January: Invisible Man [440] by Ralph Ellison.
February: The Metamorphosis [80] by Franz Kafka.
March: One Hundred Years of Solitude [430] by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
April: The Old Man and the Sea [120] by Ernest Hemingway.
May: Sons and Lovers [400] by D. H. Lawrence.
June: Billiards at Half-Past Nine [280] by Heinrich Boll.
July: In Cold Blood [360] by Truman Capote.
August: The Unbearable Lightness of Being [310] by Milan Kundera.
September: The Sound and the Fury [330] by William Faulkner.
October: Tender is the Night [320] by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
November: Beloved [320] by Toni Morrison.
December: The Wings of a Dove [500] by Henry James.
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Invisible Man
[INVISIBLE MAN] It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to be an adult black man in the United States during the first half of the Twentieth Century. The last of the official American slaves were in their final years and dying, forever severing that direct link to that unexplainable and regrettable, yet hopefully unforgettable, past that described what life was like when a black individual was not considered a person, but property; segregation was not only common, but standard, treating the black Americans to not necessarily what they needed or wanted or maybe felt they deserved, but what was left over; and many must have felt, as the narrator so eloquently states, “… I no longer deluded myself that I either knew the society or where I fitted into it,” [ch 24] which would lead to feelings of unimportance and, most certainly, apathy and frustration. The narrator of the story, who only admits to being referred to as “Brother” and mistakenly “Rinehart,” another man’s name, when in disguise, metaphorically considers himself invisible because, as a young black man without any kind of wealth or influence, he sees his thoughts and actions and even presence, and those of all black Americans for that matter, as transparent to the will and desires of the white majority. He lived the majority of his young adult life, which this story covers, attempting to decipher his grandfather’s ambiguous dying words: “Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction. Let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.” [ch 1] He couldn’t seem to decide if this meant to please white people and they’ll give you what you want, but you’ll be a traitor, or to deceive white people and try to take what you want, but you may forever be hated by those how have the wealth and influence. Not a splendid place to be.
Referring to the wealth of “white folk,” the narrator states: “Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.” [ch 6]
And referring to their influence: “These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth…” [ch 6] I hate to think how true this probably is even today.
“Everyone seemed to have some plan for me, and beneath that some more secret plan.” [ch 9] The narrator states after finding out that the black man he looked up to the most had betrayed him. To him, it seems as though he is realizing that maybe the only reason the rich white folk of his hometown had paid for his college schooling was so that he would know even better his expected place in society as the white man’s underling [not “social equality,” but “social responsibility” is what they want him to learn].
More realizations: “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? …what of those things which you actually didn’t like, not because you were not supposed to like them, not because to dislike them was considered a mark of refinement and education – but because you actually found them distasteful?” [ch 13] Ask yourself these questions. Also, as to the second question, add the things you DO like, for whatever reason.
A statement for the working class hero, “I would do the work but I would be no one except myself – whoever I was.” [ch 14] Oh, how dreadful life is when you are unable to determine who you truly are, and not just what you do, what you have, where you’re from, or who you know.
“For history records the patterns of men’s lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who won and who lived to lie about it afterwards.” [ch 20] What’s that saying about how history is always told by the side that won? Doesn’t mean that it’s definitely a lie, but doesn’t seem very balanced either.
Probably the line that made me feel the most emotion: “What a crummy lie they kept us dominated by.” [ch 23]
And like in any Shakespearean play, the climax of the plot metaphorically stated in the Prologue: “Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action. He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing gloves, struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as cold as a well-digger’s posterior. The smart money hit the canvas. The long shot got the nod. The yokel had simply stepped inside of his opponent’s sense of time.”
Suggestions for further reading on the early 20th Century black experience: NATIVE SON by Richard Wright.
this is tim
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