Blog Post 4

            Mr. Bledsoe is possibly one of the most respectfully spiteful people in that he sends the narrator away with hope in his mind and failure in envelopes. By “[keeping the narrator] running” (194), Bledsoe effectively removed him far from the college, but did not destroy the narrator in such a way that it would be a truly despicable deed. The reputation of Bledsoe would be untarnished on his campus, and no one would be the wiser as to what happened. The narrator, however, hopes to reveal the treachery, as “[he owes] it to the race and to [himself]” (194). He plans to take one life in recompense for another’s potential life being ripped from their hands.

            However, Bledsoe was clever enough that he knew the narrator’s life could not be completely destroyed, as he would be in Harlem, the center of black culture. The narrator could find a new job despite the letters that put him on a blacklist to the white leaders of the city; and he did. The job at Liberty Paints would free him from the anchor Bledsoe had tied to his feet. This was foreseen by the president of the college, as he had told the narrator to “let the white folk worry about pride and dignity” (145). If the narrator could release his pride in being a college student with backing from people in high places, and become a black man in a white man’s world, he would go places. Bledsoe effectively killed off the life path that could put the narrator in racial danger, and instead planted the seed for a “good, smart, disillusioned fighter” (145), the type of man that does good in the world despite his circumstance.