Clifton’s dancing paper doll symbolizes the reason why the Invisible Man is telling his story. This occurs in different ways. The IM also feels betrayed by Clifton. After Clifton’s unannounced disappearance and reappearance, IM loses hope in his newly found reason to be. His Brother’s betrayal lies in the doll he’s selling more than anything. IM mentions selling apples or shining shoes instead of being a sellout. I believe there is a justified answer in selling black paper dolls. His anger soon vanishes after watching Clifton be killed. The taunting paper doll represents black men and their journey in history. The flimsiness of the paper and the dance it dances to is a clear delineation to the oppressed life of dark skinned people.

Even if slavery was abolished there still lies a segregation between black and white people. This segregation is the life that the black man must live. He cannot live his own life, with his own thoughts and desires. He has to think and want in secret. In secret and not in front of the white man. He must dance until he is tired. And when he gets tired he must keep dancing. He dances something not of his own but movements he’s forced to do. “A dance that [is] completely detached from the black, mask-like face.” (334) His mind, or in this case his face, is not controlling his actions. The white men, or in this case his puppeteer controls his actions. The way the IM talks about the disconnections between Sambo’s head and body fully symbolizes the oppression of black men in the world. IM’s novel wants to spread the real story, his side of Clifton’s death to readers and not just the narrative white people would have told.

Other symbolism that lies within this chapter and Sambo deal with more oppression. At some point the IM asks himself, “What about those fellows waiting still and silent there on the platform…?”(341) These were the men outside of historical time. The ones that danced and their story never heard. Some even danced without complaint. The Sambo that the IM flung in his pocket symbolized them. They were shook and shook and not broken. As the IM shoved the Sambo, he so wanted to smash with his feet, alike was culture and race muffled in a pocket. Even the physical action of the IM not smashing Sambo, was conformity in it’s finest hour. The IM stopped himself in his tracks and wondered if smashing Sambo was what the white policeman wanted to see. It wasn’t so he didn’t. Both Sambos represent what black people had and have to live with. The harsh reality of fitting within white people’s guidelines of living. 

I do not believe Clifton’s merchandise killed him in vain. Clifton might have disappeared, but raw emotion and yearn for equality don’t dissolve into thin air. Why not sell apples or shine shoes? I believe Clifton’s intentional decision to sell Sambos was revengeful. I do not want to give my oppressors a hardy apple, or nice shiny shoes. I want to mock them for hating me so much that they gave me a meal or bought me clothes. Clifton died fighting and was not selling Sambo’s to make white people happy, but to prove that their cold hatred can hurt them more than it hurt him.

In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the narrator (literally) stumbles upon what he first describes as “a lot of junk waiting to be hauled away” on a sidewalk. However, he soon realizes that this pile is not junk – it is a pile of a dispossessed couple’s possessions that only keeps growing as the cops haul more “junk” out of their apartment. As the scene unfolds and the narrator goes through the couple’s possessions, it is clear that the Invisible Man is directly able to take things outside of the groove of history and get them in, even though it is also evident that he does not necessarily want to, based on his findings and the impassioned speech he gives to the crowd watching the eviction.

It can be seen that there was a reason why it was so easy for the Invisible Man to mistake the couple’s possessions as trash. He describes what he sees at surface level as very old, random, and perhaps even useless, items: a beaten up chest of drawers, old musical instruments, and tattered signs and posters ripped from magazines that had been hung up on the walls. From just these items, it is nearly impossible for the Invisible Man to relate this eviction to history. However, as the Invisible Man goes deeper into the items, he finds a photo of the couple from when they were young, and describes their facial expressions as people  who “expected little, and this with a grim, disillusioned pride.” Here, the reader can start to feel the Invisible Man connecting the dots to a key piece of history that this novel is themed around: racial discrimination. Throughout the novel, the Invisible Man is plagued with experiences with racism, but this photo is an actual depiction of what it feels like to be black in America. Even though this picture was taken decades ago, the narrator seems to become aware that this feeling of “expecting little” has not changed for black people in each generation. Thus, there seems to be a direct correlation for black people in America when it comes to “expecting little;” they expect little because what they actually own does not accumulate to much, which can be seen through what the Provos actually own. What they expect is, unfortunately, their realities. And, perhaps, the Invisible Man feels as if the younger version of the Provos in the photograph is like looking into a mirror.

This feeling is confirmed and the Invisible Man is fully able to take things “outside of the groove of history” and get them in when he finds a seemingly useless piece of old, yellow paper on the ground –  Primus Provo’s freedom papers. It is clear now, that at least one of the people being evicted had been a slave, which directly ties in not just racism, but also slavery, into the narrator’s revelations. The Invisible Man states, “My hands were trembling… It has been longer than that, further removed in time, I told myself, and yet I knew that it hadn’t been.” This shows the Invisible Man’s internal struggle when it comes to accepting the fact that he is still facing the direct effects of racism, but is now able to contextualize it into a much more “historical” way; and yet, despite the fact that slavery is “history,” he knows that, in reality, this piece in time has never truly ended. The narrator knows that he, himself, is just a continuation of this story. It should also be noted that something so significant – the freedom of a black man – is something that, physically, looks so small and insignificant. The black man’s freedom is represented in this story as a tattered, old, yellow piece of paper that was thrown onto the ground by the white man. It is something that could have been mistaken for garbage.

He then details this story to the audience that has gathered to watch this eviction. “‘Dispossessed’! ‘Dispossessed,’ eighty-seven years and dispossessed of what? They ain’t got nothing, they never had nothing. So who was dispossessed?” The Invisible Man is now outwardly taking things “outside of the groove of history” and getting them in, even though he does not mention the fact that Mr. Provos had once been a slave. This can be seen by the fact that the narrator plays on the fact that the Provos have had nothing then, and clearly, nothing now. He shows the audience through this line that although the Provos’ status has changed from “slaves” to “free” Americans, one crucial aspect has remained the same: the white man is still in control of the black “free” man, as the white cops physically evict the couple.

Finally, it is also interesting to note that both the audience and the narrator refer to each cop as “the white man” and everyone else in this scene as “the black man.” Clearly, the presence of the cops has a deeper meaning than government officials simply executing the law because they were ordered to evict the Provos. This eviction is an allusion to slavery in itself – the white man will always be in full control of the black man’s life, regardless of how many years have passed since a black man’s “freedom” was obtained. A black man’s freedom clearly is still not enough for him to stop a white man from stripping away everything the black man owns.

In Chapter 18 of The Invisible Man, the title character is gifted a significant item by another member of the brotherhood, Brother Tarp. The gift is that of a piece of the chain that imprisoned the elderly brotherhood member for almost two decades, for simply saying “No” to a white man. There are several reasons for the significance of the chain-link, including the most obvious which represents the racial inequalities that were experienced by black men during the time of the novel. However, there are subtle uses and mentions of the chain link throughout the chapter and briefly in chapter 19 that give away to deeper interpretations of the item in relation to the story as a whole.

When gifting the Invisible Man with the chain-link, Brother Tarp recalls his experience in the south, the origin place of the narrator. Brother Tarp makes a revelation that stunned both the narrator and myself as the reader. He claims that he walks with a limp due to his dragging of the chain several years ago. According to the elderly man, doctors do not find anything wrong with his leg, so he is sure that his imprisonment is the reason for it. I found this to be a significant moment because he tells the narrator that it happened for exactly 19 years, six months, and two days. In this exchange, two things were revealed. One being that tarp is still paying for the “mistake” he made in negating something to a white man. He put up boundaries, but as a black man was punished for said actions and although he was able to free himself from the prison, there are still remnants of it that have become a part of his life even in the present. His limp serving as almost a simulation of a shackle he now only carries metaphorically. It is also necessary to observe that he was imprisoned for almost two decades, not for murder, but for simply not being a complacent black man in a society that not only expected him, but would have forced him to be.

In questioning Brother Tarp about his motives for giving the narrator his chain link, Tarp reveals that he sees the narrator as a token and to “remind you what we are fighting against”. The elderly brother goes on to discuss how a simple yes or no holds more significance than expected. After the recollection of injustice and escape towards freedom, it seems as though the narrator does not fully grasp the distinct implications of the chain, as he refers to it as a “lucky piece of chain”. He even goes further in comparing it to the pocket watch heirloom he would have received had he stayed in the South. When the conversation comes to an end, the chain-link that was balanced upon the narrator’s knuckles falls onto the cryptic note he received in the mail. I interpreted the subtle decision by the author as an accentuation of the bigger picture. By having the chain fall on top of the cryptic note that urged IM to “go slow”, the author suddenly highlights the chains that have been put on black men by, not only society, but by other members of the black community. In a way the Invisible Man was not allowed his freedom even in the Brotherhood.

Another subtle instance in which the author uses the chain link to insinuate something larger, is soon after while the narrator is working at the Brotherhood. Of all the ways that could be used to describe the chain, the author uses “oily and skin like”, using it as a reminder to the main character of what he is working to fight against. I found those specific adjectives interesting. At the moment in time in which they were used, I interpreted it to represent the narrators awareness of what he was doing and why. He was thinking about the people in the communities that he serves, so when he touched the chain it was personified and, in a way, showed his brief understanding of it in contrast to his disposition beforehand with Brother Tarp. Moments later, however, the suspicious note covers the chain. Moving the narrator’s focus from his mission to his need to be liked and excepted by his comrades.

Later, in the following chapter, the chain-link is mentioned after the narrator finds himself in the home of a married white woman. In the scene with her, the tables are somewhat turned in contrast to his experience in chapter 1. There, the naked white woman he saw was objectified and humiliated by white men to further his humiliation along with the other black boys. However, in chapter 19 it is the narrator who is perceived as less than. The woman begins by offering him the choice between milk, like an animal, or wine, like a respectable human being. This confuses IM, but highlights the idea that he is the one being used for a white woman’s enjoyment now. The violence that the Invisible Man craves in response to his simultaneous desire for the woman is ever present in this chapter as it was in the first. When all is done, he finds himself nervous about the events that have transpired and upon receiving a phone call from the married white woman, “toys with the chain link in his pocket”. This subtlety reveals the idea discussed by the narrator prior, of duty versus desire and represents the shackles placed upon, not only black men, but men in general through lust and desire. This is a powerful moment because feminism and women is not some thing that is discussed in depth throughout the novel or is acknowledged in the narrator’s world, as he is sent to speak to the women as punishment from the brotherhood. However, although it is not obvious, the connection to the shackle and the woman gives her a power that was absent for the woman described at the start of the novel.

There are many moments of Invisible Man that feel so relevant to the present day that can really cause a reader to stop in their tracks. The first of one of these moments for me was when the Invisible Man makes his truly moving and profound speech during the old couple’s eviction. In a way, much of what was represented in the scene and said in this speech foreshadowed what is later talked about at the end of Chapter 20, the disillusioned place in history that the Invisible Man senses African Americans are succumbing to. 

The way Ellison symbolizes black history in the scene is through the various stuff that belongs to the old couple that is thrown on the sidewalk by the white eviction officers. The Invisible Man when he first sees the pile of stuff refers to it as “like a lot of junk waiting to be hauled away” as these various, seemingly insignificant items are just cluttering the sidewalk (278). When he more closely examines these things he can clearly get a sense of the timeline of the lives of the elderly couple. Some of these items the couple owned were “knocking bones” an instrument used in minstrel shows and a commemorative plate of St. Louis World’s Fair which was one of the largest human zoos in history, all these items going back to a declaration of their freedom by a slave owner (282-283). This all makes it clear that the timeline of the couple is not just a timeline of them, but a timeline of black history. The couple’s possessions are really what move the Invisible Man to make his speech, they are really the catalyst for it, and the speech brings up this idea of the Black community being “dispossessed” which is revisited multiple times later in the novel. 

I view this idea of dispossession as closely relating to the idea of falling out of the white controlled narrative in history. The Invisible Man asserts that the black community is being dispossessed by the white people in power and therefore that is what is actively oppressing them and keeping them on the outskirts of history. The fact that the objects that are the catalyst for his speech are representations of black history can further cement this idea. In addition to this, there are so many symbolic representations of this scene that can be made to directly point at the idea of black history being suppressed and ignored. 

The officer who is throwing these items on the street, these symbols of history, is white, symbolizing both the authority held by white people and their active suppression of blacks. The Invisible Man first sees the items as just junk on the street because they are thrown to be perceived in that way by the white officer. This instance shows how white people set the societal boundary to what is perceived normal, to what may be overlooked, to who gets to stay written in history. The speech that the Invisible Man makes feels like a plea for his community to realize this dispossession and to actively take back their place in history. 

Even though in the book, he is going off the cuff and hasn’t fully formed these ideas during the eviction speech, by the end of Chapter 20, many of what he is saying is aligning with this idea. This suggests that this scene with the objects, the very actions of these symbols of black history being tossed on the ground, is an act of foreshadowing to the Invisible Man’s later revelation on the importance of exclusionary narratives in history.