That One Escalator (Sasha)

To me, in all honesty, Invisible Man still has a strangely and profoundly dreamlike character. Our main character continually tries to establish himself, but is undercut in bizarre and nonsensical ways throughout, while even his attempts to slip away from the world provoke strange responses.   The narrator’s experience with the brotherhood exemplify this pattern extremely clearly. He is promoted to a high office in an organization he does not really understand (nor ever understands or is allowed to understand) and is then repeatedly criticized and shamed for failing to uphold the proper ideals of said organization. Only after one such failure for which he is criticized is he sent to Hambro, to be educated, but we, like with his college experience, see none of this. We learn only that he is successful enough in his education to be given his job back, followed by it being taken away again, and him reassigned to “The Woman Question”. This chapter too, is bizarre. We are...

        In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man , we are presented with several different characters whoa attempt to push our narrator to become a “race leader”. Of these, the most important so far are probably Mary and Mr. Bledsoe. These two characters present similar views, but treat the narrator in radically different ways. Bledsoe is a terrifying force in the narrator’s life, who punishes him repeatedly for harming his interests and what he believes are the interests of “the race”.   Mary, on the other hand, while also a profound force in the narrator’s life, which he describes as such, is infinitely more caring and less hostile. She allows the narrator a place in her home for free, where he is allowed to stay for months on end, without fulfilling his obligations in terms of rent to her. She believes in the narrator, and in every previous person who has stayed in her house. Bledsoe believes in no one except for himself. For him, the narrator, like for ...