What is the narrator to the Brotherhood?

Ever since the narrator was released from the factory hospital his outlook on life had changed. Despite the rather rough start and dependence on Mary, the narrator eventually finds his groove and starts to make the difference and find his identity. The narrator finds his voice while observing the eviction and a new side of the narrator was revealed.

However, the new independence that we see in the narrator is very quickly overtaken when brother Jack comes and offers the narrator a position in the brotherhood. The position is offered for what the narrator represents rather than what he believes and thinks is right. One of the only reasons why the narrator accepts the position in the brotherhood is because it allows him to repay the loans from Mary and give him an almost false sense of self-importance. The whole acceptance into the brotherhood is very rushed and rather confusing for the narrator. One of the most important lines in the requirement of the narrator is when brother Jack says “We've been waiting for you for months. Or for someone who could do what you've done." The quote proves that the Brotherhood doesn’t care about who the narrator is or was but rather what they can mold him into becoming. The Brotherhood the narrator is nothing more than a tool, rather than a person with agency. As we become more familiar with the brotherhood we continue to see how they mold the narrator, when he doesn’t follow their exact rules they send the narrator away to get “educated” in the scientific ideologies of the Brotherhood. For the most part, we see the narrator enjoying the new opportunities and the new ideas that he is learning. But his whole entire life becomes centered on the Brotherhood and it makes up the entirety of his identity, which would seem rather fitting considering in order to become part of the Brotherhood the narrator was given a new name, and a completely new life that he would live.To him the brotherhood is his life, to them he is just a device to continue their mission.  

            Only when the Brotherhood turns it’s back on the narrator does it challenge the new views that he was asked to learn. When the narrator finds out about the meet which he was not called into he does something rather odd, and decides to buy shoes. It doesn’t make very much sense for the narrator to go buy shoes but to the Brotherhood, they are simplify discarding a tool which had lost its use. Naturally the narrator takes person offense to being not called into the meeting and decided to have a person revolt on the brotherhood, they will attempt to continue to control him and send him to learn more about speech’s and the brotherhood ideologies but all that the narrator is trying to do is find a new identity now that his given identity has been discarded by the gifter.

The Power of a Mask

In Lark’s poem, We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar, it talks about how African Americans need to wear a mask to hide their true feelings, they only show what they want the rest of society to see.  A similar concept of wearing a mask is found in the very beginning of the first chapter of Invisible Man, with the narrator's grandfather. We wear the mask can be used as a guide to help understand the reasoning behind why the grandfather decided to use hidden tactics to fight the white supremacy and only on his deathbed reveal the true “fight” that he had been fighting all along.

We Wear the Mask uses the term mask as a way for the African Americans to hide their true emotions and project only what they want to be seen. This is very problematic because they hide the “tears and sighs” while all that the world sees is the smiles that are on the mask. This relates very closely to the feelings that the grandfather of the narrator holds. The grandfather is shown on his deathbed, where after a life of clear submission and consideration of being "the meekest of men" he announces that his son should continue the "good fight" and appeal to the white man to such extremes that it would make them sick(Ellison 13). This statement catches the narrator and the whole family by surprise, so much so that they rush the smaller children out of the room. The c mask that the grandfather had been wearing his whole life had finally come off and exposed the true emotions of the grandfather. In the grandfather’s head the mask made him a spy and tricked the white people into believing that he was submissive the whole time, which made him a secret rebel. The poem makes very similar points, it allows the world the believe one thing but only the mask wearers know the truth about what they feel. In the poem Dundar asks "Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all the tears and sighs?" which really reinforces the separation between the people who wear the mask and the rest of society (Harper 76). However it makes the reader ponder if the separation that is being made is positive?

The grandfather of the narrator thinks that the separation is an essential portion of defining his life and the life and injustices of African Americans, and it allows the lack of “clear revolt” of wearing the mask to be the revolt in itself. This further affects the narrator and will hopefully influence his journey into becoming the character that he was in the prologue

-Jan O

Works Cited:

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International, 1995. Print.

 Harper, Michael S., and Anthony Walton. The Vintage Book of African American Poetry. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print. 

Power of Laughter: Prologue vs Chapter 1

In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison creates a stark difference in the attitude of the narrator in the prologue as compared to the attitude of the narrator in the first chapter. With the interesting structure of the story it makes the reader ponder what happened to the narrator throughout the story to create such a clear difference in opinions and beliefs. The differences can be seen through the actions of the narrator but also through the narrator’s descriptions of his beliefs. Most importantly the use of laughter in the 2 separate passages gives insight to the reader to the change that occurred. It is my belief that as we continue to read this story the progression of the narrator will become clear and the progression will be the most important aspect of the novel rather than the story line.

In the prologue the narrator seems kind of deranged and his ideas and belief seem very odd and not conforming to societal norms. The narrator is constantly identifying himself as “invisible” which he believes is both positive and negative. The disillusioned idea continues to progress when he reveals that he wants to use 5 phonographs to play the same record at the same time. Together this all seems very odd, almost insane behavior. But at the same time the ideas and thoughts that the narrator is having do make sense in a very convoluted way. However in the first chapter the ideas of the narrator make a lot of sense to the reader, sometimes even to the extent that we are not sure if the narrator truly understands what is happening to him. A clear example of the narrator not quite understanding the setting to the fullest extent was during his graduation when he was cast into the battle royal and all he could think about was his up coming speech. This rapid change makes the reader wonder why the narrator changed his opinion and what possibly could have happened in the story to change his opinion in such a extreme way. One of the few hidden pieces of evidence that show the reader what happen is the different use of laughter in the 2 different sections.

In the prologue, the narrator is seen beating a man to an inch of his life after he insults the narrator with an assumed racial slur. The act of the beatings itself seems very irrational and uncontrolled, but the aftereffects are very clear and simple to understand. In the news paper the attack is described as a mugging despite the lack of stolen items. This causes the narrator to laugh and ponder the possibility for an invisible man to rob someone.  Then as we read the first chapter the laughter is used in a very different way and has definite negative conations towards the narrator, the example of this is while the narrator is attempting to read his graduating speech he is constantly interrupted by the laughter of the drunken men. The laughter seems to hold power in both situations, in the first chapter it shows power towards the drunken men because they have the right to decided if what the narrator is saying has importance or not. The power completely changes in the prologue when the narrator is holding power over the beaten man and maybe even holding power over societal norms. The change in power dynamics gives the readers insight into what happened in the story and what allowed the narrator to gain the power of laughter rather than the submission of being laughed at.
-Jan