"invisible man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)
Later in the morning Brother Wrestrum comes into the office. He is disturbed by the link of chain sitting on the narrator's desk. He sees the link as an advertisement of the racial nature of the narrator's cause, a symbol that the white brothers might find offensive. He doesn't want to stress the cause of Harlem, of black people, but the cause of the Brotherhood. He wants all brothers to wear emblems that will identify them so that members of the Brotherhood won't end up fighting with each other. Wrestrum seems uneasy. Is he jealous of the narrator's success? Is he the one who wrote the letter?
While Wrestrum is in the office, the phone rings. It is the editor of a magazine, who wants to do an article on the narrator. The narrator says that Tod Clifton would be a much better person to interview, but Wrestrum insists that the narrator sit for the interview. Reluctantly, the narrator agrees. Two weeks later he will wish that he hadn't.
Two weeks after the meeting with Wrestrum, the narrator finds himself downtown at Brotherhood headquarters. With absolutely no warning, he is accused by Brother Wrestrum of being an individualist who is exploiting the Brotherhood for his own personal gain. Wrestrum accuses the narrator of trying to become a dictator in Harlem and of having had the article in the magazine published to glorify himself rather than the Brotherhood. The narrator replies that he hasn't even seen the article, and besides doesn't Brother Wrestrum know that he tried to have the interview done with Tod Clifton? Wrestrum himself was the one who urged the narrator to do it. What is going on? The narrator and Wrestrum argue and call each other names. The narrator is asked to leave the room, the charges are discussed, and he is brought back.
The decision of the committee is that, while the narrator has been found innocent on the charge of the magazine article, it will be best for the "good of the organization" that the narrator be removed from Harlem. He is given the choice of remaining inactive until further notice or of lecturing downtown on the Woman Question. This is all done seriously. Nobody laughs. The narrator is appalled. It's like a crazy dream, a nightmare, a strange joke. They can't be serious, but they are. Are you as surprised as the narrator? Why, when he is obviously doing so well, is he sent downtown to lecture on the Woman Question, something he knows nothing about? The narrator accepts the assignment because it is the only way he can continue to be active, but the chapter ends with him sneaking out of Harlem, afraid to tell his friends what has happened. His identity has been changed again, and again by someone else's choice.
^^^^^^^^^^INVISIBLE MAN: CHAPTER 19
Chapter 19 is a transitional chapter, like Chapters 7 and 12. Invisible Man seems to be constructed in four major movements, each centering around a crisis. The crisis that begins the final movement comes in Chapter 20, when the narrator returns to Harlem to try to find Tod Clifton, who has disappeared. But before he returns to Harlem, he spends an evening with a white woman. That is the main action of Chapter 19.
As you read this chapter, ask yourself what Ellison is up to. Some readers think the chapter reads like something out of a torrid romance. Handsome black man speaks to a bunch of unsatisfied women about the "Woman Question," and what the women are really interested in is biology, not ideology. As the narrator tells the story of his seduction by the unnamed woman in red, whose husband appears to come home while she is in bed with him, you must wonder how seriously you are supposed to take all this. The narrator is very naive. When the woman goes off to change into something more comfortable and reappears in a red hostess gown, the narrator does not seem to get the message. He has come to her apartment for "coffee" and discussion after his lecture on the Woman Question, and she asks him, "Perhaps you'd prefer wine or milk instead of coffee?" The idea of milk turns him off, but he misses the oddness of the question.
Her change of clothes, her apartment with its life-size painting of a pink Renoir nude, her talk, her movement, her excitement over the "primitive" quality of the narrator, all mark the woman as one of Ellison's objects of satire. When one critic asked him if his depiction of the narrator's relationship with white women wasn't a weakness in the novel, Ellison chided the critic for taking both this scene and Chapter 24 too seriously. Perhaps you ought to be guided by Ellison's own judgment here and accept this sequence as a piece of tongue-in-cheek satire, based on the traditional myth that white women desire black men. Do you enjoy the humor of this chapter, or do you think that neither the narrator nor the scarlet woman is a very believable character in this scene?
Whether the scene is parody, satire, or serious writing, the appearance of the husband scares the narrator to death. He puts on his clothes, leaves, and vows to keep "the biological and ideological" apart in the future. He fears that the woman will tell the Brotherhood about what he's done, but no one ever says anything. So he goes on speaking on the Woman Question until one evening the phone rings and he's called to an emergency meeting. Tod Clifton has disappeared, and the narrator is needed to return to Harlem immediately.
^^^^^^^^^^INVISIBLE MAN: CHAPTER 20
When asked about the style of Invisible Man (see the section Style for details), Ellison commented that the style moved from realism to expressionism to surrealism. As you read the last six chapters, beginning with Chapter 20, think about what surrealism is and why the style might be described as surrealistic. Something changes in the narrator during Chapter 20, and he begins to move inward, seeing the world outside from a new perspective. What happens in Chapter 20 shakes him profoundly and makes him feel that the world outside is unreal and that he is just awakening from a deep sleep to see the world as it truly is for the first time.
The whole chapter has an air of nightmare about it. The narrator returns to Harlem in search of Tod Clifton, but everything has changed. He goes to a bar called Barrelhouse's Jolly Dollar, where he used to meet one of his favorite contacts, Brother Maceo. When he gets there, not only is Maceo gone but the men there resent being called "brother." It's as if the whole movement has vanished since he was sent downtown. He goes to his old office in search of Brother Tarp, but Tarp has disappeared, and the portrait of Frederick Douglass has been taken down. "Returning to the district was like returning to a city of the dead."
The next morning he finds a number of the members and asks them about Tod Clifton, but no one knows anything about Tod's disappearance. He goes back downtown to attend a committee meeting and discovers that it not only has started without him but that he hasn't been invited. The entire Harlem program has fallen apart and he has been sent to do a job with no help, no instructions, and no official program. Why? Unable to figure out what to do, he wanders over to Fifth Avenue and buys a new pair of summer shoes. Then he walks down Forty-third Street toward Sixth Avenue where he encounters a strange and remarkable sight.
A crowd is gathered in front of a piece of cardboard on which "a grinning doll of orange-and-black tissue paper with thin flat cardboard disks forming its head and feet" is dancing. Something behind the cardboard is making the doll dance, and that "something" is saying:
Shake it up! Shake it up!
He's Sambo, the dancing doll, ladies and gentlemen....
He'll keep you entertained. He'll make you weep sweet-
Tears from laughing.
Shake him, shake him, you cannot break him....
NOTE: SAMBO THE DANCING DOLL Both the name and the movements of the doll are important. Like the grinning bank that the narrator finds in his room at Mary Rambo's, the Sambo doll is one of the central symbols of the novel. "Sambo," like "Uncle Tom," is a term used by blacks to describe other blacks who allow themselves to be used and manipulated by whites. If an "Uncle Tom" is a black man who lets himself be used as a servant by whites, a "Sambo" is a black man who plays the role of comedian or mindless entertainer. He is a black who grins and laughs and pretends that he doesn't mind what is being done to him. He is the professional funny man, the song-and-dance man, who entertains whites and seems not to mind the hurt and pain that blacks must suffer, in part because of his own failure to do anything. Thus the grinning Sambo bank at Mary's and the dancing Sambo doll symbolize the very type of black man that both the Brotherhood and Ras the Exhorter seem to be fighting against.
The sight of the dancing doll and the comic spiel of the manipulator of the doll attract the narrator's attention, but what stuns him is his discovery of who the street merchant is. It is Tod Clifton. The narrator cannot believe his eyes. Why? Why would Tod give up the Brotherhood and "plunge outside history" (to use Tod's own phrase) to become a cheap entertainer, a seller of Sambo dolls?
The narrator comes to no answer. Remember that this is a first-person narration and that the narrator was not present in Harlem when Tod made his decision. Like the narrator, you can never know--you can only guess. One guess is that Tod felt betrayed by the Brotherhood when he discovered that it had changed its emphasis from local programs such as that in Harlem to more international issues. This is precisely what the Communist party did around 1940 and 1941, thus disillusioning American blacks who were working with it. Perhaps Tod simply despaired of achieving anything and gave up. Or perhaps he gave up because he thought the narrator had betrayed the cause and he was disillusioned by the narrator's disappearance. Which is the most likely explanation as far as you are concerned?
Whatever the reason, the narrator can't look at him or bring himself to talk to him. Then Tod's lookout warns him to move: The police are coming, and Tod has no license to sell these dolls. Tod and the crowd vanish around the corner, leaving the narrator to think about what has happened. The narrator picks up a doll that has been left on the sidewalk and puts it in his pocket with Brother Tarp's chain link (an interesting combination). Then he goes off after Tod. He sees him again on Forty-second Street, being led away by a cop. The cop pushes him along, and suddenly Tod whirls and uppercuts the policeman. The policeman goes down, draws his gun, and shoots Ted. The narrator, across the street, is frozen in horror.
The narrator tries to reach Tod but is stopped by another policeman, who insults him, calling him "Junior." "I'm his friend," the narrator says, but it is no use. They will not let him through. In a few moments Tod is dead. He has become what the name "Tod" means in German. The narrator answers the policeman's questions about Tod and then wanders toward the subway after the body is taken away in a police wagon.
He is in a state of shock. Nothing makes sense. Why should Tod deliberately court his own death like that? Tod knew better. He was street-wise and knew what white policemen did to any black who resisted. Did he want to die? Again, these questions are not answered. They are only food for your thought and the thought of the narrator, who tries to puzzle out what has happened as he waits for a train to take him back to Harlem.
A change comes over him. He starts to notice details that had escaped him before. He sees three boys dressed up in summer suits and felt hats, and he realizes that he has never seen boys like this before. He has never thought of these boys or of women like Mary Rambo or younger women who walked the streets in "dark exotic-colored stockings." He has been so busy with historical issues he has not really noticed people as individuals. Who speaks for such people, and who will speak for Tod? These are the questions he asks himself as the chapter ends. He realizes that he is finally waking up to reality. "I'd been asleep, dreaming," he thinks. But he is making a start. The death of Tod Clifton has stirred him to see people as people for the first time. The last major movement of the novel has begun.
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