The invisible man has now been assigned to be Lucius Brockway’s assistant. He initially thought that the paint was being made in building #1 with Kimbro but according to Brockway, the real work is at the bottom, the basement, where the base of the paint is made. Brockway tells The Invisible Man, “without what I do they couldn’t do nothing… caint a single doggone drop of paint move out of the factory lessen it comes through Lucius Brockway’s hands.” Although there are many workers in the paint factory that has gone through schooling including a scholar referred to as an engineer and took over his position when he was away on sick leave, no one can take his job or do it as well as Brockway. The “Old Man Sparland” who according to Brockway is the head of everyone, he himself asked Brockway to not retire because the company needs him. No one might admit it, unless it’s in conversation secluded, but Black folks are the base of establishments and successful enterprises.

“We are the machines inside the machine”, said Brockway to The Invisible Man, Brockway was telling him to make sure to keep an eye in the gauges because they rise at any minute and can cause an explosion. Although the higher ups think they have it all figured out with these new fancy machines,  the workers are actually the machines and put the machines to work and control what happens. This idea of having something else control the other although in one perspective it is the machine in charge ties into the invisible strings being pulled. Bledsoe has also told The Invisible Man that it isn’t the white people who are running the school and making it what it is, it is actually Bledsoe who runs the white people and runs the schoool. He’s in control, he’s in charge, just like Brockway is in charge, not the machines, not the people on the higher floors who believe their job is more important than what Brockway’s job is.

When we see in the later pages of the book, in the scene where the Invisible Man walks into a meeting hosted by the union, he is exposed to a new thinking of Brockway. According to Brockway, he is the head although he’s literally in the bottom of the building and making the base, he is the top of the company because he knows more than anyone else and if it wasn’t for him, there wouldn’t be any of this “Optic White” paint. The Invisible Man now encounters people who actually hate him for even working for Brockway. They say “… it seems to me that anybody that would work under that sonofabitching, double-crossing Brockway for more than fifteen minutes is just as apt as not to be naturally fink-minded”. Before even letting The Invisible Man explain anything, he is given this face that he himself doesn’t even recognize. He isn’t even given a chance but immediately associated with another persons troubles.  This notion of interepretted through others reminds me of Zora. Her views were different from her entire peoples. She didn’t want to be just a struggle or seen as someone to cry over or laugh historically at jokes she says, she just wants to be herself and honored for being Zora, she isn’t just black, she’s Zora, she likes to dance she has different qualities, she’s not her color. Here in this scene, The Invisible Man is just thrown against a fence and slapped with remarks about himself when he doesn’t even know anything about their establishment. He’s a new employee, a clean fresh person, but he is associated automatically as a negative being because of who he’s working with.

Once again, his strings are being pulled by others, including unknown persons.

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