Long overdue post about Cole Sprouse’s instagram account @camera_duels, in which he photographs people he catches taking photos of him. He then disses the subjects of his photos in the captions, reclaiming the power to tell his own narrative of them as they capture him. Reminiscent of Blair’s article, in which she points out that Ellison also often posed in his photos with camera in hand, blurring the line between photographer and photographed. Ellison also proved that he had a gaze too; the photography was reciprocal.

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When the narrator falls into a manhole while trying to escape racist attackers, he has to burn the contents of his briefcase in order to light his way out. When the two men first target the narrator, they ask him what’s in his briefcase, as many Harlemites had looted stores that day in the chaos and were carrying around their treasure. On page 566, they ask, “What’d you steal?” What the narrator has in his briefcase, however, is not items he’s stolen, but rather emblems of accomplishments he’s made. For example, he has his high school diploma, as well as the paper proclaiming his Brotherhood name. It is ironic that those who cannot see inside the briefcase assume that his accomplishments are actually things he’s stolen, things he is not deservant of. Throughout the novel, the narrator has had to deal with employers and superiors believing he was not deserving of certain roles. For example, Bledsoe believed he was not deserving of a job up north, Hambro and other members of the Brotherhood initially thought he didn’t deserve the role of Harlem speaker, and Kimbro did not think he deserved the role of paint mixer.

The invisible man’s briefcase also contains icons of black stereotypes, such as Mary’s shattered coin-eating figurine and Clifton’s dancing Sambo doll. These are images that he cannot escape. Although the narrator tries many times to get rid of Mary’s figurine by throwing it onto the sidewalk, witnesses believe it is something dangerous and ask him to pick it back up. On page 330, a pedestrian accuses the narrator, “This here feels like money or a gun or something and I know damn well I seen you drop it.” Because all these people force the narrator to pick the figurine pieces back up, he literally cannot get rid of black stereotypes easily.

Clifton’s doll is notable because the narrator previously believed Clifton was above all those images. As a member of the Brotherhood, Clifton should have focused on transracial similarities rather than racialized differences. So when the invisible man finally sees Clifton peddling Sambo puppets, he is shocked. On page 434, he asks, “What had happened to Clifton? It was all so wrong, so unexpected.” As a fellow member of the Brotherhood and speaker at Clifton’s funeral, the narrator cannot rid himself of Clifton’s legacy.

Wherever the narrator goes, he is carrying with him in his briefcase others’ black stereotypes, and not even the stereotypes of his enemies, but rather the stereotypes once owned by his friends. These Uncle Tom and minstrel show figures are not specific to his friends either; rather, they are common figures in racist iconography. So the narrator is carrying wide-reaching caricatures; the caricatures of his entire race. The objects in his briefcase are relatively light, but carry the weight of his ancestors and contemporaries. In order to escape the dark space of the manhole, the narrator has to burn all aspects of his identity. In this society, only by becoming nameless and faceless will he be able to satisfy his basic needs for water, food, and air.

In Chapter 9, when the narrator is on his way to Mr. Emerson’s office, he encounters a man pushing a cart full of blueprints. Their interaction is confusing at face value, yet is representative of something greater. Upon deeper examination, it is evident that their interaction is a commentary on the narrator’s main life struggles.

When the narrator first hears the man’s blues singing, he is reminded of his family back home. These are memories that he says he has “shut out of my [his] mind” (173). Clearly, this isn’t a pleasant memory. This negative association represents the narrator’s struggle to be honest with his family while wanting to please them at the same time. His parents expect greatness from him as a college student, so he tells them he already has a job in New York even though no one has offered him a job yet. Pressure to make his parents proud motivates him to tell this white lie. The narrator also likely feels pressure to interpret his grandfather’s advice and carry on his legacy, even though he may not exactly know what his grandfather meant by living life stealthily and fighting a deceptive war against authority. The blueprint man’s singing reminds the narrator of familial expectations.  

Next, the blueprint man asks the narrator if he’s “got the dog” (173). The narrator is puzzled by this inquiry at first, and then just answers in the most straightforward way: that he does not “have the dog.” In response, the man says, “maybe it’s the other way round…maybe he got holt to you” (174). This contrast is important. Historically, the dog is man’s best friend, and at the same time, the dog is a wild animal that has been domesticated and stands in opposition to “civilized” man. The lack of a dog by the narrator’s side communicates his feeling of loneliness; far away from his family and school friends, and with Bledsoe turned against him, the narrator has few friends available. At the same time, the narrator is somewhat innocent–he is just beginning to navigate society and figure out his role in it. He doesn’t know how to act in certain situations. For example, his mistakes with Mr. Norton show that he doesn’t know when to override honesty for security. The narrator shows Mr. Norton too much of the neighborhood because he hasn’t yet determined how to make the foreign environment seem “tame.” He has not yet “domesticated” his presentation and figured out how to code-switch. Of course, the designation of himself and his community as a “wild” other is based on misinformed white characterizations.

It is also significant that the man is disposing of the blueprints he has. The man explains, “every once in a while they have to throw ‘em out to make place for the new plans…plenty of these ain’t never been used…folks is always making plans and changing ‘em” (175). This lack of permanency is also reflected in the narrator’s life, as he is also in the midst of making and changing plans. The discarded blueprints also represent false hopes. The narrator has false hopes throughout the novel: namely, in New York, he hopes that he will find a lucrative job but is actually sabotaged by Bledsoe.

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.