The invisible man: a man with no memorable face, qualities, or purpose. A man who is damned to covertness of a white society. A man who is clearly not invisible, not some freak of nature, but simply ignored for the dark pigment of his skin. Blaming himself over something he cannot control. “What did I do to become so black and blue?”(pg 11). An invisible man served as a metaphor of society portraying the misconception of "separate but equal", equaling no equality at all.
Despite his grandfather's warnings and advice, to “agree ‘em to death and destruction”(pg 13), the narrator believes that genuine obedience to the white man will earn him the respect and praise he thinks he deserves. In retrospect, he is correct in some way. By being obedient, the white man awards him with a scholarship. But, along with the scholarship, is forced to participate in the degrading battle royal.
This is all a portrayed example of the humility of being black in this time. How the dark skinned were viewed as games. This protagonist, the invisible man, was forced to fight in a barbaric sense of entertainment for the whites. While blindfolding the boys, leaving them to beat one another, relates back to the theme or literal invisibility. They cannot see who they are hurting, but it is known to the white man. The blacks are blindfolded to the humility of seeing the excited, white skinned faces, while they are forced to fight people of their own descent.
The Invisible man realizes that no one will see him as he wants to be seen, he is defined by his skin he is born into. They will only see him as they want to be seen, because it will always be a White Man’s rule.
"The racism/incident at Little Rock" Ulloa, 1957
The narrator's seemingly accidental defiance to his grandfathers words is seen is his abiding to the white man's standards. His lack of attempts to "...agree em to death and destruction..." (16) and other slacking in his grandfathers wishes almost a haunts him. He feels that "curse" resonate through him when he is praised for his essay and then forced to fight. The ache for visibility seems to be what causes this sort of obedience? you might call it. It is the constant reminder that everything he is doing is for the white man, essentially, and that his visibility in a white washed world is more harmful than his self-respective invisibility.
ReplyDeleteI see the "battle royal" almost as a metaphor for the black mens' lives. They are unknowingly in competition with each other in real life; a competition for attention. By, succumbing to the whites, they want to be regarded as accepted. As they compete, they never realize that the whites are playing games with them and stringing them along for their own amusement and this shows in the "battle royal as the blacks are blindfolded and forced to fight with each other not completely realizing that the whites are humiliating them.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to imagine that several blacks would be blindfolded and placed in a boxing ring to fight for the amusement of whites. With this kind of activity, you can't see why any blacks would just give "genuine obedience" to the people that force them to do this. While the narrator did get a scholarship out of this, it is questionable if it was even worth getting one if this is how he will get treated. I agree with Seth when he stated that the battle royal is "a metaphor for the black mens' lives." This "genuine obedience" the narrator is giving is only rewarded with genuine abuse from the white men.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with his Invisibility stemming from the color of his skin, I think it may be even deeper then that. As I read in another post, the repeated phrase "the end is in the beginning" essentially means "its over before it begins". This phrase is used when discussing how blacks are trying to fight for equality. Maybe him being invisible isn't just because of his skin, but because he is unable to do anything about the society he leaves in, forced to cope with it as if he could never truly have a voice.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that the narrator is born into the skin is very true. He has no control over it and is ultimately affected by it in the long run. He is deemed unequal to that of the white man. And with that being said I can agree with what you've stated in your blog about how "The blacks are blindfolded to the humility of seeing the excited, white skinned faces, while they are forced to fight people of their own descent.". Your blog post can be backed by actual racial prejudice shown in our own American history most predominate during the Civil Rights Movement.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that "they cannot see who they are hurting" is very powerful in this context. The men strive to fight against the white man, but in doing so blindly, they only hurt themselves. This serves as a metaphor to the organization of racial equality/relation movements - disorder and chaos backfires on one's own race. The narrator's fellow fighters only hurt themselves and did nothing to improve race relations, except offer entertainment - the complete opposite of what they vie for.
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