Ben Pabst
12/5/09
Composition & Communication
Professor Sciacca
The Struggle for Identity
In Ralph Ellison’s, Invisible Man, the narrator states that he is “an invisible man,” however this is not meant to be interpreted literally (Ellison 3). The narrator is simply stating that he is invisible because people choose not to see him. The narrator’s perception of invisibility is linked to a feeling of blindness and identity. Since the narrator is black, whites refuse to see him as a person and he therefore, depicts himself as invisible and characterizes the whites as blind. The narrator describes these people as blind because their prejudices prevent them from seeing African Americans on the same level that they see themselves, therefore the narrator considers himself “an invisible man.” The novel is about a man’s search for his identity and place in society, as seen from the perspective of an unnamed black man during the 1940’s in New York City. The novel was written in 1952, when segregation was still at its height. Throughout the novel the narrator travels from place to place and at each place he goes, he feels his perception of how other people view him, changes. His identity and place in society changes based upon each place he travels. Also, since the narrator is so conscious of how he is perceived by society, he will eventually prevent himself from being the stereotypical black individual. The narrator’s identity and place in society are influenced physically and psychologically based upon where he goes and is reflected in his responses to food. His perception of how other people view him is his reality.
The first occurrence of the narrator’s innocence is found after the battle royal, as he is giving his speech. The narrator remains vulnerable and the people he meets define his identity and status in society for him. For instance, when the narrator is making his speech to the white crowd he mentions social responsibility. The crowd wants him to repeat the word, so instead he says social equality to which one man approaches him and tells him that “We mean to do right by you, but you’ve got to know your place at all times” (Ellison 31). The white men are racists and make a fool out of the narrator. After the battle royal and the narrator’s speech, they award him with a scholarship. The narrator’s response is one of gratitude and gladness. He is conforming to society and letting them walk all over him. He is playing the role of the servile black man. This example shows how the narrator does not know who he is and what he wants. He is being pulled around like a dog and told how to act and think. His identity, which is ever changing correlates to the way he feels about food. When he feels that he is being judged and labeled, he will react differently to food then he would have if he had not felt threatened.
The narrator’s place in society is confirmed in a much greater way in this instance when he feels alone and invisible around the white people, “eating with them in the same cafeterias (although I avoid their tables) gave me the eerie, out-of-focus sensation of a dream” (Ellison 168). The narrator is talking about his time in New York after he was expelled from college. He visits all of these trustees while looking for a job. At the same time he talks of his experience in New York. Although he is in the presence of these white people, he feels alone and hidden at the same time. Since the narrator is unseen, his sense of identity is invisible and his place in society is one of nonexistence. The narrator does not mention much about the food, possibly because he feels threatened and cannot even enjoy his meal. The food he eats in this situation does not have any meaning for the narrator, because he feels threatened.
Here the narrator is still acting as a puppet for others enjoyment. After the narrator returns Mr. Norton to the school he is told that Dr. Bledsoe wants to speak to him. He goes to see him and Dr. Bledsoe talks of himself and how he has to lie to the white people so that he can get what he wants out of society. He says ‘“You’re a black educated fool, son,” “You’re nobody, son. You don’t exist”’ (Ellison 143). Here, the president of the school, Dr. Bledsoe, expels the narrator for driving one of the founders of the college, Mr. Norton, to a brothel. He makes the narrator feel as if he is nothing. Dr. Bledsoe has power due to his position in society, so he uses that to his advantage. The narrator is acting as the diligent uncomplaining disciple of Booker T. Washington. Washington’s philosophy was that blacks should work toward economic success as a means of achieving racial equality. He is letting others dictate his identity for him. I feel that in this situation his place in society is as a black man who is being convinced to be whiter.
Throughout the novel, we see the narrator interact with food and his reactions toward it. The narrator’s feelings of how he is perceived in society are evident in the way he acts around food. If he feels that he is being identified as a stereotypical black man, he will choose to not eat food that identifies him as a stereotype. The narrator enters a drug store and goes up to the bartender and asks what the special of the day is, to which the bartender replies, ‘“Pork chops, grits, one egg, hot biscuits and coffee!”’ (Ellison 178). This statement upsets the narrator, because the bartender tells him that he would love the special. This would confirm in the narrator’s mind that the bartender is obviously a racist. Therefore the narrator chooses a different option, one that would not identify him as being the typical black person. He is upset at the fact that the bartender offers him the special, because the food is obviously southern food. The narrator feels pleased with himself for declining the special, however, he notices that most people are eating it. The narrator has such disgust for conforming to the stereotype, because he does not want people telling him who he is and what his place in society is. The reason the narrator felt this way was because he knew that pork dates back to Biblical times, and was considered unclean and a sin for Jews to consume it. However, during slavery it was consumed often. The slave-owner would cast off the scraps onto the slaves, which culminated into soul food. The slaves would make dishes using the different pieces of the animal. This was known as “eating low on the hog.” For the people who would eat the good portions of the pig, like the slave owner, it was considered “eating high on the hog.”
As the novel progresses, the narrator’s sense of his own identity changes and he begins to feels less threatened by the way he believes others perceive him. His identity in this instance is one of change. He begins to understand his place in society. The narrator goes to work at a factory, called Liberty Paints, where he is told to dope cans of white paint with a few drops of another paint that has gone bad. Kimbro says “White! It's the purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint any whiter. This batch right here is heading for a national monument!” (Ellison 202). The only way that the paint becomes so white is by adding ten drops of black paint. This is a symbol of the reliance of whites on blacks, and the fact that whites need blacks to achieve greatness. This is how the narrator feels the whites perceive him. He is merely a stepping-stone in their path to importance. Physically he is doing menial labor to further better the white society and psychologically he is feeling as if he is at the bottom of the totem pole.
After the explosion at the factory, the narrator is taken to a hospital where some doctors run a series of tests on him. At the end of the tests, they ask him a series of questions to figure out whom he is and if he is ok to be discharged. The doctors ask him about Brer Rabbit and Buckeye, two characters from folktales introduced by Africans to America. The doctors then leave the narrator alone for a little while, to which he responds by saying, “Left alone, I lay fretting over my identity” (Ellison 242). This shows how where ever the narrator goes, he is unable to shed his heritage. He is also unable to free himself from the burden of racism. Buckeye symbolizes childhood, whereas Brer Rabbit symbolizes adulthood. The narrator acknowledges that Southern black folklore is part of his heritage and he will never be able to get rid of it, neither do I believe he intends to. This is the first example of the narrator starting to understand his place in society and his identity. The narrator tries to discard his culture, while trying to transform his identity but he cannot seem to get rid of the racism that is attached to it. After this incident the narrator feels a sense of accomplishment because he creates his own identity rather than accepting an identity imposed upon him from the outside.
Another instance concerning the narrator’s Southern culture is reemphasized when he is walking down the street one day and sees a vendor selling yams on the side of the road. The narrator stops and asks the man for three of them. The vendor asks him if he is one of them old-fashioned yam eaters, to which the narrator replies, ‘“They're my birthmark,’ I said. ‘I yam what I am!”’ (Ellison 266). These yams confirm his identity and heritage and place in society. The narrator chooses to behave as he wishes. He is his own person; no one is going to tell him how to act or how to be. His identity is what he wants it to be. He is celebrating his own background and taking hold of his freedom. The yams symbolize the Southern way of life and habits, because they are a traditional food of the South. Psychologically he is in a state of bliss because he is reminded of home and forgets about how he has been trying to act around other people. He forgets about how he feels about how other people view him, and focuses on what he is eating. The yams not only symbolize freedom, but they symbolize comfort and hominess.
The yams are a type of sustenance but the narrator does not eat them for the sake of being hungry. He eats them because they conjure up memories of childhood and life. He describes them as being nectar and he talks of how as a child they would roast them in the fire with pork fat, or put them in cobblers, or even eat them raw. He goes into such detail when describing them, almost like someone describes a pornographic film. As the narrator is eating the yam, he is reminded of his childhood. He mentions that he had to hide the yams, while eating them at school, “squeezing the sweet pulp from the soft peel as we hid from the teacher” (Ellison 262). I can tell from this occurrence that the narrator has deep feelings for Southern food. His love and desire for his heritage takes over and makes him forget about how he is supposed to act around whites and he forgets about what others may think of him. The only thing that matters at that moment was the yam. He describes how at school, the students were taught to disregard their heritage and instead accept the white culture. This is similar to Booker T. Washington’s teachings.
When the narrator returns to Mary’s home, he notices the familiar smell of cabbage, a smell that reminds him of his childhood. “Cabbage was always a depressing reminder of the leaner years of my childhood and I suffered silently whenever she served it” (Ellison 296). Cabbage was considered poor mans food and dates back to Africa to the time of the slave trade. The slave trade began in the fifteenth century with the Portuguese and reached its peak in the eighteenth century. It started in West Africa as a cuisine and made its way to America by way of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It then became a series of dietary staples among enslaved Africans, known as Soul food. Soul food is America’s adaptation of African cuisine. Cabbage is a reference to the narrator’s childhood and also a reference to enslaved Africans. Before, with the yams, he felt this sense of freedom from racism, yet here he feels enslaved again. Its ironic that based upon his location and the type of food, his feelings towards an item will change.
This is yet another example of invisibility but also an example of the narrators feeling as if he is unidentifiable by other people. The narrator is invited to a meeting with Brother Jack, because the Brotherhood wants to recruit the narrator. They feel that he would be a good asset. He would give speeches that would build up people, rather than tearing them down. Yet, when he enters the room, the men turn and look at him, then they turn their backs on him and pay no attention to him. He feels as if “It was as though they hadn’t seen me, as though I were here, and yet not here” (Ellison 301). He feels invisible because people act as if he does not even exist. It is as if they do not even identify him as a human being. If they do not even acknowledge him here, how is he expected to do his job? This is similar to when he was eating in the cafeteria with the white people. There is this sense of not belonging that the narrator felt when he was eating in the cafeteria. It is the same feeling he has when he enters the room full of the men from the Brotherhood.
After the meeting with the Brotherhood, everyone in the meeting goes to a party. At the party, one gentleman goes up to the narrator and tells him to sing a “Negro song,” ‘“Nonsense, all colored people sing”’ (Ellison 312). Here the narrator is being chastised and told that since he is black he can sing. Blacks were considered entertainers for the whites at that time. This is a prime example of his identity and place in society being made up for him. The narrator should be able to decide for himself and make up his own decisions. Perhaps the narrator liked to sing, but now he cannot because of the stereotype.
Here is an example of identity and place in society, but not from other perspectives, it comes from the narrator’s perspective. The narrator wakes up after the party to hear someone banging on the pipes, because the room he is in has lost its heat. The narrator decides to do the same, so he picks up an object and starts hitting the pipe. He soon notices that what he was using to hit the pipe with was a “cast-iron figure of a very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro” (Ellison 319). The item was a bank and represents the servile slave, eager to provide self-effacing amusement to white people, while performing pet like tricks for them. The bank establishes a black man as an object, a decoration, and a trivial toy to be played with and used by white people. This is how the bank made the narrator feel. This also shows how blacks were portrayed; this is the identity that the narrator is trying to run away from.
After leaving Mary’s house, the narrator opens his briefcase, the one he was given in the beginning of the novel, and he places “the smashed bank and coins inside and locks the flap” (Ellison 327). The narrator just cannot seem to get rid of the bank. It defines him in one-way or another. The fact that he places the bank in his briefcase, tells us that it helps define him in some way or another. He cannot part with it. It symbolizes his Southern heritage. The narrator’s identity is shown through his desire to keep the bank and not get rid of it, thus emphasizing the stereotype.
When the narrator is walking through the street one day, he notices a stand that is selling dolls, but not just any dolls, he notices that the doll is “A grinning doll of orange-and-black tissue paper with thin flat cardboard disks forming its head and feet and which some mysterious mechanism was causing it to move” (Ellison 431). The Sambo doll represents the narrator because he is being used like a doll to do what the Brotherhood wants him to do for their entertainment and amusement, even though they may not show it. His identity is given to him; he has a choice but chooses to accept what they tell him. He also, decides to keep one of the dolls and puts it in his briefcase, thus emphasizing, no matter how much he hates the stereotype he cannot part with it. It is part of his heritage and he does not want to loose that. This is similar to the bank idea. He cannot run away from his identity.
At the end of the novel, the narrator is sitting in his manhole talking about how society treats people and sees people. He mentions that he understands his place in society and “Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health” (Ellison 576). He says this, because he has come to the realization that a single ideology would limit the complexity of each individual. He knows for sure that society will always “make men conform to a pattern” (Ellison 576). Each individual is multifaceted. However, the narrator still does not know his identity completely and may never understand it fully. The narrator attempts to get rid of his self image to society by trying to throw away the bank and destroy the Sambo doll, but cannot seem to toss them. The few times in the book that he really understands his place in society and chooses his own identity is when he leaves the hospital and when he is eating a yam in the street. He accepts his culture and allows it to define him. The narrator attempts to strip himself of his culture earlier in the novel but by the end of the novel he accepts his culture and comes to the realization that his identity is complex and not described in one single way.
At the end of the novel, the narrator understands his place in society. He believes that society divides itself into two categories, blacks and whites. He understands that his identity is black, however, he feels that society should treat him as an equal and not conform to a stereotype. They should acknowledge his existence as an individual and as an American man. The narrator is a representation of the struggle to define oneself against societal expectations.
Work Cited
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. 2nd ed. New York: Random, 1980. Print.
