Torn

Throughout life, there's time that arise where one may have conflicting feelings or emotions and don't know which way to turn. During this particular story, the narrator face several self-conflicting situations which all come down to either benefiting himself as a black man as well as building an image that he is not susceptible to only what he is told to do by the white man or having a heightened respect for the whites and treating them as a higher form, putting himself in a secondary position. When the novel starts and his grandfather's words to "Live with your head in the lion's mouth." (16) and later Dr. Bledsoe's words to not obey every wish of the white man, and "...show them what we want them to see." (102) the narrator almost had that conscious debating whether he should follow his grandfather's wish or continue standing at the foot of each white man to gain a somewhat reciprocated form of respect. It's not just the narrator, however, his grandfather and Dr. Bledsoe both display the same display of catering to the white man. His grandfather admits "[He has] been a traitor [his] whole life..." (16) and the narrator questions Dr. Bledsoe's ideologies when he goes frantic over Mr. Norton continually apologizing and which the narrator deemed "...most confusing of all." (105) he wonders why he should stop putting himself at the "invisible" standard society views him and stop catering to the white man if that's the way he's moving around and getting somewhere. The college wants its students to move forward and be successful, but what if the only way is to get a good foot on the white side first?