His opportunities are not always based on his own accord, most of the time he has help. For example the first time he get's kicked out of his establishment is when Bledsoe sends IM to Harlem with "letters of recommendation." After wandering from job inquiry to job inquiry, he finds himself at Emerson's company with reading the fateful words in Bledsoe's letter which had made it virtually impossible to get a job. The fact that he will never go back to school, and was played by the number one person he looked up to, is crushing news for him, yet indicates the first step into his discovery process. From this low point, he channels his energy into finding a job and a place to stay (Mary's).
In one day, his life is turned around again.
At Liberty Paints (where he spitefully took a job Emerson jr recommended), he is in a different caste system where he ends up again majorly injured and thrown out. He survives and explosion, but is in some kind of hospital where they are experimenting with shocking his brain. In this scene the allusion to re-birth is actually overt and he is discharged from the hospital still in a stage of re-learning vital things about his life. But he does not get his job back and is sent to a place where he has little to do and explore, the Men's house. In this stage of his character development, he has vague memories and is re-understanding the world, this time with less illusional perspective. This leads him to mistake a man for Bledsoe and cause damage that gets him thrown out of his situation again. But, this time he has Mary's offer and goes to live with her.
While he is living with her, not really doing anything, he comes across an eviction and speaks out for his race "of law-abiding people," and has such a moving effect, an organization called the Brotherhood contacts him about taking a job. Not surprisingly, he is refreshed with a new identity and place of residence. He has more agency in evoking this change/new chapter in his life than before, and we see the Invisible man start to emerge into a substance rather than the shell he was at the beginning of the story. He is making decisions and creating his own aspirations that are like the narrator we see in the prologue, but also on a much more visible social scale.
At Liberty Paints (where he spitefully took a job Emerson jr recommended), he is in a different caste system where he ends up again majorly injured and thrown out. He survives and explosion, but is in some kind of hospital where they are experimenting with shocking his brain. In this scene the allusion to re-birth is actually overt and he is discharged from the hospital still in a stage of re-learning vital things about his life. But he does not get his job back and is sent to a place where he has little to do and explore, the Men's house. In this stage of his character development, he has vague memories and is re-understanding the world, this time with less illusional perspective. This leads him to mistake a man for Bledsoe and cause damage that gets him thrown out of his situation again. But, this time he has Mary's offer and goes to live with her.
While he is living with her, not really doing anything, he comes across an eviction and speaks out for his race "of law-abiding people," and has such a moving effect, an organization called the Brotherhood contacts him about taking a job. Not surprisingly, he is refreshed with a new identity and place of residence. He has more agency in evoking this change/new chapter in his life than before, and we see the Invisible man start to emerge into a substance rather than the shell he was at the beginning of the story. He is making decisions and creating his own aspirations that are like the narrator we see in the prologue, but also on a much more visible social scale.
This theme of resurrection is so far recurrent in Invisible Man's story, but it leads to the question: how did he end up in the setting of the prologue? Did his public drive fade? Did life circumstances lead him to become out of touch with the system of race and economic class heirarchies that he has been playing in since the beginning of his life? or so in touch with this system that he has embedded himself very deeply and disappeared indefinitely?
I really like how you convey the emergence of new forms of his character as resurrections because he builds a new identity each time. It would be interesting to look into how his view of his own identity changes alongside his identity itself. He sees himself differently each time. How is this influenced by the world changing around him and how much of it is it because of his progressive disillusionment?
ReplyDeleteWe continue to see big and small forms of this "resurrection" dynamic even within the Brotherhood sections--he's temporarily "reborn" as a leader on women's rights, lecturing downtown on feminism (where he's something of a celebrity), and then when he returns to Harlem (especially after Clifton's death), his role as "community leader" seems like a starting-over, with the entire social climate having changed, Tarp gone (and his Douglass portrait as well).
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