Janie's Husbands

One thing I noticed while reading their eyes were watching god was how each of Janie's husbands seems to characterize a particular theme or characteristic. Janie's first husband was "chosen" by her grandmother after she had her first kiss. As our class discussed, Logan Killicks represented security and safety economically for Janie. He had a house and land, and he was eligible to be married, so he seemed to be the perfect choice for Janie. However, Janie could never fall in love with Killicks. Throughout their marriage, he became less romantic and started to order her to work around the farm. From an outside perspective, this could show equality and Killicks' respect for Janie, but she took it in a very different way. She believed that her role was to stay in the house while Killicks would do the outside work. For this reason, and a rise in Killicks' abuse, she decides to leave him for her second husband Jody Starks.

Jo Starks is depicted to be a very contrasting character to Killicks. Where Killicks was rough, simple, and expected Janie to work, Starks was much smoother with his words, ambitious, and does not want Janie to work at all. This actually ends up turning out to be the problem for Janie. In the initial stages of the relationship however, she is much happier than her previous marriage. While in her first marriage, she was frustrated with the amount of work Killicks give her, in this one, she gets angry internally about how Starks won't let her do anything. Starks's ambition and set ideas about his role in society has taken away Janie's independence. It made me curious how the author meant to portray Janie with these situations. Did she want Janie to seem unreasonable with her idea of men? or was she setting up Janie for a Goldilocks-type story where she finally meets someone just right for her? This raises the question about Tea Cake. Will he be another of Janie's ex-husbands she remembers with bad feelings or the one that Janie will be able to love even after he's gone?

The Puppet and the Puppet Master

The topic the narrator discusses most extensively in the prologue is invisibility, more specifically how he realized it and used it to his advantage. Fast forward to chapter 20 in which the narrator has arrived back in Harlem. He decides to go buy new shoes and on his way back, encounters Tod Clifton, who was said to be missing. However, instead of seeing Clifton, the first thing the narrator notices is the Sambo doll that Clifton is trying to sell. He has multiple emotional and physical reactions to the doll itself and goes as far as to spit on the doll. When the narrator finally looks up and recognizes Clifton, he cannot believe his eyes. Clifton gives a strange response by smirking at the narrator while continuing trying to sell the doll. The passage describes it specifically as a "contemptuous smile". Why was Clifton smirking at the narrator? 

I believe that this is a symbolic representation of Clifton's newfound invisibility. Like he said during the scene with Ras, he has "fallen outside of history" and become something new. I interpreted the doll as what the people see as Clifton: just another black person who entertains. This fits the narrator's description of invisibility from the prologue almost perfectly, and ironically, it is the narrator who doesn't notice Clifton's invisibility. The smirk that Clifton gives to the narrator is a mocking smile because Clifton has finally realized his invisibility and he knows that the narrator is still trapped without this knowledge. Clifton has put forth this doll that people, including the narrator, see and by making this new "persona", he has effectively made himself invisible. Clifton has become his own puppet master. 

Was this scene meant to be a learning experience for the narrator? As seen in many scenes before, the narrator gathers the most useful information from unexpected sources and perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the narrator's story of his recognition of invisibility. 

The Battle Royal and the Hospital

Ellison has a habit of repeating themes and patterns throughout the novel. An important one that should be acknowledged is how the eleventh chapter mirrors the first. The first chapter covers the events of the Battle Royal while the eleventh is about the narrator’s time at the factory hospital after being “treated”. Both chapters have multiple similar aspects but with a different perspective of the narrator.

In chapter one, the narrator’s grandfather figuratively opens the narrator’s eyes unsuccessfully by revealing his secret. In the next scene, he is said to be blinded by the naked dancing woman. Similarly in chapter eleven, the narrator is physically woken up after being hurt in the previous chapter and sees the “bright third eye that glowed from the center of his forehead” (Wright 231). In both chapters, the narrator is being spectated by random people and is watched like some kind of experiment or entertainment. However, the narrator seems more aware of this in the eleventh chapter than in the first.

Another similarity is with the spectators themselves. In the Battle Royal, the spectators yelled conflicting orders at the black people to both look and not look at the dancing woman. In the hospital, the doctors give him many strange orders and questions, with some yelling and some just speaking to him. One of the most striking similarities is with the electricity. In the battle royal, the narrator is shocked by the electrified rug and sees another person “dancing” while being shocked on it. Almost directly mirroring this scene, the narrator is electrocuted and the doctors talk about how he is dancing and has good rhythm.

The narrator comes out of each of these experiences differently. In the first chapter, he receives his scholarship after answering correctly to the white peoples’ questions. In the eleventh chapter, the narrator leaves with a new personality but doesn’t answer the doctors’ questions correctly and takes it as more of a joke.

I probably missed some other references. If you find another or thought any of these were interesting, please comment your thoughts!

Inevitable Invisibility

"I am an invisible man" 

Invisibility. This titular aspect of "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison cannot be interpreted in any specific or correct way but can lead to an interesting discussion about the true meaning of being unseen in society. Is anyone truly visible in "Invisible Man"? What is the author trying to say about invisibility? And how does this apply to the real world? In order to start looking for these answers, I started to think about the meaning of invisibility.

The narrator of "Invisible Man" refers to himself as invisible in several moments in the first few chapters of the novel. The first time he discusses invisibility is actually on the first page of the novel. The reader can understand from this passage that although the narrator may be a bit chaotic, he has a clear understanding of his personal definition of invisibility. He describes, albeit in a condescending manner, to the reader that he is not a ghost or "Hollywood-movie ectoplasm", but that he is of flesh and bone and yet is somehow invisible (1). He continues by saying that he is only invisible because people refuse to see him and that they see everything, like his surroundings and their own imagination, but him. It seems that in the narrator's mind, his invisibility is a result of other people's ignorance and prejudice and not his own deceit.

"That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact."

I initially thought that the type of invisibility that the narrator refers to could be a form of social invisibility. Social invisibility is normally attributed to a group of people that are constantly ignored and marginalized by the majority of society. However, in "Invisible Man", the narrator is not necessarily ignored but is depicted as "just another African American" with no individuality or personality. The whole first chapter revolves around the narrator's complete nonchalance to a disgusting and crude situation and his complete blindness to the fact that he is being used by the whites as entertainment. Although the narrator seems to think that he is "special" due to his education, he is still constantly worried about what the whites will think of him and if they will let him say his speech. He essentially turns himself into another "trophy" that the whites can use as a means of justification for their twisted benevolence. The narrator further emphasizes this fact on page 58, where he mentally curses at Jim Trueblood for ruining the reputation of African Americans, more specifically his own reputation in the eyes of Mr. Norman. This shows how the narrator automatically groups himself with his race and does not yet have an idea of individuality, as hinted at by the mention of Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote a novel about self reflection that the narrator hadn't studied

The narrator's invisibility can't be discussed without bringing up the scene of his conflict with the white man. This scene also gives important clues about what the narrator believes to define one's invisibility. He describes how he bumped into a man who called him a possibly racially-charged name, and how he immediately started to attack him. The narrator continues and shows himself explode with rage and almost kill the man with a knife, until he suddenly stops and has a thought that the man couldn't "see" him and he runs away while laughing. It looks like the narrator realizes in that moment that to the man, he is not a person but a generalized group of people, and that from that fact, he is essentially protected. And in a sense, that realization is true, and the narrator was invisible to the man he attacked. The Daily News article publishes an article the next day calling it a mugging, which emphasizes the lack of individuality given to the narrator.

"Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere compassion, mugged by an invisible man!"

The narrator previously said that he is invisible because people cannot see the true him, but if he himself does not yet have his own individual self, can he really call himself invisible? Or would it be more fitting to say that he is without a form yet? This is another important distinction that should be made. I think that from what has been read so far, the narrator in the present time uses the light bulbs as a metaphor for finally having a completely solid form and that since he knows exactly what his figure is, he can call himself invisible because no one else knows what he truly is. The idea of being formless can be taken back to the prologue in which he says that while light doesn't give people visibility, it gives them form. Perhaps as his vision starts to be cleared from white propaganda and he is "(en)lightened" he is able to have a more certain sense of self or a more solid form. As mentioned in a previous discussion in class, there are a couple moments where the younger narrator is aware of the white suppression, for example the "white blindfold" that he realizes he can see through in chapter 1 and the fact that he questions the true meaning of the statue on his campus. 

From these realizations, I believe that the narrator's idea of invisibility centers around the balance or imbalance between the person that one believes themselves to be and the person that others see. Even in real life, people naturally judge others by their appearance, race, and other similar aspects, and from these judgments, people are "grouped together" and are not thought of as individuals. In the novel so far, no character has been shown to have a personality or individuality other than the narrator in the present. Maybe this was a deliberate decision to show how even the reader is supposed to categorize the characters depending on the descriptions the narrator gives (Mr. Norman as a Santa Claus-like figure or just an amount of wealth, Trueblood being depicted by the narrator as representing the whole black community, etc.).

"How can he tell this to white men, I thought, when he knows they'll say that all Negroes do such things?"

Another interesting comment the narrator makes is that other people don't know that they're invisible. Could this be because they don't yet know themselves well enough? or are they just not aware that they are being generalized by others' preexisting prejudices? The narrator's definition of invisibility puts an ironic twist to the phrase "seeing through someone".

The narrator is an invisible man. However, so is everyone else. We are all invisible to each other. We are not ghosts or science experiments, but individuals with flesh and bone that people other than ourselves couldn't possibly understand fully. We are always seen with peoples' inner eyes and will inevitably become "invisible" to them. I think that this is the message that the author is trying to give about invisibility to the reader. 

I look forward to seeing my thoughts change and get proved wrong as I read further into the book and come to new realizations about how the author finally discovers his invisibility.

CJ