Blog Post #3 on Invisible Man
In Chapter 5 of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man the narrator, along with other students, goes to a chapel, where the visitor was waiting. During the service, Reverend Barbee speaks. He talks about the founder comparing him to Moses and says he “showed them the way.” Right away relating the founder to an important religious figure and liberator, making it seem like the Founder saved the black community. When Barbee tells a story about an attempt on the founder’s life, there is religious imagery which harkens back the conversion of Saul into Paul. Barbee makes the founder into a figure that was also meant to help all black people out of bondage. Finally, when talking about the mourning for the Founder, Barbee holds the Founder as a godlike figure, and even white men paid respects to the Founder, showing that they respected him. The Founder’s successor Bledsoe was also painted as a perfect figure as Barbee transfers the founder’s legacy onto him. They are both seen as figures to be idolized.
After Barbee trips, the narrator realizes he is blind. Barbee’s blindness could symbolize that Barbee is blind to how the Founder and Bledsoe really are. Or the blindness could be something that Barbee hides behind while creating an illusion, with his words, for everyone to get lost in. The blindness, also, is yet another thing that connects him to a real, famous poet of the same name, Homer.
As the narrator is leaving the chapel, we can see he fell for the illusion that Barbee painted for him, as he believes that some like Bledsoe, who has no flaws, will show him not mercy.
Blog Post #1 on How It Feels to Be Colored Me
People think of race as something that you are born with, something that is always there but Hurston starts her story by saying that she “became colored” therefore flipping this notion on its head, Hurston was not “colored” until people made her feel that way.
As a kid, Hurston was mostly protected from racism since she lived in a town where everyone was the same race as her. However, white tourists would pass through and treat her differently from the black residents. For example, giving her change when performed while the black residents would reward her with affection. Showing her the differences between an audience and a community. Still, here she was Zora, just Zora.
However, when she leaves her hometown, she starts to face racism as she started her “colored life”. But, while people try to group her with African-Americans she tries to push herself away from that group by embracing her female, blackness and believing that the world is still open to her. She doesn’t want to try and be a different race and she believes that she can succeeded.
Towards the end, she becomes one of two things, “Cosmic Zora” she isn’t colored, she is who Zora wants to be seen as. However, she mostly becomes the brown paper bag, ordinary and filled with ordinary items
At the end when she writes about herself as a brown paper bags, she also brings up other bags. The three colors of these other bags are white, red, and yellow and while those are bright colors, they are also colors that are usually associated with other races: white is associated with Caucasians, red (although it is offensive) is associated with Native Americans, and yellow is associated with Asians. Then she mentions that if the contents were emptied out and then the bag were refilled, it wouldn’t make much of a difference because though we are different colors, under that color we are the same.
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