The amount of metaphors, symbolism and imagery used in Chapter 11 in the novel “Invisible Man” when the protagonist ends up in the hospital, it’s intense. We don’t know why he is in the hospital, but the description of what he goes through and what he feels, can be interpreted in different ways as well as be connected to the idea of double consciousness and loosing your identity. The doctors of the hospital preformed electric shock therapy on the protagonist “I was pounded between crushing electrical pressures”, but in the pain and unconsciousness the protagonist mistaken them for saviors “They would care for me. It was all geared toward the easing of pain. I felt thankful”. Such a turn in his thought made me stop, and think back to history moments where groups of people were put in daze and taken advantage of. Further more his later imagery of not having enough room, and feeling cramped, and latter ever forgetting his name can be figurative language for the type of things oppressed groups have experienced. Chapter 11 “I found myself back in the clinging white mist and my name just beyond my fingertips” is another strong metaphor for the constant struggle and efforts to maintain your identity in a society that tried to prevent that.

Another strong metaphor can be seen in “A pair of eyes peered down through lenses as thick as the bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle, eyes protruding, luminous and veined, like an old biology specimen preserved in alcohol”, the presence of symbolism of the “Coca-Cola, eyes protruding, luminous and veined, like an old biology specimen preserved in alcohol “I don’t have enough room” the feeling of being trapped the protagonist feels, can be a metaphor for the coke epidemic that effect minority communities in a negative revolving door of abuse and instability.

Overall the chapter shows how blindness and the loss of your identity can happen and what it can result in. Thankfully at the end of the chapter we learn that despite loosing parts of identity, not being heard, the narrator overcomes his efforts to obeying an ideology he followed (referring to devotion to college and its ideologies). I was relieved that despite such experience, he was able to over come certain fears and in a way become free.

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