Tag Archives: Ralph Ellison

Chance encounters are what keep us going!

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In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, chapter thirteen, ironically the narrator tried to throw off part himself and become a new being. In chapter thirteen the narrator gradually became more and more perceptive and enthusiastic for his own identity. As compared to chapter nine the narrator felt ashamed of his southern culture. When the narrator met Wheatstraw, he tried to deny his culture and did not really accept it when he offered a special; the pork chop. But the baked Car’lina Yam incident is completely different. The narrator accepted his black culture while he saw a street vendor was selling yams. He purchased the first yam and he bought another two more yams at the same time. He even enjoyed the freedom to eat in the street as “I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of freedom- simply because I was eating while walking along the street” (Ellison 264).

He noticed that it was great not to hate things he really didn’t hate. The narrator accepted his own identity and started to change. He even is sure that Bledsoe just pretended not to like his southern culture. Bledsoe is a chitterling eater, this idea makes him very interesting, and laughs at him pretending to be above it. “Bledsoe, you’re a shameless chitterling eater! I accuse you of relishing hog bowels! Ha! And not only do you eat them, you sneak and eat them in private when you think you’re unobserved!” (Ellison 265)

In chapter thirteen the narrator did his second speech and it made him more confident in this time. As compared to the narrator’s first and second speech in public, the first speech was delivered at his high school graduation in chapter one. The speech urged humility and obedience to be the key to the progress of black Americans. It proved so successful that the town arranged for him to deliver him at a gathering of the main white residents of the community. In the narrator’s first speech, he talked about racial equality. The speech acknowledged the struggles of facing blacks. At that time, he was even afraid to go on with his speech.

But in chapter thirteen the narrator’s second speech was about freedom which is almost impossible to succeed in a world of color again. “Black men! Brothers! Black Brothers! That’s not the way. We’re law-abiding. We’re law-abiding people and a slow-to-anger people” (Ellison 274-275). The narrator kept saying that “We’re a law-abiding people and a slow-to-anger people […] We’re angry but let us be wise” (Ellison 275). This time the narrator is not afraid to stand up. He is not saying what white people want to say here, he is saying things that inspire black people. After the narrator moved to New York he started to appreciate what he has. Moreover, his experience taught him to become more and more confident. It is not always easy to have faith in oneself, especially if we are naturally self-critical or someone else lets us down. However, there are steps we can take to increase and maintain self-confidence just like the narrator, an invisible man.

 

Simple Bibliography

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“Biography – The Gordon Parks Foundation.” Gordon Parks Foundation, www.gordonparksfoundation.org/artist/biography.

Blair, Sara. Harlem Crossroads: Black Writers and the Photograph in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press, 2007.

Lamm, Kimberly. “Visuality and Black Masculinity in Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ and Romare Bearden’s Photomontages.” Callaloo, vol. 26, no. 3, 2003, pp. 813–835. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3300728.

Millichap, Joseph. “Fiction, Photography, and the Cultural Construction of Racial Identity in Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man.’” South Atlantic Review, vol. 76, no. 4, 2011, pp. 129–142. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43738922.

Raz-Russo, Michal. Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem. Steidl, 2016.

Rowell, Charles H., and Kerry James Marshall. “An Interview with Kerry James Marshall.” Callaloo, vol. 21, no. 1, 1998, pp. 263–272. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3300033.

Sargent, Antwaun. “’Invisible Man’ Inspires Conceptual Art About Blackness.” Vice, VICE, 21 June 2017, www.vice.com/en_us/article/ev4wwm/invisible-man-inspires-conceptual-art-blackness.

“Silence Is Golden.” The Studio Museum in Harlem, 4 Jan. 2019, studiomuseum.org/collection-item/silence-golden.

Walling, William. “‘Art’ and ‘Protest’: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Twenty Years After.” Phylon (1960-), vol. 34, no. 2, 1973, pp. 120–134. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/273820.

 

The main database I used was JSTOR and Google Scholar. I searched the terms “Ralph Ellison” “Invisible Man” “art” “photography” I also played with the wording and got different sources. There wasn’t many articles that helped my specific topic of Ellison’s art in Invisible Man but what really set off my search was researching the information in Visuality and Black Masculinity by Lamm which gave me other leads.

The Privilege of Sexuality and Freedom of Sexual Thought in Invisible Man

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Black-ish Little Girl in Elevator Scene

Blackish S03E04 Dre meets little white girl in elevator scene. https://twitter.com/blackishwriters/status/786379713891569664

Though this scene from Black-ish does not directly relate to what I discuss in the post, I think it does a great job of showing how a person’s blackness can affect every action. It reminds me of the scene where IM is freaking out when he’s pressed against the white woman in the subway: one accidental touch can be blown completely out of context.

     Have you ever been at a strip show and looked into the dancer’s eyes more than any other body part? Have you ever immediately thought about how a girl’s incestuous rape would affect you? Your answers to these questions may directly relate to your race. And if you’re the protagonist in Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, the answers to these questions are yes and yes. Ellison argues that The Invisible Man’s experience as an African American man shapes the way he thinks about sex, sexual violence, and acts in sexually charged situations. 

     The first encounter with sexuality in Invisible Man is at the Battle Royal scene when the dancer appears. The Invisible Man recalls, “I wanted at one [of her nipples] and the same time to run from the room, to sink through the floor, or go to her and cover her from my eyes and the caress her and destroy her, to love her and murder her” (19). The Invisible Man is attracted to the dancer like the white men at the hotel and even holds sexually violent thoughts about her. However, he also wants to look away from her, most likely because he knows the long history of black men being lynched for supposedly raping white women. The Invisible Man’s reality as a black man means he is not proud about his attraction towards the dancer. It’s dangerous for the Invisible Man to interact with or think about the white dancer because any supposed encounter with her could be his death sentence.  He cannot guilelessly treat her as a sexual object and his standing as an African American man affects how the Invisible Man and his peers behave towards the dancer.. This is especially apparent when the dancer is nearly raped. Ellison writes, “the men began reaching out to touch her. I could see their beefy fingers sink into the soft flesh… They caught her… tossed her twice… I… head[ed] for the anteroom with the rest of the boys… some were crying in hysteria” (20). The novel implies that only the white men attempt to rape the dancer because throughout the chapter they town’s white elites are always referred to as “the men” while the black students there to fight are “the boys.” The Invisible Man’s description of heading to the anteroom also implies that he and the other boys weren’t involved in the attack but left to get away. Part of the reason why the boys don’t have the (ludicrous) privilege to touch whomever they want. Quickly touching a white woman, not to mention violently assaulting her, could end these boys’ lives.  

     The Invisible Man and his peers’ social standing as black men also affect their range of sympathy and empathy towards victims of sexual violence.  The Invisible Man further describes the dancer’s attempted rape, saying, “Above her red, fixed smiling lips I saw the terror and disgust in her eyes, almost like my own terror and that which I saw in the other boys… some [of the boys] were still crying and in hysteria” (20). The Invisible Man and the boys empathize with the dancer. Like her, they face violence by white men and are at their mercy. Empathy towards the dancer is specifically afforded because the dancer’s attackers are white. Later, The Invisible Man’s talks about his feelings towards Trueblood, the black man who claims to have raped and impregnated his daughter.  The only fleshed out comment The Invisible Man interjects into the narrative in between Trueblood’s story is, “How can [Trueblood] tell this to white men… when he says all Negros will do such things” (58)? Instead of sympathizing or empathizing with the Trueblood’s daughter, a victim of sexual violence like with the dancer, The Invisible Man is concerned about how the rape story will negatively impact the black community. The Invisible Man’s social standing as a black man veils him from feeling sympathy towards Matty Lou. The rapist in this story is black – unlike the white attackers at the Battle Royal. But more importantly, his mind is preoccupied by fear of how Trueblood’s story will affect the entire black race. Any feelings of sympathy he could have garnered towards the rape victim are blocked because The Invisible Man is rightfully fearful of how the white, racist world will attribute Trueblood’s actions to all black people. 

     Invisible Man argues that African Americans’ relationship and approach to sexuality is directly tied to their low social standing and their lives as constant victims of racism. The implication is heartbreaking as it shows one of the more hidden ways in which the black community is chained and how racism can affect every aspect of one’s life. However, the “end goal” for African American men shouldn’t be to become as sexually liberated as the white men in Invisible Man who freely attack the dancer. Balancing sexual freedom and proper restraint is a tricky issue, but perhaps the first step is the most and least obvious: have universal human respect. White men respecting both women and the black race could enable the latter group to become sexually free in thought and action without gaining the white man’s current freedom and “right” to be sexual predators. Less freedom for white men will equal more freedom for black men and make women safer. Like usual, the white men hold the most power to inflict change with the least incentive to do good. 

(In)visibility in Chapters 5-12

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This section of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison focuses heavily on themes brought up in Fanon’s writing (as well as that of other authors we have read so far); namely the interplay of visibility and vision with perception and consciousness.  Symbols of vision in these chapters vary, but tell the audience a lot about the narrator’s psyche and give us clues about the path he takes to end up as the narrator from the introduction.

One of the most obvious symbols is blindness, most clearly illustrated in Pastor Barbee’s sermon at the university. He stands before the crowd, chronicling the fantastic and unbelievable achievements of the Founder, painting such a vivid, visceral, and moving scene with his words that audience members begin to cry and shout out (pp 97). However, both the fantastic nature and convenient moral of these stories suggest that they may be exaggerated if not entirely too good to be true. After all, what are the odds of surviving a gunshot to the head due to the help of a mysterious stranger and a  seemingly demented black man” with “ a surprising knowledge of such matters“? (pp 95) How did the founder seem to be so unaffected by race in a time that was so clearly riddled with racism and discrimination? Furthermore, the constant stress of race throughout this speech, (both on some white people as allies and on some black people as foes to the cause) and the emphasis to pull oneself up by the bootstraps (pp 103) are reminiscent of the narrator’s earlier speech about the future success of black Americans hinging on their ability to know their place and cooperate with white Americans. Together, these facts suggest that this story may be being twisted in order to fit the college’s agenda of pleasing its white donors. This is further supported by Dr. Blesdoe’s later statements concerning power at the college being acquired by lying to the white partners and telling them what they want to hear (pp 108). The fact that after leading the congregation on this moving (and on many levels, very visual) journey, Barbee proceeds to trip due to his blindness alludes to the classic idiom of the blind leading the blind, further suggesting that he does not know the truth, but has created a truth (similar to the truth Blesdoe speaks about when reprimanding the narrator [pp 112]).

In a similar vein, Ellison uses distorted vision, mainly in the narrator, as a metaphor for inner turmoil and identity crisis. His inability to see clearly and perceive what is going on during the fight with Brockway is one example of this. Although this fight erupts suddenly, it results from the accumulation of stress over having no say in how he is perceived by others, and in the moment that he lashes out most violently, unable to see the difference between teeth and a knife, the narrator loses sight of who he momentarily. The most intense distortion of his vision, however, comes with the accident in the paint factory and his hospital visit. This is a watermark moment in the narrator’s story (especially given the implication of lobotomy) that changes how he will see himself moving forward, so as that change fully takes hold, he loses his clear perception of the world around him.

Finally, there is the vision of others. Particularly important are the scenes where the narrator is being viewed or not viewed. As the novel’s title would suggest, most people do not see the invisible man as he truly is — the refusal of the white professionals with whom Blesdoe connects him to even come out of their offices to see him is the most poignant example of this. They see a paper, a profile, not a man. When he talks to the director of the paint company, vision is only mentioned in reference to moments where the narrator is acting strangely (not a true representation of who the narrator is), and mostly seem to focus on the unease of the director. Finally, there are the interactions between the union members, the narrator, and Brockway. The narrator is not allowed to represent or even speak for himself — instead, he is characterized by the assumptions of these characters based on the actions of people other than himself (the finks or the black unionists, respectively). In his words:

“ It was as though by entering

the room I had automatically applied for membership — even though I had

no idea that a union existed, and had come up simply to get a cold pork

chop sandwich. I stood trembling, afraid that they would ask me to join but

angry that so many rejected me on sight. And worst of all, I knew they were

forcing me to accept things on their own terms, and I was unable to leave.” (pp 172)

That being said, there are those who do seem to see him more truly and directly, such as Miss Mary, who can see that he needs help and is willing to offer it. She sees his potential, sees his personhood, and is able to act as a “constant” in his life. However, there are occasions where what she sees in him is the future and the change that she hopes the black youth of the country (and particularly of the South) will usher in. Despite her relatively clear vision, even Mary can lose sight of who the narrator is, giving rise to his moments of frustration with her as he counts on her to be a constant as he figures out who he is for himself.