While reading Chapter
11 of Invisible Man, everything that was happening to the narrator felt very
familiar. This chapter shares eerily similar ideas and events with Chapter 1.
One of the first similarities that struck me was both chapters put the narrator
in situations that affect significant aspects of his future. Whether it was
getting a scholarship to college to continue his academic life or getting
operated on to keep him alive, to the narrator, he needed to be in those
settings. However, while these situations are so important to the narrator, he
pretty much has no control whatsoever of what is happening to and around him. In
Chapter 1, when he is at the gathering of the town’s most accomplished white
citizens to deliver his graduation speech, he is forced to take part in a
blindfolded “battle royal” against other black boys his age and then tricked
into being electrocuted. In Chapter 11, he has even less control. He wakes up,
not remembering anything and barely being able to move, only to be then
operated on by unknown doctors (they use electrical shock treatment on him). Something
else these two chapters share is that literally, they make no sense. Why did
they have the narrator and the other boys partake in a battle royal, confuse
them as to whether or not they should look at a naked white woman waving an
American flag and trick them into shocking themselves in a gathering that’s
purpose was for the narrator to recite his speech? The entire setting of
Chapter 11, in itself, doesn’t really make any sense. What kind of factory has
an entire hospital attached to it? Both of these chapters feel like a
dream/nightmare, when you accept whatever is going on, no matter how ridiculous
it seems when you think about it after waking up.
There are many more little details each chapter had in
common, but there was one major difference that I found notable. After the
anger and disappointment he felt after learning what Bledsoe wrote in the
letters and the feeling of freedom he gained after eating the sweet yams, the
narrator has a very different mindset compared to the first chapter. During
that scene in Chapter 1, he seemed to just be passively observing everything happening
to him, never questioning, like a dream. With his new mindset, Chapter 11 shows
him questioning what the doctors were doing, expressing how he felt at certain
points and even making jokes in his head. The fact that Ellison put the
narrator in a situation parallel to the very first chapter, but with a
different way of thinking, shows significant growth as a character. Also, on a slightly
unrelated note, during the class discussion on Chapter 11, we found it to be a kind
of rebirth of the narrator, which I found interesting that it happened in a
chapter so similar to Chapter 1.
This just came to me but given that you resurfaced the dreamlike quality of both chapters like we discussed in class way back, do you think chapter one is like a normal dream and chapter eleven is more analogous to a lucid dream (as our narrator seems to 'think' through the dream more)? I don't think (or know) if this comparison has any 'racial' relevance at all, but it just came to me.
ReplyDeleteAlso, regarding your line "you accept whatever is going on, no matter how ridiculous it seems when you think about it after waking up": do you think this compares to our narrator buying into and aspiring towards a college-educated career, respectable status, etc as his "dream" only to "awaken" later and understand these things aren't the entire world he once thought they were? Our narrator being so angry he wants to kill Bledsoe (is that "ridiculous"?), only to later let go of this anger? Or am I reaching
Anyway, I agree with the points you touched on in this post; we discussed this in class today lol but there's also uncanny coincidences between chapter 1 and chapter 16. At first I didn't think much of chapter 1, but I'm starting to think it may one of the most important chapters in this book. (Especially given how Ellison published chapter 1 independently?)
I definitely thought that Chapter 11 was like a lucid dream. I also am not really sure if this observation has any deeper racial implications.
DeleteI think your comparison to his college dreams and being awakened by Bledsoe's letters is spot on. I didn't even realize that. It seems like everytime he is "awakened", there is a major shift in his mindset and character. Wanting to kill Bledsoe was his immediate reaction to the letters, and when you just wake up from a dream you don't really question what just happened. Him eventually letting go of this anger, I think, makes total sense, as his state of mind is further and further away from dreaming.
It's a striking observation, that we can see more independent personality in the narrator amid this weird brainwashing/experiment setting, as he's interrogated about his identity by mysterious and evil-seeming doctors, than we do when he's giving his prized speech before the dignitaries of the town in chapter 1: a fitting reflection of how Ellison depicts that first speech as basically a recitation of conventional views (B.T. Washington), custom-made to please the white folks but not to express any individual identity whatsoever. It's a fitting Ellisonian irony that this "identity erasure" actually seems to generate a more lively, active, critical consciousness than his formal education does.
ReplyDeleteThe development of the character as the novel progresses is undeniable as the reader knows that each chapter gets us closer to the version of the narrator we see with 1300 lightbulbs in his room. The similarities allow us to make a direct comparison to how he might've handled an equal situation earlier in his life, and how he has come to find a voice and personality, even when completely wiped clean of his own.
ReplyDeleteThis is a noteworthy comparison. I think we also discussed the similarity between Chapter 1 and the scene where he first meets the Brotherhood and feels an eerie sense of deja vu. And in that scene as well, he undergoes a sort of ritual/rebirth. In fact, we see it several times throughout the book, even at the very end he seems to be coming out of his hole and again being birthed. It seems that rebirth is a cycle he constantly undergoes and will never stop undergoing. Perhaps Ellison is trying to reference us as a readership with this theme of rebirth, that we are constantly growing and learning and changing.
ReplyDeleteEach of his re-births, or new chapters in his life are connected somehow and I like how you highlighted this one, because though the contexts are so different, what he goes through is very similar.
ReplyDelete