"invisible man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

^^^^^^^^^^INVISIBLE MAN: CHAPTER 5

Chapter 5 consists almost entirely of a long, brilliantly written sermon delivered by Reverend Homer A. Barbee of Chicago. The occasion for the sermon is Founder's Day, and the purpose of the sermon is to honor the unnamed founder of the college, a man whose life and work Barbee transforms into a myth, almost a religion.

NOTE: THE "FOUNDER" AND BOOKER T. WASHINGTON The college in the novel is modeled in part on Tuskegee Institute, which Ellison attended from 1933 to 1936. The great black leader Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) founded Tuskegee in 1881 and ran it on the fundamental principles of "separate but equal," which became both custom and law in the South during the 1890s. Washington encouraged blacks to learn useful trades and not to aspire to equality with whites. He was an astute fund raiser and a politically adept leader who succeeded in building Tuskegee into a major national force in black education. You may wish to explore the extent to which the founder in the novel is modeled on Washington.

As the narrator waits for the sermon to begin, he thinks of the many hours he has sat on those hard benches and listened to the choir sing songs demanded by the distinguished white visitors. He thinks of the times he has spoken and debated as a student leader, and he watches Dr. Bledsoe, distinguished in his swallowtail coat and striped trousers, seating the white guests on the platform.

At this point you must read very carefully. Ellison uses a technique that recurs throughout the novel. He lets the narrator tell you something with a straight face, but invites you to see the humor or the irony that the narrator misses. Speaking of Bledsoe's arrival at the college as a child, he tells us: "I remember the legend of how he had come to the college, a barefoot boy who in his fervor for education had trudged across two states. And how he was given a job feeding slop to the hogs but had made himself the best slop dispenser in the history of the school...." From slop dispenser he rises to office boy and from office boy to educator, from educator to president, from president to statesman, "who carried our problems to those above us, even unto the White House."

How are you to take this story? Or the story of the Founder, told by the black minister, Homer A. Barbee, which makes the Founder seem like a combination of Moses and Jesus Christ? In both cases, the stories are obviously exaggerated. The myths of Bledsoe and the Founder endow these men with almost superhuman qualities. If you can understand why, then you can enjoy what Ellison is doing and what the narrator misses. It suits the college to mythologize Bledsoe's past. It suits Homer A. Barbee to make the Founder into a religious figure worthy of worship, because these legends and myths create loyalty in their followers. These legends keep the white philanthropists giving money and keep the students following their teachings. When the narrator hears Barbee's beautiful story of the life of the Founder, born a slave but devoted from his early childhood to learning, he feels guilty that he has wronged the college by his mistakes, and he believes that he, not Bledsoe, is the one who has acted improperly.

All the students are moved by the sermon, and they join in song, this time one sincerely felt. The narrator feels confused and apart, and when the orchestra plays excerpts from Antonin Dvorak's symphony From the New World he keeps hearing strains of his mother and his grandfather's favorite spiritual, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Too moved to listen, he leaves the chapel and hurries out into the dark.

NOTE: HOMER A. BARBEE Ellison enjoys using symbols. At the end of Homer A. Barbee's speech, he stumbles and falls, his dark glasses drop to the floor, and the narrator realizes that the man is blind. The combination of his name and blindness suggest his role. He is Homer, the blind Greek bard (bard = barbee?), who sings the praises of his heroes, Bledsoe and the Founder, as Homer sang the praises of the Greek and Trojan warriors on the plains of Troy.

^^^^^^^^^^INVISIBLE MAN: CHAPTER 6

The moment the narrator has been dreading arrives: the confrontation with Bledsoe. Mostly dialogue, this would be a powerful scene to read aloud with a friend or to act out in front of a class. Bledsoe tears into the narrator for taking Norton to Trueblood's and the Golden Day. He accuses the boy of dragging the name of the college into the mud, and he expels him. But the narrator doesn't take it lying down. He fights back, calling Bledsoe a liar for going back on his word to Mr. Norton that he would not punish him. Bledsoe shocks the boy by suddenly changing tactics. He admires the boy's fight, and he levels with him for a moment. "I'm still the king down here," he tells the narrator, "and I will do whatever I have to do to keep my power. I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am."

Like an expert boxer, he shoots jabs and hooks at the narrator's weak defenses, reducing him to helplessness. You begin to see the implications of Bledsoe's name--he "bleeds his people so" in order to secure and advance his own power. He works with the whites because it suits him. This is too much for the narrator to handle. He thinks of all the events of this one day--Trueblood, Mr. Norton, the Golden Day, the vespers sermon, and now Bledsoe's confession. What does it all mean? He thinks of his grandfather, who had told him on his deathbed (at the outset of Chapter 1) "to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction." For a moment he wonders if his grandfather's advice has not been right. But he cannot let himself believe that his true role in life ought to be the undermining of white society. No, the school is right, Bledsoe is right, he thinks. He decides to accept his punishment, go to New York, and continue to build his "career" from there.

The next morning he rises early, packs his bags, and goes to Bledsoe's office to ask a favor: He would like letters of recommendation to some of the trustees, who then might help him find a job. With the job he will be able to earn the money to come back to school. He will suffer his punishment and return. Bledsoe seemingly agrees and gives the boy seven sealed letters. He is not to open them under any circumstances.

^^^^^^^^^^INVISIBLE MAN: CHAPTER 7

Chapter 7 is a transitional chapter between two major sections of Invisible Man. Ellison does not divide the novel into formal parts or books, so you must make the divisions yourself. Many readers place a major break here in Chapter 7, following Ellison's own suggestion. In "The Art of Fiction: An Interview," Ellison says, "Each section begins with a sheet of paper; each sheet of paper is exchanged for another and contains a definition of his identity, or the social role he is to play as defined for him by others." (See The Critics section for the entire passage.)

The first piece of paper referred to seems to be the scholarship given him in Chapter 1. The second piece of paper may well be the letters given to him by Bledsoe at the end of Chapter 6. These letters will define his identity in New York in Chapters 7 to 9. But first he has to get there, and much of Chapter 7 is taken up with the bus trip to New York, where he meets again the vet-patient-doctor from Chapter 3, Burnside. Burnside is being transferred to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital in Washington and is being accompanied on the trip by an attendant named Crenshaw.

Burnside, as he did in Chapter 3, plays the role of the wise fool. He knows the truth, and for his knowledge he is called crazy. Bledsoe, it seems, has had him transferred to St. Elizabeth's to get him out of the way. For those who run the system, people like Burnside are dangerous, because they threaten to expose the truth. During the bus ride, Burnside gives the narrator some good advice about life, experience and self-knowledge. He tells him to play the game, but "play it in your own way.... Learn how it operates."

The narrator seems to understand little of what Burnside is saying. He is too young, too tired, too lonely, and too scared. At this moment all he can think of is survival. He gets to New York and is terrified by the mass of bodies crushed together in the subway that takes him uptown. Everything is new to him--the huge city with its impersonal masses, the mixture of black and white he had never seen in the South, the noise, the strange sight of a short black rabble-rouser named "Ras," who will much later in the novel figure very significantly. He has arrived in Harlem.

^^^^^^^^^^INVISIBLE MAN: CHAPTER 8

The narrator settles in at Men's House in Harlem, a respectable place for young men "on the way up," as he believes himself to be. He rejects the Bible in the room as fit reading for someone in New York; instead, he spreads his seven letters from Bledsoe on the dresser and admires them. He believes they are his ticket to success, and he starts out early the next morning to deliver them, one at a time, to the important people to whom they are addressed. Most of these people work on Wall Street, and at first the narrator is frightened of the tall buildings and the swiftly moving crowds of white businessmen. He thinks people suspect him of some crime because he is black. But he finally gathers the courage to go into one of the buildings, and after he has delivered the first letter, delivering the others is easier. But the letters do not seem to do any good. All the recipients say they will contact him, but no one does. He tries to reach them by telephone, but he can never get past the secretaries. Something is wrong, but he doesn't know what it is.

Finally, he has only one letter left, the one addressed to Mr. Emerson, and rather than taking the letter and risking rejection, he telephones, saying that he has an important message for Mr. Emerson from Dr. Bledsoe. Just as his money is about to run out, he receives a letter from Mr. Emerson inviting him to the office.

^^^^^^^^^^INVISIBLE MAN: CHAPTER 9

Chapter 8, a brief chapter, was largely devoted to forwarding the action. Chapter 9 is more central to the themes of the novel. In it you are introduced to two important figures: Peter Wheatstraw and young Mr. Emerson. As the narrator leaves Men's House, he sees a black man pushing a cart and singing the famous "Boogie Woogie Blues" by Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing. His name is Peter Wheatstraw, and he does something significant: He makes the narrator think of his southern folk roots. He recognizes the narrator as a fellow black from "down home," and he asks him a series of questions, using language common among less educated southern blacks. He does so deliberately to remind the narrator that he is part of that folk tradition. The narrator rejects him. He's too proud, too educated to acknowledge an illiterate southern black like Peter Wheatstraw. "Why you trying to deny me?" Wheatstraw asks. The question is important. The narrator has been trying since the opening chapter to deny his heritage, to act like an educated white man. He is ashamed of himself and his heritage. He can see no value in it. Peter Wheatstraw, the blues singer, ballad maker, fast-talking "seventhsonofaseventhsonbawnwithacauloverbotheyes," is there to remind the narrator that rejecting the blues and folk tradition means rejecting his humanity.

But the narrator isn't ready yet to get the message. He has a momentary flash of admiration for Peter, and the blues strike a chord of recognition. But it passes, and he goes into a restaurant and orders orange juice, toast, and coffee instead of pork chops, grits, one egg, biscuits, and coffee because he doesn't want the people to think he is a southern country boy.

After breakfast he goes to Mr. Emerson's office, hopeful it will be his lucky day. What happens to him here is one of the major turning points in the novel. Young Mr. Emerson, the son of the Emerson to whom the letter was addressed, is in the office. He takes the letter, then invites the invisible man into the inner office. There follows a remarkable conversation that lasts for eight or ten pages. Mr. Emerson tries to persuade the narrator to go to a different college, somewhere in the North, perhaps. But the narrator is not interested. He wants to earn the money to go back to his own college. Mr. Emerson grows increasingly disturbed. He asks more questions. Has the narrator opened the letters? How many letters were there? Does he believe that two strangers, one white and one black, can be friends? The narrator wonders what is going on, and you are as puzzled as he unless you have figured the truth out first. Perhaps you have. The truth is that the letters are frauds: the letters, rather than helping the narrator, carefully instruct their readers to do nothing for the narrator and to keep him in the dark about the truth. All this, the letters conclude, is in the best interests of the college. You now understand the significance of the narrator's dream at the end of Chapter 1, where he opens the envelope and reads the message: "To Whom It May Concern--Keep This Nigger-Boy Running." For that is exactly what Bledsoe's letters instruct the white trustees to do. And the narrator never suspected it. Again, the narrator has lost his identity. The letters were all he had, and he remembers the old folk song, "Well they picked poor Robin clean." It seems especially appropriate for him at this moment.

But young Mr. Emerson is not old Mr. Emerson. He is not content with reading the letter and dismissing the boy. As we have noted in The Characters section, he may represent the young, liberal white who wants to be "pals" with the black man. He thinks of himself as Huckleberry Finn and the narrator as "Nigger Jim." He wants to work off his own guilt by taking the narrator to nightclubs and listening to jazz. He wants to be cool and modern and go to the Club Calamus (see The Characters for an analysis of the name). At the end of the chapter he honestly believes that his revelation of the truth about the letters has genuinely helped the narrator. But has it?