"Black love is Black wealth"

Part of an epigraph of Richard Wright's White Man, Listen! reads:

"...men who carry their frail but indefatigable shoulders

the best of two worlds -- and who, 

amidst confusion and stagnation, 

seek desperately for a home for their hearts: 

a home which, if found,

could be a home for the hearts of all men"

Reading this, I was drawn back to my first impression of Bigger's aimless restlessness in Native Son. I remember perceiving the "red hot iron" Bigger feels, as comparable to a chronic illness without a cure, with an ever-present unarticulated fear that cannot stay at the forefront of one's mind in order for one to maintain their sanity in just getting out of bed every morning and going about daily life. This constriction that Bigger feels reminds me of Paul D's doubts of his own "manhood" and his sealed tobacco tin in Beloved. What Wright suggests in his epigraph however, is a constancy that transcends a daily routine, a truer, deeper constancy people yearn for (or at least believe themselves to).

In my initial perception of Bigger's aimless constriction, I had thought that perhaps Bigger would be "freer" if he knew better how to articulate who the "somebody" pushing the iron down his throat is, who to fear, or who to hold accountable (perhaps even God). This awareness of hate or fear -- which Max is able to articulate to an extent -- is surely a form of constancy and sense of stability; evident in how Paul D is made confused about his own worth and how he should actually feel about Mr. Garner. As in Wright's poem, however, Morrison seems also to suggest that articulating what or who to love and fully believe in is more powerful. Sethe speaks of the beauty of having milk for all her children and this Paul D understands; the freedom of having unlimited love to spare, stronger than his aspen tree. This sentiment is reflected in "Nikki Rosa" by Nikki Giovanni -- which Athena discussed in class on Friday -- in the line that reads, "Black love is Black wealth." In this way, we see how love can be affected by but is by no means defined by circumstance. Circumstance can make someone like Paul D guard his love carefully or it can make someone like Sethe commit to its transcendent power in a dangerous manner.

It is the greatest constancy yearned for by all the characters in the novel and yet  there seems to be the implication that this source of stability may be impossible to achieve. In fact, love seems to be one of the most unstable concepts of the novel thus far. Denver waits for a father she doesn't know has gone crazy. Paul D, after moving from place to place with his aspen tree of love was moved by Sethe, thought himself to have finally found a home for his heart only to begin to fall apart; to have his tobacco tin opened. Perhaps, ultimately, at least in  the setting of  what I have read so far in Beloved -- I'm inclined to believe my conclusion will change -- love cannot conquer all. As evident in Stamp Paid's contemplation, Baby Suggs threw herself into using her heart to heal others, preaching "the word," only to find that "they still came into her yard." Love does not seem to be enough to combat circumstance and the constricting chronic fear that tires their marrow until they can take no more.

At this point, I'm not sure what the conclusion of the book will ultimately suggest, however. The dangerous love between Sethe, Beloved, and Denver, in which they each seem to find a part of themselves in each other may prove Baby Suggs wrong.

Mine

The sense of self-possession -- the inner freedom, power, and sense of control -- involved in what the narrator of Invisible Man's ultimate laughter represents and Bigger's ownership of his murders as a manifestation of part of his identity resonates with the significance of Sethe's claim to her actions in Toni Morrison's Beloved. 

Sethe believes her actions -- killing her daughter and attempting to kill her sons -- manifest the power of her love in the way Bigger considers what he killed for "must've been good" because although he cannot articulate what it is exactly, he felt something hard enough to do it. It is the evident power of Sethe's full-fledged belief in her perception of love that scares Paul D, thinking, "This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw...more important than what Sethe had done was what she claimed"; much like how Bigger's perception of what constitutes his identity intimidates Max. 

This suggestion of finding an inner power or freedom in fully embracing or submitting to a truth or "reality" is depicted again through Stamp Paid's contemplation of Baby Suggs' weariness and ultimate rejection of "the word,": "..and she could not approve or condemn Sethe's rough choice. One or the other might have saved her, but beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed."

Stamp Paid's thoughts get at the inextricable difficulty of Bigger's near-enlightenment, or any philosophy and belief system; the idea that we can never really know if we are close to the truth or simply better at coping as Stamp Paid implies when he says that either approving or disproving of Sethe -- but fully embracing one or the other -- would have "saved" Baby Suggs. To Stamp Paid, being"saved" seems to signify the ability to stay sane despite circumstance.

While there is a certain inner freedom in this self-possession, as it makes Bigger readier to die, Sethe able to live with the ghost, I think it is pretty evident that Sethe is still far from free as Bigger is similarly unable to be completely free. Sethe remains haunted by her past; perhaps never able to truly embrace her interpretation of love. However, when she realizes who Beloved is, the exhilaration she feels and freedom from part of what has haunted her is derived from the affirmation of her motivations she receives; as she thinks, "Beloved...she mine." In this way, the role of freedom in fully claiming something, or the power of the belief behind it manifests itself, especially considering the circumstance Sethe lives under, having been considered property of others for most of her life; still in many ways claimed by them. She begins to fantasize about all her children coming back to her and most significantly, their understanding; being misunderstood a significant fear of all the protagonists of the novels we have read so far this semester. I wonder then to what extent this inner freedom comes with claiming a reality or if one ever fully claims one at all.

This isn't a completely developed idea however because I was also thinking about how the feeling that Sethe articulates -- which Bigger would describe as what she felt "awful hard" enough to kill -- is love, carrying the implications of a haunting investment in the potential of life (even if it's on the "other side") and  people, why she still holds on to her past; as she thinks of herself as belonging to Beloved as well, thinking, "I wouldn't draw breath without my children." Perhaps that is why Bigger seems less haunted, more free; although still not completely. I'm not sure how I would articulate exactly what Bigger felt hard enough to kill but his murders are less influenced by human connection and  seem to resonate more with a nihilistic motivation which paradoxically is what gives his acts meaning. 

My Art is Barren

I want to start off by saying that I'm not nearly familiar enough with hip hop. I guess a small part of it is because I didn't grow up in an environment where music and its history were valued all that much, especially because my parents both moved to the U.S after college. I remember a few singers from Taiwan my mom was particularly fond of when I was little and sometimes I'll hear my dad blasting opera but beyond that I didn't start listening to music with any preexisting knowledge or interest exactly. It made me a blank slate in a way that's proved to be a double-edged sword (although a lot of it is probably just my character); I'm easily persuaded to see the validity in all sorts of music; force me to listen to something I think I dislike and tell me to at least try to take it seriously, even if just for pretend, for awhile and you will have me convinced, emotional, mentally dumbfounded in much less time than expected. Say, listen to this song, and I'll probably like it (to various extents), because I like you. In a way, this is a good thing because there is indubitably beauty and validity in all art -- as long as it's created out of some genuine purpose and meaning -- and being able to see where it comes from and how it's present in everything gives you a beneficial open-mindedness. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like the narrator in Invisible Man after he's eaten the yams, unable to even articulate what he likes and dislikes. Each time I think I've found a "reality" that resonates with me, I find that I'm able to accept, reject, and accept again another and another because all of them have obvious elements of "realness" in them. Furthermore, I've realized just how ignorant I am of each reality, I'm still blind in the way the narrator is even as he immerses himself in each one, so I"m hesitant to ever fully immerse myself in one I'm starting to really get into because not only might there be a better one out there, but I'm blind to this reality as well. I know that music is different, you can like all sorts of music and still have one reality but when I can't articulate and argue why I like what I like over what I reject strongly enough, I begin to feel lost --  because it also means I don't love my reality strongly enough -- and it goes beyond music and art, because like religion and so many other things, they are mechanisms to understand and express reality, making you able to get out of bed in the morning, keeping you living off of the strength of it's truth.

I've gone off on a bit of a tangent but this brings me to what I want to discuss about hip hop, the poetry in White Boy Shuffle and two related ideas from the spoken word poems "Diary of the Reformed" by Will "Da Real One" Bell and "Dead Man Walking" by Amir Sulaiman:

In White Boy Shuffle, poetry bears significance to Gunnar's ultimately nihilistic attitude. During the LA riots, Gunnar says, "I learned that it meant nothing to be a poet. One had to be a poet and a farmer, a poet and a roustabout, a poet and a soon-to-be revolutionary." Maybe the critics of Ellison are coming from a similar place; one can try to explore, express, and understand reality all they want but the evidence of the difference it makes seems so subtle and lost or inferior to what is going on right this second. Before performing "Dead Man Walking," Sulaiman mentions that the purpose of his poem is to remind and inform. At one point in the poem, he says:

"But my balance is off
My talent is lost
I've married my art, but
She's barren of course
And I hear in her voice that
We're headin' divorce"

And a lot of Gunnar's feeling of meaninglessness in his poetry is his powerlessness over how people interpret his words (for example, the  students at BU), representing this fear of being misunderstood and unseen that has been a strong theme in every single book we have read this semester. Numbers and words are paradoxes: all we have, wonderful when it allows us to communicate and connect but never allowing us to fully do so.

Sulaiman's poem is built very much around the theme of an invisible man. In one stanza, he brings hip hop into it, saying, "They don't see our music as musing / Merely amusing amusement." Similarly, in the poem I presented in class (performance linked at the bottom), I interpreted the same desecration of hip hop in how Patterson says:

"now this damn near sound like a hip-hop song,
but it's slavery at its peak,
a circus for all the freaks"

Along the lines of being misinterpreted and feeling powerless in art because of peoples' (perhaps specifically/ mostly non-black people's) blind approach to it, in his poem, Will "Da Real One" Bell says

"And maybe it all went down at...Or maybe it was at North Miami Senior High..
When they studied my poems for 'black history'
Or maybe it was in that letter from my inmate in Raiford Penitentiary
Stating that now
Through my poetry
He could be free
But nevertheless I'm sitting in a strut with a fully loaded Glock to represent the man in me
And someway, somehow, this has to stop."

There's the significant contrast of someone sitting in jail believing himself to have inner freedom and enlightenment and Bell sitting with a loaded gun thinking feeling his poetry is ultimately powerless because there are still obviously unresolved issues and struggles in the tangible world.

I feel a little bit absurd discussing his poem, with the line about his poems being studied in black history. It's a bit ridiculous, in a way, the privileged setting in which I am studying "African American Literature," However, at the very least, we're thinking about art in a way that goes beyond taking it as "amusement." I want badly to believe that art ultimately matters. I think it's clear that it has a profound effect on the creator and audience but it is communication as well as a kind of religion/philosophy/reality that brings you to inner freedom. And it comes down to having enough faith in "art" as communication (like Ellison/ the narrator) and as a reality, to achieve complete freedom. My fear is that, like Gunnar seems to ultimately believe, it's a distraction from pain, necessary and potent, but meaningless coping. I'm inclined to think however, that Gunnar's discovery of how his poetry represents more desire than fulfillment is what gives it meaning, in the same way he believes death or the desire it represents gives life meaning. Perhaps, in Beloved, the significance of Sethe's past to the present through the desire involved with haunting fits along these  lines.

P.S
I know this was an especially long and rant-like post
Sunni Patterson's performance of "We Made It":

I'd Kill and Die for It

Gunnar's increasing self awareness and mounting sense of frustration in Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle led me to recall the crucial moment of near-enlightenment for Bigger in Native Son. The moment comes when he says to Max, "I didn't want to kill...But what I killed for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder...What I killed for must've been good!" With this heightened sense of purpose and meaning in his life, he is then readier to die. 

Through his experiences at Boston University, Gunnar seems to be feeling with intensified ferocity the same indescribable "red-hot iron" Bigger attempts to articulate as he begins to contemplate his "raison d'etre," combined with the "crazy" in Invisible Man's narrator in his increased awareness of ridiculous circumstance and the impossibility of ever cutting the strings and successfully separating himself from the identities projected upon him.

Bigger's near-enlightenment and self discovery has always been particularly difficult for me to grasp because on one hand, I can see some truth in his epiphany but on the other, I am not completely convinced that the reason behind one's strongest feeling encompasses all of one's true identity although it is a definite factor. Consequently, Gunnar's speech at the rally that spoke of sincerity coming from a readiness to die and the reactions to it has manifested for me a lot of how Bigger's conclusion can be viewed as insufficient in the wrong light but valuable in another. 

For me, one of the difficult aspects of Bigger's conclusion is how he is still unable to fully articulate what he killed for. What I find to be a problematic interpretation then, is the idea that the killing -- or in The White Boy Shuffle,  the dying -- was or is necessary proof for the existence of the reason for killing or dying; the feeling that makes up identity. To incorrectly take this to the extreme, is to be Peyote Chandler at 12 years old, sticking her head in the oven in order to make the ultimate statement and validation of her grief in losing her boyfriend. In this scenario, she discovered little about herself in this readiness to die; it was not a readiness to die, like Gunnar's then, that pushed her to reflect upon the reason but conversely, the misguided belief that the feeling needed to be validated by death. Beatty points out this misguided interpretation and the persistent desire of society to be told what reality is, what steps to follow to achieve truth, in his absurd depiction of a multitude of black people across the United States and Dexter's suicides; people who believed that death would give the purpose to life. 

I wonder then, to what extent, Bigger's self discovery is self-justification and a deluded method of coping and to what extent it is enlightenment. Did he believe that the killing was what gave his life purpose or the acts that allowed him to better articulate and focus on the "feeling" in reflection, in their impulsiveness, therefore increasing his self awareness? The image Gunnar refers to, of Osamu Dazai wandering around Japan, attempting to summon the courage to drown himself in the Tamagawa River particularly struck me, resonating with the restlessness and "ambivalence" of Bigger, the narrator, and Gunnar. Ending your life is supposedly the opposite of ending the life of another but they can both suggest the greatest manifestation of an unfulfilled desire. However, this desire does not need the manifestation to exist which is why a readiness to die that hopes for a resolution or translates some truth somewhat understands the readiness -- the "It" one is dying for -- just as Bigger is able to somewhat understand and become more aware of his readiness to kill. 

Dance for Me, Puppets

In 1712, Willie Lynch, a British slave owner, delivered a speech to the colony of Virginia expounding his "foolproof" method of maintaining control over black slaves. In his speech, Lynch speaks of taking the differences between slaves which he outlines as age, sex, status, intelligence, shade of skin, and magnifying them to a degree that would induce enough "fear, distrust, and envy" among the slaves, forcing them to ultimately respect and depend upon their owners ("for at least 300 years").

Reflecting on the material discussed in Ethnic Notions, I was reminded of the Willie Lynch Letter and the connection between his method of control and -- in addition to self-justification -- the method of control in minstrelsy and the creation of caricatures such as the sambo, pickaninny, mammy, and so on. The results of the enforcement of these stereotypes reverse the significance of the narrator's laughter in Invisible Man; the implication of self-possession in seeing past ridiculous, fabricated "reality." Instead, the laughter of the enforcers of these "humorous" stereotypes result in an amount of parasitic control over supposed freed slaves in the fabrication of apparent "realities," so that it not only creates fear, distrust, and envy within the black community, but even more the individual distrust of their own identity, ultimately leading them to perhaps submit and depend on the white version of their identity; for example, black minstrels who black-faced because it was necessary in following a rare path to a form of success or the nostalgia for "mammy" in Louis Armstrong's renditions of "When It's Sleepy Time Down South."

As such, some black people are then wrongly perceived as solely stereotypes or "minstrels" and then perceived as someone to be celebrated by both the white and black/minority community for the wrong reasons (please note however, that this an extremely overgeneralized observation). The reason being that it seems like they are the most successful a black person can be; thus resulting in a vicious, restricting cycle. I know that this isn't a perfectly coherent argument but I connect this to the significance of basketball in the contemporary setting of White Boy Shuffle. We see Gunnar's dad fitting him into the stereotype of a black athlete and later Scoby's frustration at being idolized for his basketball playing, confused as to whether he is playing for himself or the expectations of others; simultaneously fulfilling his classmates' vicarious happiness and the expectations of him from the condescending white people just as the white audience celebrates his failure at the Shakespearean Soliloquy Championship.

Along these lines, one of the speakers in the documentary mentioned how these images are/were so instilled in the culture of society that "we even come to believe it ourselves."  The complexity of these stereotypes that arises from the difficulty in distinguishing reality from unreality led me to recall the significance of Rinehart in Invisible Man, and the interaction between the narrator and Sybil. The narrator believes he can maintain his own interpretation of himself while playing Sybil's expected "brute" but the line between Sybil's perception of him, and his perception of himself begins to blur and this is part of what ultimately pushes him to separate himself from the outside altogether in order to discover a sense of his own reality. In this way, we see how criticizing the "minstrelsy" in Their Eyes Were Watching God is such a difficult evaluation to make because there is always a very imprecise overlap between stereotypes and reality in certain aspects; for example the narrator is attracted to Sybil but that does not make him society's definition of a "brute." Consequently, it is evident how hopelessly and poisonously pervasive constructed stereotypes are and how it is perhaps impossible to ever truthfully separate your true identity from your socially constructed one; your real identity which you must use to maintain sanity and freedom in truth and your reputation which you must use to be free in the physical sense. As such I can understand where the words "it's no disgrace being a black man, but it's terribly inconvenient,"  are coming from. It is the frightening matter then, of reversing the negative cycle to allow truth to pervade societal constructs.

All You Need Is Love (Maybe)

While the authors of all three novels we have finished reading in class thus far have contained criticism for one another and varied in their approaches, I think it can be said that all of them have a significant focus on the self discovery of the protagonist (perhaps most centrally in Invisible Man). It seems to me, however, that Native Son and Invisible Man are both more existentialist novels, emphasizing/exploring more the significance of an amount of individual agency and will in determining one's own identity. Perhaps this is one of the reasons Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, was criticized for a lack of  "message" and "thought" and described as "cloaked in that facile sensuality" by Richard Wright; Hurston suggests that ultimately it is the individual will that lets one discover more of one's self but it is the basis beneath a journey that requires an idealistic faith, most notably in another person, that is, finding true love.

It is easy to dismiss this suggestion immediately, label it as "facile" as Wright does, and I admit I felt this way initially and can still see some of where Wright is coming from -- not because I believe her material is invalid but because I think she could go into greater depth with what she already has in order to bring out the complexity of her story. Janie's peace of mind at the end of the novel still seems a bit fabricated and impossible but this book has led me to question my easy dismissal of what I assume is idealism and think about where the balance is between being too idealistic and too skeptic (or maybe even a defeatist). I don't think we can ever really be sure what realism encompasses because we are all basing the definition of that off of our own limited experiences.

Notably, Wright and Ellison both portray women as mostly inconsequential characters, a means to an end but of no equal importance to the protagonists. While a lot of this is a misguided perception of women, it is also due to their belief that finding your sense of self comes from feelings and realizations within, a solipsistic view. Bigger can be viewed as the antithesis of Janie.

Yet in thinking about this, I can see how "love" may even be discreetly necessary to Bigger and the narrator. If love can be perceived as genuinely connecting with others -- which is often so rare even among who we call friends -- then we can see why it was so difficult for Bigger and the narrator to have a sense of identity. Bigger never really understood the people in his life and the narrator is forever realizing how he has no genuine connection with those he deems significant in his life. If they weren't born into a society that forced them into a disadvantage to connect with certain people, might it have been easier for them to understand themselves? Ellison makes it clear that it takes a certain amount of awareness of the outside world in order to be self aware so it makes sense to me that understanding someone else might be essential to self awareness. Paradoxically, it is the realization of their disconnection from others that makes Bigger and the narrator get closer to the truth, in other words, a realization of the lack of "love". Significantly, the narrator ultimately cannot stay underground, resolves to attempt to connect, even if it is impossible because he is ultimately unsatisfied, just as Bigger is not completely enlightened. In depicting Janie's complete peace, Hurston might not be depicting common reality exactly but suggesting the possibility of reality and the potential/significance of connection, an argument that solipsism may be constructed from defeatism.

Doubt still remains with me however because while I see how love might be extremely valuable to
self awareness and getting closer to enlightenment; I'm still hesitant to believe one can really get there. Since one deprived of love can manage to get closer to enlightenment in their disillusionment, perhaps it is possible for them to reach the same amount of truth as another person aided by love yet lacking in other realizations. I guess what I'm trying to say is that just as the coming-down-to- reality of disillusionment is not enough, the yearning-towards-reality of love might also be insufficient.

The Horizon: The Potential of Idealism

In one of Jack's recent blog posts, he describes Eatonville as giving off a sort of Utopian vibe when Jody begins to build it up. This led me to  re-examine the idealistic value in Janie's nature  that we have seen so far in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, in a new light. It is clear that Janie has some in-articulated ideal she dreams her life to live up to -- an ideal that is very much connected to some part of who she is that she is waiting for the right moment to reveal -- and it's intriguing to compare her to Bigger and the narrator who were also initially unable to articulate what it was that was propelling them towards where they were going in their journey to self discovery and increased awareness of circumstances.

It was surprising to me just how controversial Janie's idealistic nature was to others from discussions on recent blog posts and in class. It seems like she can be easily viewed in two ways: as bravely admirable or selfishly/childishly impractical. To me, however, she must fall somewhere in between as all idealistic approaches to anything must. People will praise and glorify the idealist who succeeds and scoff at the ones that don't, saying that they knew it along, that he or she had her heads too high up in the clouds. Last year, I took the "Utopias and Dystopias in Literature" course taught by Ms. Linder. I can see how Janie sees the potential of "Utopia" in the people she meets. It's not a exactly a romantic possibility she is searching for then -- although that is certainly part of it - but the potential of infinite possibilities in general. This is very much evident in the strength she has to marry Logan motivated by her belief that she may realize love and motivation to follow Joe Starks because of his big talk about creating something out of nothing, representing to her the "horizon." I feel a sense of foreboding with how smoothly things have been running in Eatonville (though I may of course be wrong) and in a similar way there is a sense of foreboding in all of Janie's hope, manifesting itself for instance through the revealing of Joe's true nature. As with most Utopian/Dystopian literature, things fall apart, or turn out to be more than they seem. I remember I'd open a book for last year's class already mentally preparing myself for that moment. In all honesty, I was under the impression that my initial belief that there was no point in attempting to make things perfect, or to be extreme, to even try and make things better if it will never exactly live up to the ideal, would be confirmed. I ended up realizing something else however. At the same time I was reading Arcadia, I was writing a paper about the Port Huron Statement for U.S History. (Please forgive me if this is too much of  a digression for you.) I was particularly struck by the last line of the document which reads, "If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable." Striving for Utopia is not particularly meaningless then, having a powerful, if unrealistic ideal that drives you is not completely pointless and childish. In essence, and I don't mean to sound platitudinous, there is something to be gained from trying. Perhaps it was the norm of the time to marry a Logan and stay with him, perhaps a real life Janie would leave and not find ideal love elsewhere but there would have been no possibility of change had she not left -- any revolution we have gone through throughout history was started out by an idealistic fringe that gradually became the norm.

I realize of course that there are many downsides to idealism. The ideal that one is chasing may not be a beneficial ideal or perhaps it deludes one from seeking truth -- which there is fulfillment in -- in being so consumed with the hope of seeking happiness. At times however, having an ideal in mind can help one to seek truth. It comes down to articulating the ideal so that one is self aware enough to avoid the dangers of idealism. I suppose in reality we all have our own, maybe subconscious versions of an ideal, ranging on different levels. Perhaps we are so quick to judge Janie because her ideal is illustrated so deliberately and instilled into the motif of the novel with such fervor by Hurston. The narrator in Invisible Man initially believes he just wants to climb up the ladder to the highest point imaginable for him but in the end he is able to articulate and realize that the "ideal" he is actually seeking is to realize his identity and in turn is able to come closer to truth. I understand that telling Bigger to go for it, go be a pilot, follow your dreams, is unrealistic but at the same time, in changing, in doing something (albeit killing women and writing a kidnap note), attempting to manipulate someone else for once, he is able to articulate more of what has been constricting him. However, it is significant neither Bigger or the narrator are ever able to completely articulate/figure things out, fulfill their own realized version of an ideal though they gain something from getting closer. Not to digress too much again but I can connect what I am trying to say about the potential of idealism to Plato's Symposium which we are reading in Intro to Philosophy. He has Diotima define love as the perpetual desire for absolute good. This absolute good is the ideal we are all striving towards but the truth of the matter is that we can never fully reach it -- we can never fully uncover the truth and yet we still love. In some ways, there is something to be said about giving up, living by the rules of a religion you may doubt just in order to cope and try to be happy. However, there is also something to be said about continuing to search for the truth you will never find because the search itself is the method of "coping." I do not see Janie's ideal as illustrated so far as detrimental and I am intrigued to see where Janie's idealism takes her.  

But I guess I'm what I

In "Theme for English B," -- one of the poems we read at that the start of the semester -- Langston Hughes writes: "But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear." Through Bigger, Wright agrees that to an extent, we are what we see and hear -- as Max tells Bigger -- but we are more than that, who we are lurks somewhere in-articulated in the depths of the nameless unique force that propels us to feel what we, as individuals, feel so strongly. In Invisible Man, Ellison says that we are still more than all of that. We are not what we see and hear nor are we what we feel because the reality we, as individuals, are currently living, believing, and trusting in may not be true reality but someone else's "reality." In that case, we cannot only be what we feel -- for instance, the contentedness in delivering a speech after being forced to participate in a battle royale, or the strong foolish humiliation in playing the caricature of a lumbering brute in the bedroom -- because our feelings are often deluded, we cannot always trust them, we are made to dance, inside and outside of ourselves, under someone else's strings. There is something in both Wright and Ellison's approach however, that resonates in the same way, suggesting that there is a not yet articulated something and a not quite yet discovered reality that gives us our identity, and in ever coming closer to articulating and discovering -- as Bigger and the narrator do but never fully carry through -- we get closer to the freedom that must be felt in a complete self-awareness that will allow for an enlightened awareness of society and ability to deal with those outside forces. We see Bigger's closeness to a full self discovery make him readier to accept death and the narrator's closeness make him ready to come out of hibernation and attempt to connect with the outside world.

It' s little surprise then that Ellison was so upset at Grinell -- saying, "I am not a Tom, I am not a Tom." After all it's quite possible that being misunderstood, invisible, unable to connect, may have been one of his greatest fears. How could he be a Tom when in writing Invisible Man, in "disillusionment" after "disillusionment," he tells us not to bow down to Bledsoe or Norton or Emerson, not even unions, Brockway, the Brotherhood, or Ras -- whom may be of good intentions or of similar struggles -- but to ultimately bow down to ourselves. I have to confess this is the reason the documentary we watched in class made me feel the slightest bit discouraged. Ellison and the narrator blurred together as one in my mind and I envisioned Ellison standing up after having finally composed his last line, having uncovered a bit more about his sense of reality through the act of writing the novel, and telling himself that it was time to go out, time to further increase his own awareness and attempt to share it with others -- poised to write his masterpiece. I felt a little bit of  hopelessness then, when the documentary said that in all those years and manuscripts, he "never figured it all out" (I'm aware that Juneteenth is still an impressive book I plan to read but this is all slightly irrational). I don't know how I imagined Ellison to go --  free and enlightened above all mankind? It's possible that in the process of reading Invisible Man, I came to subconsciously immortalize Ellison, almost believing that in some ways, he was immortalizing me.

For all my love of Ellison however, I am able to see where some of the criticism he received is coming from, although I still do not believe his critics fully understood him. I write all of this with the luxury of using "us" and "we" because of the universality of the existentialism in Ellison's novel yet also comfortably, perhaps misguided and all-assuming, with a very privileged and unbreachable distance from the oppressive environment of the narrator. Someone like Amiri Baraka would surely point this out and he would not be wrong in doing so. Ellison and Baraka wrote in a time where suffocation boiled to the point that immediate change was needed and called for. Survival, frustration, and much needed stability must have been so predominant on the mind that one might argue there was no time to "hibernate" or find a way to live in the world as it was with a sense of identity because -- with some shades of Wright -- they would say changing circumstance must be prioritized, that one should be participating in marches instead of being there in spirit, that one should fight now not "cope" first (perhaps Invisible Man as a protest novel is not so obvious as Native Son). Although Ellison criticized the Black Arts Movement for placing politics above creativity, it's possible that perhaps politics -- dealing with how we feel in what we see and hear -- needed to be prioritized if any change was to be brought about.

Still one can understand how as someone chronically ill does not want to be defined by their illness, though the effect of dealing with the illness cannot help but shape who they are, Ellison would not want African Americans to be defined by their imposed suffering, embodiment of caricatures, or disadvantage. I suppose that at the end of the day, I believe the approaches of artists in the Black Arts Movement and Ellison's to have resonated effectively in their own right.

"Sybil, my too-late-too-early love"

I've heard and read on Michelle and Mr. Mitchell's blog entries several intriguing takes on the significance of the "Woman Question" and Ellison's portrayal of women as one-dimensional,  over-simplified in their extremity, and peripheral characters in Invisible Man. The possibility that Ellison is marginalizing women deliberately and ironically in order to make a statement is a really interesting suggestion though I find the possibility that the "Woman Question" is on Ellison's periphery of concerns -- and therefore the narrator's -- in reality, valid as well. There's no way to be sure of the author's intentions but I feel that to a degree, it is a balance of the two: Ellison notes the irony of the invisibility of women and incorporates that into the narrator's awareness but at the same time that observation is not of major concern to him or the narrator and as suggested from the characterization of female characters in the novel with a plot driven by male characters, his personal perception of women might actually be pretty misguided.

That said, while still a small, supporting role, and portrayed quite simplistically, Sybil's character and encounter with the narrator is heavy with symbolism and plays a consequential role in the narrator's self discovery in the idea she represents. She serves a purpose to the narrator that goes beyond being irritating and unfathomable. If Jack represents the misguided approach of the Brotherhood and what the narrator once supposed as freedom from the likes of Bledsoe, Sybil stands for the provocativeness and supposed freedom of Rinehart: the blurred lines between truth and lies, reality and fantasy and foreshadows its ultimate insufficiency (I don't think Ellison made an arbitrary choice in naming her Sybil).

The whole encounter between the narrator and Sybil gives off a mood of tragic irony. The narrator invites her to his apartment for the purpose of using her to get information about the Brotherhood and as the night goes on he begins to realize that Sybil similarly intends to use him to fulfill her sexual fantasy. He seems to feel increasingly like he is being turned into a Sambo doll at one point even thinking, "She had me on the ropes." Yet both of them are lost in this scene and lack any true control both of them desperate to make sense in their own way. She has the narrator sing and flex his muscles and he thinks: "I was confounded and amused and it became quite a contest, with me trying to keep the two of us in touch with reality and with her casting me in fantasies in which I was Brother Taboo-with-whom-all-things-are-possible."

The narrator finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy in his mounting confusion about Sybil and what he desires from her. Although what Sybil suggests horrifies the narrator it moves the narrator in a strange way. He notes the paradox of her -- her innocence in relation to the horror of what she desires, seeming to find a vulnerability in her that he can relate to. He thinks. "But why be surprised when that's what they hear all their lives. When it's made into a great power and they're taught to worship all types of power?" The narrator conveys many ideas with this section but one of them is the tragic invisibility of the fantasy that is Rinehart. Sybil perceives him as the mythical black rapist -- a unreal power society has created -- just as the community has a multitude of false perceptions of Rinehart simply by how he pretends to embody whatever each group in the community want him to embody. When the narrator scrawls, "Sybil you were raped by Santa Claus" over her body, he implies that she does not see him for who he really is but a myth, an invisible man. However, he doesn't seem to blame her for it, seeming to begin to understand how invisible everyone is to each other in society and seeing her as a product of the way society functions.

The narrator continues to marvel at how unknown he is to Sybil, seeming to find her "naivety" and "carefree" attitude enthralling and endearing yet frustrating in its deludedness, thinking. "Was she calling me beautiful or boogieful, beautiful or sublime...I am invisible." Later on Sybil tells him to catch her and he runs, symbolizing the essence of all the ideas that have kept him running and how all of them have inhabited the twisted place between reality and unreality.

When the narrator gets involved with the looting, Sybil seems to remain at the back of his mind the whole time. When the others speak of a white woman starting the commotion he thinks, panicked, "But it couldn't have been Sybil." Later, he stumbles upon the hanging mannequins and thinks, "But are they unreal...are they? What if one, even one is real-- is...Sybil?" With the mention of Sybil, the narrator once again seems to feel the inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not, and feel again the fear of not seeing people, not being seen, losing control of / misinterpreting reality and the validity of certain ideals. In "Sybil," the narrator not only realizes the ultimate emptiness and impossibility of sustaining the self within the deluded freedom and manipulative power of embodying false identities -- yessing them to death in the fashion of Rinehart -- but the blurring between reality and unreality, illusions and disillusionment that has haunted him throughout his whole journey, realizing that he cannot escape the necessity and responsibility of attempting to grasp reality no matter how tempting accepting any one of society's multitude of apparent realities may be. 

 

"I was no Samson"

The narrator's experience in the factory hospital is undoubtedly a pivotal point for him. We discussed in class how we could view this experience as a sort of rebirth for the narrator and while I agree with this approach to an extent, I see it more as yet another stage in the narrator's gradual disillusionment. He undergoes further realization of his circumstances in relation to himself in a heavy, sudden, and uniquely tangible dose as many of his many inner and outer conflicts manifest themselves in physical form. So far, in the most notable moments of disillusionment for the narrator, we have seen small shifts in his character. After being expelled by Bledsoe, we see the narrator still undeterred in his purpose but beginning to question the roots and meaning behind seemingly insignificant ideas such as those presented in song lyrics. After his encounter with Emerson, we see him taking this questioning of why things are and start to direct anger outwards, beginning to hold people accountable as he does when Brockway threatens to kill him and he reflects angrily on his past easy humility towards authority figures (although Brockway does stand out in that the narrator's initial respect for him was pretty low). Having emerged from the hospital we see him laughing at circumstances, saying "I am what I am!" and then wondering anxiously who exactly that is. Thus, the narrator's experience in the factory hospital has begun to set him on a path to self-discovery.

Ellison's portrayal of the narrator's experience is heavy with symbolism. He is confined to a glass box, studied like a specimen. Most notably, the machine seems to represent the societal system and people limiting the narrator.  The narrator describes how he was "pounded between crushing electrical pressures; pumped between live electrodes like a accordion between player's hands" as if he is finally feeling fully the control others have over him. Society gives him no freedom or room to do different then what please them without being accused and shut down. Coming into consciousness the narrator says, "I don't have enough room," to which a doctor responds "Oh that's a necessary part of the treatment" -- although we never really know what exactly the treatment is for, the doctors talk of  "criminals transformed into amiable fellows," thus we see people trying to literally control who he is.

There are other examples but the most important issue that is raised from the literal aspects of his experience is the narrator's inner questioning of his identity when he cannot remember his name. He panics, thinking, "Who am I? It was no good. I felt like a clown." In all his physical struggle against the machine for room, he comes to a strange deduction, thinking, "Whoever else I was, I was no Samson. I had no desire to destroy myself even if it destroyed the machine. I wanted freedom not destruction...there was one constant flaw, myself." In this moment, the narrator "realizes" that just as he cannot get out of the machine without getting hurt, with all his plans, and blueprints, in his life, his character has prevented himself from achieving what he truly desires. He thinks, "I could no more escape than I could think of my identity. Perhaps, I thought, the two things are involved with each other. When I discover who I am, I'll be free." In this moment, we finally see the concept of the freedom of the mind and self beyond physical freedoms that his grandfather seemed to have and that the narrator was so frustratingly ignorant of when we followed his thought process in the Battle Royale. Upholding the narrator's tentative conclusion is Bigger's "freedom" at the end of Native Son which was derived from Bigger's belief that he finally knew who he was.

A Blueprint to Life

As I have just finished Chapter 9 of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, it seems clear that the narrator is just beginning to undergo a shift in his character in his disillusionment so I would like to explore his character up until this point. One of the most significant qualities of the narrator thus far is his sincere belief in the simplicity of living. I don't mean to say that he is under the impression that he is living in comfortable, privileged circumstances or that there are few obstacles, people, and struggles in his path to success because it is evident that he is quite aware of his lowered "humble"position in society in relation to white people. However, he believes that navigating and rising above his circumstances can be done simply enough through sticking to certain guidelines --genuinely living and acting in the way that most pleases those above him -- ultimately, "doing the right thing", and somehow obtaining a reward that will be fulfilling. How can following these principles and doing no wrong not lead him to a life that is meaningful in its purpose and direction? In examining this initial attitude, we see that the narrator doesn't simply differ from Bigger's mindset at the start of Native Son because he is more at peace with the necessity of pleasing white people but essentially because he fully believes in the probability of finding his purpose in life and therefore is not tortured with Bigger's sense of meaninglessness. While it is true that the mindset of Bigger's family differs from the narrator in that Bigger's mother's sense of "meaning" in life was the purpose of survival mixed in with the greater meaning of God, the straightforwardness of religion, and the narrator's sense of meaning is derived from his belief in the concept of Dr. Bledsoe and the Founder, the mindsets are comparable in their false sense of purpose/ fulfillment (Please note that I am by no means attempting to invalidate religion). Of course it should be taken into account, that sometimes one just can't afford to speculate much upon the worth of their life because trying to merely survive is so predominant on the mind, as with the case of some of Bigger's friends but nevertheless while he cannot articulate the exact feeling, Bigger does.

In Native Son, Bigger notes the "blindness" of those surrounding him. His mother, sister, Bessie, Jan and Mary all seemingly so sure that the way they are living is only way to live or that it is undoubtedly the right way. Here, the narrator is the one being called blind by more people than he cares for -- the vet in Golden Day, who tells him he doesn't realize his invisibility, Dr. Bledsoe, who tells him he is nothing in reality, and Mr. Emerson, who tells him there is more going on, that life isn't that simple, to which he responds, "But I'm not bothered about all the other things, whatever they are, sir. They're not for me to interfere with and I'll be satisfied to go back to college and remain there as long as they allow me to." From the moment he was haunted by his grandfather's last words, the narrator never wanted to be, feared the necessity and possibility of being part of a grander scheme. He just wants to live the straightforward path the noble journey of the Founder and Dr. Bledsoe has supposedly made possible for him, the journey that so moved him, with its straightforward messages and heroics retold by Reverend Homer A. Barbee who symbolically, is literally blind.
This false sense of purpose manifests itself repeatedly as the narrator wakes up every so often in Harlem with renewed optimism. However, we begin to see the narrator start to change, even before his encounter with Mr. Emerson. When he bumps into the man pushing a cart of blueprints, he is initially annoyed but begins to enjoy his company. When the man says, "...Folks is always making plans and changing'em," the narrator responds, "...but that's a mistake. You have to stick to the plan." Nevertheless, the narrator leaves the encounter not moved with a concrete feeling, like the utter admiration and adoration he felt after hearing Barbee speak but with a new sort of speculation, though seemingly insignificant. He questions the meaning of the song the man is singing describing a woman that surely cannot be attractive, a song he has heard all his life. Similarly, after meeting with Emerson, he begins to ponder another song he hears, putting himself in the position of the protagonist Robin in the song, and finally thinking, "What was the who-what-when-why-where of poor old Robin? What had he done and who had tied him and why had they plucked him and why had we sung his fate?" In this moment we see the narrator begin to articulate feelings similar to Bigger's and realize that he cannot escape the weight of the grander scheme. 

This moment is also significant in that in his disillusionment and forced to give up on his sense of purpose and possibility of living up to his own high expectations of himself, the narrator is freed in a way similar to how Bigger feels freed after killing Mary, giving up on the predestined path he constantly couldn't tolerate. It is evident that as the narrator begins to contemplate killing Dr. Bledsoe because he feels he "owes it to himself" he is starting to think more about his true individual desires as well in contrast to his confusion to Emerson's "Do you wish to do what's best for yourself?" Notably, the young Emerson himself says to the narrator: "You have been freed, don't you understand?"

Feeling Things Hard Enough

When we are born, we don't usually actively question our place in society or where society has placed us. As we grow older,  however, we become increasingly aware of our position in relation to our peers and the rest of the world. We start to recognize the ways in which we are privileged and the ways in which we might be at a disadvantage -- more often, we see most clearly what others possess that we do not. It is not too difficult to articulate these observations. Observations like: I can walk and she can't. My father earns more money than his does. I am sicker than them.  In Native Son by Richard Wright, Bigger is able to articulate his observations of the unequal position society has pushed him into clearly enough when he says to Gus, "...Every time I think about it I feel like somebody's poking a red-hot iron down my throat. Godammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't..." Of all the injustice in his life, Bigger is astutely aware. What is difficult for Bigger to articulate then, is the "somebody" that is forcing the iron down his throat, and the meaning of the burning sensation. He does not know exactly what or who to blame especially since some of the white people he encounters all claim to be on his side in some mixed up way. Perhaps it would be easier for him if he did know so that his fear would not be so aimless. Maybe if he believed in a God, he could hold him accountable for every aspect of his life and believe that circumstances are out of his hands. What makes the fear and anger that perpetually consumes Bigger so toxic is how similar it is to a chronic disease with an unknown cure. The fear that cannot be articulated lives there in the pit of his stomach --  yet that fear can't always be at the front of his mind, he must get up, eat, walk, go get a job -- all the while knowing none of these acts will resolve the tension underneath it at all. What makes Bigger unique from his friends and family is that there is a part of him that wants to act but knows not how, believing a bit of control may be within his reach -- but at what point do we accept something as hopeless, inexplicable, and just something we have to live with? At what point do we decide thinking about some unjust situation is pointless and that it is far better to get drunk and sleep it off? For some reason, even though Bigger handles his circumstances differently than his friends and family, I feel that in a paradoxical way, Bigger is ultimately reduced to the same sort of tragic acceptance as them. One of the lines that struck me the most is what Bigger says to Max towards the end of the novel: "...I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em..." There is a freedom in giving up. It isn't true freedom but is at the very least a twisted relief in freeing yourself from not only other peoples' expectations but from your old expectations of yourself. Though Bigger believes he has reached a state of enlightenment, when it comes down to it, Bigger did not kill Mary or Bessie for intentions beyond survival but the exhilaration and deluded understanding he felt was a result of the release from the predestined path he seemed to have laid out for him. With his tension pushed to the point of exhaustion, his ultimate form of acceptance is not so different from Bessie living for the deluded numbness of alcohol.