Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

I’m teaching an American Lit class this semester and I’ve got some absolutely fabulous students. Last night we discussed the first half of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I first read this novel in college, but in order to teach it, I had to reread it. I remember being moved by it when I read it the first time, but reading it for the second time has left me shaken and puzzled at my own reaction to the book. The main issue, I think that I’m thinking about (and that I’m always thinking about, I suppose) is how the narrator acts and doesn’t act and how some of his actions seem to make no difference in terms of his fate. More specifically, I’m thinking about how he brings Mr. Norton to the Golden Day. The class had a lengthy discussion about whether we thought that the narrator might have subconsciously desired to bring him there (wouldn’t there have been other bars he could have taken him to?) or whether he truly wasn’t thinking or what.  And then, we talked about why Bledsoe kicked him out of the college and why the narrator posed such a threat to Bledsoe. If the narrator was just a foolish college kid, then it seems that Bledsoe would have resorted to a more lenient punishment, but certainly the extreme nature of the punishment (banishment), argues that there’s something about the narrator’s actions that is particularly threatening. One gets the sense that the narrator cannot conform to the degrading norms of the society around him. He tries but then again, he doesn’t. I think we were all intrigued by the psychology of the narrator and relationship of his psychology to the theories of Booker T. Washington. And Booker T. leads us of course to this idea of compromise, this feeling somehow that we want compromise and reform to work even desperately, but is this in vain? In the service of our masters? I think that the deep feeling is yes. Yes, it is. And this leads us to a feeling of depression because is the alternative to compromise being ousted from institutional structures? In any case, one gets the sense that this narrator cannot conform, that he is essentially incapable of it but all of his screw-ups seem to have a veneer of subconscious longing. Like he may want to mess things up and for very good reason. We are going to read and discuss the next half of the book next week, so I’m curious to see what the class thinks of the latter half of the book. I still can’t get the phantasmagorical Golden Day out of my mind.