is used to is not always right. 

After breaking the offensive bank, the narrator tries to get rid of it, but he can never quite seem to get away from it. The bank follows him around until he gives in and puts it in his briefcase. He wants to move on with his life and make a name for himself as an individual, but the broken bank is now with him and serves as the man he is expected to be. 

In the end of the chapter the Invisible Man he sees he is mentioned in the news for his involvement in the eviction riot. He is proud of this image of himself, but he is not mentioned by name, only as “unknown,” so the one instance in which he could have his own image is tainted by invisibleness. 

Chapter 16 continues this theme of images through the Invisible Man’s speech. The narrator gets a new suit, adopts his new name, and essentially takes on a whole new persona, giving off a new image with the brotherhood. He gives the speech in a boxing ring, which recalls his old image: obedience. The light in the boxing ring blinds him, so he has no image of the audience. He gives an emotional speech that resonates with the crowd, but not the brotherhood. The Brotherhood does not like the image he is giving off and insist that he go see a special brother to refine his speaking skills. They want to mold him into their collective image vs. the invisible man’s desire to have his own self-image. This difference in desired images creates a sense that the invisible man does not really understand what the brotherhood means, he goes on to say that 

“For the first time, lying there in the dark, I could glimpse the possibility of being more than a member of a race. It was no dream, the possibility existed. I had only to work and learn and survive in order to go to the top” (355).

This contradicts the brotherhood’s image of collectiveness, but the invisible man does not realize this yet. 

Questions 

1. What qualities of the bank in Mary’s house are similar to qualities of the invisible man? 

2. Do you think that by giving in and keeping the broken bank in his briefcase, the invisible man is holding on to the old image of himself? 

3. Do you think that there are any similarities between the brotherhood and Bledsoe in shaping the images of their followers?

Invisible Man, Chapters 12-13

Yams != sweet potatoes (262-67)

End of Chapter 11 -- broad thematic connections:

Blondes:

Note the "platinum blonde" on the subway:

 "Across the aisle a young platinum blonde nibbled at a red Delicious apple as station lights srippled past behind her" (250)

vs. the blonde at the Battle Royale:

"A sea of faces, some hostile, some amused, ringed around us, and in the center, facing us, stood a magnificent blonde -- stark naked...I was strongly attracted and looked in spite of myself. Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked. The hair was yellow like that of a circus kewpie doll, the face heavily powdered and rouged, as though to form an abstract mask, the eyes hollow and smeared a cool blue, the color of a baboon's butt" (19).

Apples:

Note the "red Delicious apple" (250) mentioned way back in Chapter Two as Trueblood describes the harassment he and his family have incurred from the "biggity school folks up on the hill" (52) and the assistance of "white folks" (53).

The Invisible Man watches Trueblood bite into a plug of chewing tobacco" when "Something tinkled against the porch and I picked it up, gazing at it from time to time. It was a hard red apple stamped out of tin" (53).

Chapter 12:

After being discharged from the factory hospital, the Invisible Man is assisted by a woman called "Miss Mary"(Mary Rambo). Mary is a new human mother figure who is certainly not insignificantly named.

In Chapter 12 alone she takes him in and nurses him back to a state resembling health (252-3) and attempts to awaken a sense of racial responsibility in the Invisible Man:

"'What you plan to make out of yourself'...'So what's wrong with being an educator?' (254)....'whatever it is (you do), I hope it's something that's a credit to the race'...'It's you young folks what's going to make the changes...Ya'll's the ones. You got to lead and you fot to fight and more us all on up a little higher. And I tell you something else, it's the ones from the South that's got to do it, them what knows the fire and ain't forgot how it burns. Up here too many forgits. They finds a place for theyselves and forgits the ones on the bottom. Oh, heap of them talks about doing things, but they done really forgot. No it's you young ones what has to remember and take the lead'" (255).

Mary draws him away from the challenging masculine environment of the Men's House where he no longer fits in, especially after his actions on 257-8 into a residence that more closely resembles a family home led by "a force, a stable, familiar force like something out of my past which kept me from whirling off into some unknown which I dared not face" (258). The Invisible Man appreciates this, though he does get annoyed by "her constant talk about leadership and responsibility," particularly when he encounters difficulties finding work.

"It was a most painful position, for at the same time, Mary reminded by constantly that something was expected of me, some act of leadership, some newsworthy achievement; and I was torn between resenting her for it and loving her for the nebulous hope she kept alive" (258). 

Here, the Invisible Man will struggle to make peace with himself, his past, his future, and his prospects. He no longer has the same plans he had before and he appears to alternate between blissful recollection of the south (the yams on 263-66) and the desire for mockery and vengeance on its most prominent figures (265).

Chapter 13:

Yams: 

Why is the IM attracted to the yams?
What is the significance of his: - claim that it is good just from looking at it, and the man’s advice to try it first - choice to eat it while walking down the street (264)
- thoughts about shame and public actions (265)
- accusations about Bledsoe’s chitterling habit
- return to get more yams and claim that they are his “‘birthmark’” (266)
- why he doesn’t think that he will be able to enjoy the hot fried pies?

Yams and the Invisible Man's attitude towards the South/home
What does he find when he walks away after finishing his yams? How does it make him feel? (267-75)

Event: The Eviction Speech

What drives the IM to act? (270-75)
What are the points of the IM’s speech? Is it totally contradictory? Does he actually instigate the protest? (275-281)
The Invisible Man feels identification, pity, and shame when he looks at all of the household articles and significations of family:

"an ornate greeting card with the message 'Grandma, I love you' in childish scrawl; another card with a picture of what looked like a white man in black-face seated at the door of a cabin strumming a banjo beneath a bar of music and the lyric 'Going back to my old cabin home'...an old breast pump with rubber bulb yellowed with age, a worn baby shoe and a dusty lock of infant hair tied with a faded and crumpled blue ribbon...[and] lapsed life insurance policies with perforated seals stamped 'Void'" (272).

 His speech seeks to vindicate their human dignity (with mixed effects) against his sense of "dispossession," which is mixed with

"a pang of vague recognition: this junk...all throbbed within me with more meaning than there should have been. And why did I, standing in the crowd, see like a vision my mother hanging wash on a cold windy day....why were they causing me discomfort so far beyond their intrinsic meaning as objects" (273). 

He draws attention to the familiar articles referenced above in his speech on 277 and on 278 suggests that the old people "'look like my mama and my papa and my grandma and grandpa, and I look like you and you look like me'" (278).

In the second half of Invisible Man, the main character encounters various substitutions for biological family and for traditional authority. The Brotherhood enter into the plot as an alternative to Mary's economical housekeeping and programs of redemption. Mary simply sees the Invisible Man as a smart young man, but she insists he personally bear the responsibility for the improvement of the race (255). At the same time, she takes care of the Invisible Man without expecting anything in return. He ends up rejecting the maternal environment of Mary's on the basis of the "odor of [her] cabbage...a depressing reminder of the leaner years of my childhood" (296). He realizes that he is costing Mary too much and providing too little -- he is a ward or charge and not an equal. He sets off to meet up with the brotherhood on 298 in order to make money and, he thinks, do so on his own terms.

Brothers 

By 295, the Invisible Man has written off all of his early training and aspirations as mere "Bledsoeing" (295). Bledsoe is no longer an idealistic father figure that he aspires to be liked by or to imitate, but a hypocritical and ridiculous example of what southern social institutions once encouraged him to aspire toward. The "Brotherhood" is a more inclusive and fully developed manifestation of the union of "brothers" that the Invisible Man encountered in the union meeting at Liberty Paints on 219-223.

The Brotherhood, on the other hand, are neither interested in genuinely benefiting the Invisible Man as an individual or helping him to develop as an individual -- they want him to represent his race within their organization and to do so in specific and calculated ways. Yet, the Invisible Man appreciates that the Brotherhood, more than any other social group he has ever encountered, accept him on his own terms as an equal individual.

Brother Jack first addresses the Invisible Man as "brother" on 289 and the Invisible Man has to "repres[s] an impulse to call him down about the 'brother' business." He is very reserved with Brother Jack but he does toy with him --

(Brother Jack) "'But you were concerned with that old couple...Are they relatives of yours?'"
(Invisible Man) "'Sure, we're both black'"
(Jack) "'Seriously, are they your relatives?'"
(IM) "'Sure, we were burned in the same oven.'"
The effect was electric.
(Jack) 'Why do you fellows always talk in terms of race!'" 

Is there a right and a wrong way to engage history? Brother Jack suggests that in “‘times of indecision when all the old answers are proven false, the people look back upon the dead to give them a clue.’” Do you think that this is the right approach, given his earlier disdain for old attitudes? There is “‘little the dead can do’” but they are not “‘absolutely powerless.’”

Why will Mary not do as a landlady (308-9)? Why is the IM given a new identity (309)?

What is the IM’s private attitude towards Booker T. Washington (311)?

 On 300 he walks into an entirely different world than he has ever seen before -- the social world of the Communist party in New York during the 1930s and 1940s. Among these brothers he finds himself treated as more of an equal, though his difference is still acknowledged. This fuels his belief that the party is a forum for him to be (and be appreciated for being) himself.

It is not long before Brother Jack begins suggesting a father figure for the Invisible Man to strive to publicly emulate. On 305, Jack suggests that he might become "'the new Booker T. Washington'" and goes on to state that

"'it isn't a matter of whether [the Invisible Man] wish[es] to be the new Booker T. Washington...Booker Washington was resurrected today at a certain eviction in Harlem...You shall be the new Booker T. Washington, but even greater than he'" (307). 

The Invisible Man writes off all of this talk of influence (at least somewhat) on 311:

"'But to hell with this Booker T. Washington business. I would do the work but I would be no one except myself -- whoever I was. I would pattern my life on that of the Founder. They might think that I was acting like Booker T. Washington; let them. But what I thought of myself I would keep to myself" (311). 

The final section of the reading for Tuesday in which the Invisible Man is requested to sing is significant because it functions as his initiation into this new world of "Brothers" (and "Sisters").

On 311 a member tells him that "'You're just who we need. We been looking for you'" and requests -- addressing him as "'Brother'" -- that he sing "'a spiritual...Or one of those real good ole Negro work songs'" before demonstrating the style of song himself on 312. The Invisible Man watches and listens to the reactions on the part of the party members, who shame the member who made the request. The Invisible Man remains silent until he announces the man's drunkeness and diffuses the tension by joking -- in a way no one really understands but himself -- about the meaning of the man's requests: "'He hit me in the face...with a yard of chitterlings...He threw a hog maw...He's high as a Georgia pine'" (313). The Invisible Man continues to make folksy jokes about the other man's drunkenness until race is no longer in the forefront of the situation. In this way,

 "as though I had told them something which they'd wished very much to hear, had rendered them an important service which I couldn't understand" (314)

The Invisible Man thus successfully becomes a part of the Brotherhood -- a new family predicated on theoretical beliefs of human equality and worker solidarity. At the same time, he can't help but think that they have made too big an issue of political correctness:

"But now after the mutual laughter something disturbed me. Shouldn't there be some way for us to be allowed to sing? Shouldn't the short man have the right to make a mistake without his motives being considered consciously or unconsciously malicious? After all, he was singing, or trying to. What if I asked him to sing?" (314)

What does dancing with Emma fulfill for the IM? See the veteran's contemplation of what he will do in the "'dream'" of New York back in Chapter 7: "'you might even meet a few white folks. And listen...you might even dance with a white girl'" (152). Even after the attendant Crenshaw insists that "There's other kind of freedom besides some ole white trash women,'" namely "'shows'" and "'big restaurants,'" the veteran maintains that short duration of the Invisible Man's planned stay in the city will be spent

"'working, and so much of his freedom will have to be symbolic. And what will be his or any man's most easily accessible symbol of freedom? Why, a woman, of course. In twenty minutes he can inflate that symbol with all the freedom which he'll be too busy working to enjoy the rest of the time'" (153).

 Is he comfortable with Emma and the Brotherhood (and sisters)? Is this freedom? (314-15)?
What does he admit that he dislikes about “people like Mary on 316-17?


Consider:
Chthonian
"History" -- "old people" -- etc (291).
The things about "people like Mary" that he dislikes (316)

Additional Reading for Thursday 4/3 & Tuesday 4/8 -- skim:

The Crisis, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1910-1933, magazine still exists today

1. W.E.B. Du Bois "The Negro and Communism" (from The Crisis, September 1931, 6 PDF pages)
2. -----. "The Black Worker" (from Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, 1935, 7 PDF pages)