Ellison's Novel the Invisible Man - Essay Example

The Imagery of Sight and Blindness in Ellison’s Invisible Man In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the narrator immediately tells his listeners that he is not literally invisible, but has rather been driven underground and into invisibility by the culture in which he finds himself, where no one is willing to see him as an individual capable of thoughts, feelings and actions independent from their preconceived notions of him. Like the difference between being literally physically invisible or figuratively invisible, Ellison’s character describes several different ways in which he has become invisible to the world around him despite every attempt to establish his own identity. “The novel is at once a resonant plea for recognition, the right and need to be ‘seen,’ to be individuated and at the same time a radical exploration … of alienation” (Lee 1970). With the imagery of sight and blindness, Ellison reveals the theme of invisibility by displaying the lack of insight in such characters as the boys of the Battle Royal, Brother Jack and Rinehart. In describing the scene of the Battle Royal, the narrator is sure to point out that the boys who fight in the battle wear blindfolds. This strong ‘blind’ symbolism of their inability to recognize their exploitation at the hands of the rich white men who are seeking entertainment is further emphasized by their mad struggle on the electrified carpet to collect the odd coins thrown their way. Just as they don’t ‘see’ that they are being used in a cruel and dehumanizing way, they also don’t realize that they themselves are contributing to the overall stereotype of black boys as servile (in that they would concede to fight each other with blindfolds on at the mere request of a white man) and humble (in that after doing so, they would further concede to crawl about to collect coins while being shocked by the carpet and distracted by the nude white woman whom they are not permitted to touch). Although the blindfolds enable the black boys to hide the truth of the event from themselves during the fight, they remain equally blind to the messages of white domination and black suppression being conveyed as they scramble for the change thrown to them and are denied the sexuality paraded in front of them in the form of the nude white woman. These ideas remain invisible even to the narrator as the fight ends and he humbly accepts his scholarship from the white men with a speech that denotes both unreasoned gladness and gratitude with none of the righteous rage or indignation he had reason to feel. “When, dazed and bloody, he finally delivers it [his speech], he is completely ignored by the drunken men” (Griffin 1969), yet the narrator swallows his own blood and continues on with the address regardless, blind to the idea that they do not care about his aspirations or cause as long as he continues to “know your place at all times” (Ellison 1964 p. 33). It is, instead, up to the reader to see past this blindness to understand how appallingly racist these white men have proven to be in their cruel teasing game of ‘bait the black boy’. Through this scene, the reader can see that stereotype and prejudice often determine and manipulate the range of action of which a person is capable. Brother Jack presents another image of the blind leading the blind down avenues of self-denial and lack of self- and other- awareness. Brother Jack is a white man who ostensibly works to promote the cause of the black man as a principle figure of the Brotherhood. In his duties working for the organization, Brother Jack lost one eye and now wears a glass one in its place, providing him with the unique idea of half-sight. “What he cannot see is that instead of working with Negroes as a ‘brother,’ he instead follows the old line of bearing the ‘white man’s burden.’ Thus, the false eye he wears symbolizes his basic deviation from the ideals of his brotherhood. His sight is artificial, then, rather than nonexistent.” (Bloch 1966). Not immediately realizing that Jack wears a glass eye, it takes a while before the narrator begins to realize that Jack does not see him as any more of a person than the white men of the Battle Royal had, instead viewing him as a tool to advance the goals of the Brotherhood, which are not necessarily the goals of the black community. However, that he does realize it, both on a physical and on a metaphysical plane, marks a significant change over the scene regarding the Battle Royal. Where the narrator lacked any insight into the situation before, he now has a ‘half-sight’ into the motives behind Jack’s actions. “The moment where the narrator discovers that Jack wears a false eye emphasizes its significance. The eye suddenly ‘pops out’ of Jack’s head at a committee meeting of the Brotherhood where the narrator learns that the people of Harlem are to be sacrificed to an undefined greater goal; where it becomes apparent that the words of brotherly love are only mouthings which hide the aims of stereotyping thought into the one proper pattern” (Bloch 1966). It is Jack’s half-blindness that symbolizes how commitment to ideology, even ideology with original good intentions, can blind a person to the plight of the individuals caught up in it, even to the point of denying such a connection exists. “We do not shape our policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they think but to tell them!” Jack tells the narrator at one point (Ellison 1964 p. 106). Significantly, the character of Rinehart remains completely invisible throughout the novel, symbolizing both the lack of sight in that he is conspicuously missing from the action as well as the paradox of how this absence permits him to become the free individual he is. When he darkens the world around him by putting on the dark sunglasses of a blind man, the narrator is finally able to ‘see’ his people with the clarity and insight he has been struggling for throughout the novel. Because many people now mistake him for Rineheart, the narrator is able to get a glimpse into this shadowy figure’s world and this, in turn, provides him with the insight he’s been lacking. Although Rineheart is depicted as a con-artist who takes advantage of the people of Harlem, he does so in such a way as to take advantage of everyone in Harlem, not just the blacks and not just the whites, by playing on the ideas of what they are able to see and what they remain blind to. “He learns for the first time that Rineheart’s world, unlike his own, is not solid; it is a ‘vast, seething, hot world of fluidity’ (p. 430). Although Rineheart stands for chaos, in such a world of fluid relationships chaos need not stand for destruction; it can represent possibility” (Griffin 1969). It is this experience that enables the narrator to realize that a life of extreme freedom, complexity and possibility is possible even to someone like him. Through this new invisibility in the character of Rineheart, the narrator is able to see that he himself has always been just as invisible to those around him as Clifton and Rineheart had been to him. No matter where he stands, he remains invisible. In a sense, then, it is through making himself blind and invisible in the persona of Rineheart that he is finally able to see the reality of how both whites and blacks on their various sides have been working collectively to keep the black people and culture in their place, so to speak. He realizes that Rinehart’s many perceived personas represent a life of extreme freedom, complexity, and possibility rather than the restricted, self-denied existence he’s been living in trying to meet with the tenets of the Brotherhood simple because of this inability of others to see him. Through the characters of this novel, then, one can trace the strengthening insight of its protagonist. His complete lack of any kind of insight can be seen as he becomes involved with the Battle Royal, a blindfolded fight that epitomizes the stereotyped white-male dominated world to which the narrator is being initiated, as long as he can remember his proper place within it without overstepping his bounds. The narrator gains partial sight through his relationship with Brother Jack, a half-blind white man who leads the Brotherhood, ostensibly as a means of helping the cause of the black man, but who has become blinded by the ideologies he preaches and is only able to see the version of the black man this ideology envisions. When he releases his own persona to walk in Rineheart’s shoes, a character who remains truly invisible throughout the novel and who is known for wearing dark glasses like those typically worn by the blind, the narrator is finally able to see the realities of the world around him and begins to grasp the individual within him. Works Cited Bloch, Alice. “Sight Imagery in Invisible Man.” The English Journal. Vol. 55, N. 8, (November 1966), pp. 1019-21+1024. Ellison, Ralph. The Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1964. Griffin, Edward M. “Notes from a Clean Well Lighted Place: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 15, N. 3, (October 1969), pp. 129-44. Lee, Robert A. “Sight and Mask: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Negro American Literature Forum. Vol. 4, N. 1, (March 1970), pp. 22-33. Read More