AA Lit Blog

            Chapter 19 of Invisible Man was a wild ride of humor, discomfort, and silliness. The funniest moment of this chapter for me was when the narrator asks, “But we’re going to discuss brotherhood and ideology, aren’t we? (Ellison 411)” At this point, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a whole category of memes; they feature an image of a displeased person with captions like, “when she invites you over for beyblades but then she starts taking off her clothes.” The narrator’s cluelessness is best shown by this line. Unfortunately, the woman moves on to talk about the narrator and his speaking. She uses words like “primitive,” “forceful,” and says he has, “tom-toms beating in his voice” (Ellison 413). In using these descriptors for the narrator, she shows that despite claiming to be part of a post-racial/anti-racism movement, she may be holding onto some strange ideas about the black people: that they are inherently more “pri...

The novels Invisible Man and Native Son are seemingly written in conversation. Scenes throughout Invisible Man feel like responses to the events and ideas of Native Son. One example which is most obviously a response to Native Son , however, and one which we discussed in class, was the narrator’s meeting with the brotherhood.   In Native Son, when Bigger is in the car with Jan and Mary, they ask him to sing “his people’s” songs and talk about how “his people” love singing. The scene is extremely uncomfortable, especially for modern readers. Ellison’s scene is almost the inverse of this. When someone in the brotherhood asks the narrator to sing, and insists that, “all colored people sing,” he is carried off, and they apologize profusely for his behavior. However, the narrator is still left wondering how the “asking someone to sing” dynamic works between the races. These two scenes contrast the reactions to asking a black person to sing a spiritual. On one hand, it can feel pa...

Today’s discussion made me consider the parallels between Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and A Poem for Players by Al Young. Both works explore the idea that black people can be “invisible” to society. They aren’t literally invisible, and it’s not that everyone ignores them. Ellison and Young’s idea of invisibility is that many black people are pigeonholed into preconceived roles that are “acceptable” for them, and that they are not seen for who they are. Ellison’s narrator is unnamed. He is perceived by some as being nameless, for example, Mr. Norton. Norton doesn’t see him as a full person, but rather a “part of [his] destiny.” Despite Norton having a favorable opinion of the narrator, and believing that he has the potential to succeed, he still doesn’t “see” him. Worse than Norton were the people in chapter 1. They certainly saw him as less than a person, and simply thought it was funny to have “the smart boy from the local high school” come out and fight for their entertainment....