Ellison's portrayal of the Brotherhood starts off a lot stronger than it ends. It actually ends in the last chapter when the IM discovers brother Jack was the one who sent the threatening letters about his position. All of these hints, and scenes where IM's trust of the Brotherhood is tested, the strength of the organization is disqualified, although not de-sanctified in IM's mind until the very end.
One of the key moments we see the fragility of the brotherhood is when IM comes back from downtown and meets some of his former "brothers" at a bar. He has casual conversation with the bartender, but when he recognizes some people from the Brotherhood but they respond to him pretty bitterly. It seems as though they were cast out, or somehow got a distaste for the organization because IM claims, "I was certain they knew who I was" (424). But they refuse to call him brother and say, indirectly to IM, "some of us dont think so much of his kind of politics" (426).
The author is clearly critiquing the power structure of the Brotherhood, which, in larger society, was a metaphor for communism. The mistrust of two former believers in the Brotherhood is like mutiny, but mutiny under a benevolent leader is disgraceful, whereas these men--the workers--seemed to believe they were the ones given the short end of the stick.
The ideology of the Brotherhood was just from the beginning, but like many political power structures had deep cracks that could not be filled like that of racial inequality and overall trust issues. All of the instances where the IM did nothing wrong and was criticized, like when he did an interview, or when Clifton died, looked very sketchy compared to Brother Jack's extreme power. And from the beginning we suspected this Brotherhood deal would end up badly. The critique of communism, and other power structures where the main leader has a particular agenda (in this case using the IM and then dumping him) is a clear theme in the book manifested heavily in all of IM's story with the Brotherhood.
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ReplyDeleteAlso, a note, the Invisible man was not naive when he was in the Brotherhood (at least compared to how he was in the beginning of the book), but he still justifies their cause. It's a question still in my mind why he would take his support so far, even after having very legitimate doubts, except that he is trying to be a part of history. But that is addressed at the end,when he makes a new path in history for himself tied to no one, no ideology, just playing any role he chooses. The texts about him that will go down in history are his own (this book) and not a doctored speech that he has made under the jurisdiction of a manipulating political group. Really cool shift in his consciousness at the end when he goes underground.
DeleteIn the beginning, the Brotherhood does seem like an organization dedicated to empowering others but there are hints at its exclusivity such as when Brother Jack throws out the black brother for singing spirituals. By doing that Brother Jack is keeping up a certain image for the organization in a way that's reminiscent of Bledsoe, and the narrator doesn't recognize this similarity until later. The Brotherhood appears to be doing good things while the narrator is experiencing success with his work, things go wrong when he's reassigned for supposedly "taking credit" for all of the organization's work. This suggests that organizations like the Brotherhood impede the work that an individual can accomplish. By the end of the book it's apparent that Brotherhood doesn't really believe in equality and doesn't care about the black community, and instead seem to believe in a warped idea of social equality where equality is obtained at the expense of giving up your identity.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point here, about the "brothers" who no longer recognize our narrator as a "brother" (or a leader, which isn't exactly a "brother," which is part of the problem). He initially takes this as a sign that "the organization" has crumbled, and later he realizes that the movement must assume *he* has abandoned *them* by suddenly moving downtown (this is his assumption about why Clifton left--disillusioned by the narrator's "abandonment"). But in fact, we could see them as growing wise to the Brotherhood's machinations, seeing the narrator for what he is--not a "brother" in any meaningful sense, or certainly not *their* brother, in any case, but just a tool of an organization that has no significant presence in their community. It's telling that, for all Jack's bluster about "the Harlem people," no one in Harlem seems to even know he exists.
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