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My Strange Relation to the Narrator

While reading Invisible Man, I’ve found myself relating to the narrator of Invisible Man. This is a strange
experience for me, and I often question myself for feeling this way. For one thing, I am not black, nor am
I living in a systematically racist society. I am a spoiled child of a wealthy family in 2019. But
somehow, even with our extreme differences, when I read Ralph Ellison’s  descriptions of the narrator’s
thoughts and actions, it is hard for me to not see myself in him. 
What this means for me is that when Ellison describes the narrator’s experiences with the Brotherhood
or Ras, I imagine what I would do if placed in similar situations. I become one with the narrator in ways
that, given my racial and historical identities, seem impossible. The cause of this is my role as
sympathetic reader. The result is a moving experience for the reader. In chapter 1, I distanced myself
from the narrator and watched him conform to heavily racist ideals, Now, I feel a sort of attachment to
him that I never would have imagined. 
This also goes back to the narrator’s grandfather’s speech in chapter 1: 
“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 swallow you ‘till they vomit or bust wide open.”
He is telling the narrator to gain and apply knowledge in order to ultimately subvert the society that
controls them. For the grandfather, this is the American system of segregation. The narrator has no
idea what his grandfather is saying at the time, but his conscience is slowly shifting in the “right”
direction.

Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing! I see where you are coming from relating to the narrator, and I think that this relation effects what we take away from the story! At the beginning, if I'd had put down the book and gone about my everyday life from there, the experiences and outlooks I had gained would transform into me pointing fingers at the causes for invisibility and finding someone to blame. Now that we are approaching the end of the story, I see this piece of literature as more of a way to bridge gaps. Everyone experiences some form of invisibility sometime in their life, and this similarity is a place we can start to bridge divides.

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  2. Your immersion into Invisible Man's narrator really speaks to Ellison's writing ability. The fact that you feel like a Black man in a systematically racist society while living a starkly contrasting life in reality is really amazing. Ellison's skill is especially obvious when we consider how the Narrator's relatability changes drastically from the start to the finish of the novel. As you said in your blog post, the narrator begins by conforming heavily to society and as the story progresses we see him become rebellious, showing brief moments where he acts in ways that we would in these unbelievably far fetched situations.

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  3. I find this idea incredibly interesting, almost as if this is what Ellison intended. To me, the ending of the book felt like the narrator was showing the readers how they could all find similarities between his life and theirs, much like you have written about here. I feel as if this examination of your own life and experiences in comparison to the narrators was intentional to force readers of various backgrounds to see how we are all not much different than each other.

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  4. I agree that it was very hard at first to connect to the narrator because he seemed so brainwashed by racism. Throughout the novel, the narrator is challenged to discover his own identity and political beliefs while still steeped in society's expectations and biases. He's trying to figure out who he wants to be, but the world keeps pushing him to become someone else. I can understand why the narrator would want to hibernate in a hole for a while.

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