The prologue and first four chapters of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison are filled with evocative and brutal imagery. The “us” vs. “them” racial dichotomy is often very visible. This dichotomy is illustrated when the narrator attacks a white man who insults him on the street, and when he is placed in a blind boxing ring, forced to fight other black men for the amusement of white onlookers. In Chapter Three, another similar moment is discussed by a former physician (dubbed “the vet”), now mental patient, who describes the unsettling dynamic between the invisible man and his white benefactor, Mr. Norton. In the following paragraphs, I will analyze the vet’s descriptions and explore the extent to which these two characters fulfill them.
On page 95, right after Mr. Norton is nursed back to health and is about to leave the Golden Day with the narrator, the vet proclaims he believes their arrival was “very fitting.” He describes the pair as “poor stumblers” because “neither of you [them] can see the other.” This remark continues the idea that true sight is about seeing what lies beneath the color of one’s skin-seeing into one’s soul. The narrator describes himself as an “invisible man” because those around him usually only see his physical presence as a miscellaneous black man and fail to recognize his emotions and desires. These sight concepts are reminiscent of the ideas of double consciousness proposed by Du Bois and triple consciousness proposed by Fanon.
The vet says to Mr, Norton, “to you he is a mark on the scorecard of your achievement…a black amorphous thing.” Examining the way Norton speaks to the narrator, these conclusions are not extraordinary. Norton claims he sees the narrator’s fate as intertwined with his own because Norton was one of the founders of the black college, and the narrator’s success or lack thereof will reflect his own. The narrator initially fails to understand what Norton means by this, perhaps because he sees his own success as dependent on so many more factors than just a college education. With the world’s eyes seemingly disgusted by the sight of him, determined to make him run as if on a treadmill with no promised destination (as he dreams the letters in the gifted briefcase to proclaim), the odds are against him. One seemingly well-wishing white man cannot change this fate.
It is also notable that Norton urges the invisible man to read Emerson. This further emphasizes how out-of-touch Norton is with reality. As we have discussed in class, Emerson praises a return to nature, and with that, the ability to detach oneself from societal ties and become a “transparent eyeball.” However, many of the black writers we’ve read would argue that becoming a transparent eyeball is impossible when one is tied down by the implications of their race at all times. Norton likely does not understand that the narrator cannot relate to “rising above” social identity due to the depth of his struggles. One cannot escape societal ties when they have become an essential part of one’s identity and have to be considered in order to strategize social survival.
This strategy for survival is important to take into account when analyzing the extent to which the narrator fulfills the vet’s “automaton” characterization. The vet claims that the invisible man views Norton as a God-like figure, capable of immense funding and power and therefore demanding of the utmost respect. However, the vet has drawn these conclusions based on his observations, without verbal input from the narrator himself. The narrator is not a robot; he has complex thoughts but forces himself to perform as a monotonous servant in order to maintain his position at the college. Evidently, even the vet, a black man, has superimposed a deferent, slave-like narrative onto the relationship between Norton and the invisible man. Even the black characters in Ellison’s narrative fail to truly “see” the narrator.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
