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.